It was earlier than the 40's. It started in the 20's. With the institute i mentioned with all the book burnings and what not.
I would argue that it is not from French but Latin and that way more linguistic genders exist in other languages. Without much of that function in English and frankly with our schools in the last few generations turning out bumpkins...we are easily manipulated.
Re nouns...we are not. The langue used to describe us may well have nouns but you and I and all of these other weirdos here are flesh and blood men and woman. And this one time the group heretic will say that we as men and women transcend the language used to describe us as individuals or our wonderful binary
Re victorians and their use of the words as synonyms...I have a weird habit with respect to dictionaries.
Since I was a snot nosed punk and first my grandfather correct me on the word and then a week later heard G Gordon Liddy expound on the topic, I have tried to look it up in increasingly older dictionaries.
Any opportunity whether it is at libraries, thrift shops or an estate sale I make a beeline to look it up.
What I have found generally is that after 1919 when the Oxford English dictionary apparently lead the charge in exciting a lot of what they considered archaic words and uses, you only found gender being synonymous with sex with the notation of being slang.
Strangely, around the same time all the encyclopedias started ditching all of the really useful stuff that you might use to rebuild a culture from scratch....hmmm I smell a conspiracy
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