Gender

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity.

Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories. However, Money's meaning of the word did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Today, the distinction is strictly followed in some contexts, especially the social sciences and documents written by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, in many other contexts, including some areas of social sciences, gender includes sex or replaces it. Although this change in the meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s, a small acceleration of the process in the scientific literature was observed in 1993 when the USA's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started to use gender instead of sex. In 2011, the FDA reversed its position and began using sex as the biological classification and gender as "a person's self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation." In non-human animal research, gender is also commonly used to refer to the physiology of the animals.

Grammatical gender

In linguistics, grammatical gender is a specific form of noun-class system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language, such as adjectives, articles, pronouns, or verbs. This system is used in approximately one quarter of the world's languages. In these languages, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the genders of that language. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words."

Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine and neuter; or animate and inanimate. In a few languages, the gender assignment of nouns is solely determined by their meaning or attributes, like biological sex, humanness, animacy. However, in most languages, this semantic division is only partially valid, and many nouns may belong to a gender category that contrasts with their meaning (e.g. the word for "manliness" could be of feminine gender). In this case, the gender assignment can also be influenced by the morphology or phonology of the noun, or in some cases can be apparently arbitrary.

Gender (disambiguation)

Gender refers to the distinction between male and female.

Gender or Genders may also refer to:

See also

Pawn

Pawn may refer to:

Pledge (law)

A pledge is a bailment that conveys possessory title to property owned by a debtor (the pledgor) to a creditor (the pledgee) to secure repayment for some debt or obligation and to the mutual benefit of both parties. The term is also used to denote the property which constitutes the security. A pledge is type of security interest.

Pledge is the pignus of Roman law, from which most of the modern European-based law on the subject is derived, but is generally a feature of even the most basic legal systems. It differs from hypothecation and from the more usual mortgage in that the pledge is in the possession of the pledgee. It is similar, however, in that all three can apply to personal and real property. A pledge of personal property is known as a pawn and that of real property is called an antichresis.

In earlier medieval law, especially in Germanic law, two types of pledge existed, being either possessory (cf. Old English wed, Old French gage, Old High German wetti, Latin pignus depositum), i.e. delivered from the outset, or non-possessory (cf. OE bād, OFr nam, nant, OHG pfant, L pignus oppositum), i.e. distrained on the maturity date, and the latter essentially gave rise to the legal principle of distraint. This distinction still remains in some systems, e.g. French gage vs. nantissement and Dutch vuistpand vs. stil pand. Token, symbolic reciprocal pledges were commonly incorporated into formal ceremonies as a way of solidifying agreements and other transactions.

Cruiser

A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundred years, and has had different meanings throughout this period. During the Age of Sail, the term cruising referred to certain kinds of missions – independent scouting, raiding or commerce protection – fulfilled by a frigate or sloop, which were the cruising warships of a fleet.

In the middle of the 19th century, cruiser came to be a classification for the ships intended for this kind of role, though cruisers came in a wide variety of sizes, from the small protected cruiser to armored cruisers that were as large (although not as powerful) as a battleship.

By the early 20th century, cruisers could be placed on a consistent scale of warship size, smaller than a battleship but larger than a destroyer. In 1922, the Washington Naval Treaty placed a formal limit on cruisers, which were defined as warships of up to 10,000 tons displacement carrying guns no larger than 8 inches in calibre. These limits shaped cruisers until the end of World War II. The very large battlecruisers of the World War I era were now classified, along with battleships, as capital ships.

Cruising (driving)

Cruising is a social activity that primarily consists of driving a car. Cruising can be an expression of the freedom of possessing a driver's license. Cruising is distinguished from regular driving by the social and recreational nature of the activity, which is characterized by an impulsively random, often aimless course. A popular route (or "strip") is often the focus of cruising. "Cruise nights" are evenings during which cars drive slowly, bumper-to-bumper, through small towns. Another common form is a "Booze Cruise": this is where a group of people go out 'cruising' and drinking. A cruise can be a meeting of car enthusiasts at a predetermined location, organised predominantly through the internet (in recent times) but also largely through mobile phone, word of mouth or simply by a cruise being established enough that it becomes a regular event.

United States

One of the oldest cruising strips is located on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles. Cruising on this strip became a popular pastime with the lowriding community during the 1940s before spreading to surrounding neighborhoods in the 1950s.Van Nuys Boulevard in the central San Fernando Valley has been a popular cruising strip since the 1950s-1960s; the 1979 film Van Nuys Blvd. depicted the cruising culture on the strip. Perhaps the most famous cruising strip (or main drag), however, is McHenry Avenue in Modesto, California. The cruising culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s was depicted in the film American Graffiti. The film was set (but not actually filmed) in director George Lucas's home town of Modesto, which also hosts an annual "Graffiti Summer" celebration in the film's honor.