Well, no offense, but you reacted like a shrinking violet and that you continue to use a word that is “technically incorrect” shows you are still a little afraid of what others think. Most ordinary Americans have absolutely NO reaction to the word “sex.” It is the Stalinists on the left who have a problem with it.
Now, if you choose to use the word “gender” because you want to, that’s something else again.
I took a battering from this nasty guy for a long semester. He tried to destroy me and a project I had acquired funding for out of sheer professional jealousy. He had the upper hand with a PhD status while I was a graduate student with no allies or support. So I was reacting to more than his phraseology. Perhaps you would have done better in that situation.
I said you are right, technically. But grammar and usage change with the culture, sometimes making technically correct definitions seem less important and, often, a bit pedantic. Our society has become so sexualized that the word sex has lost its sedate usage that it once had, say, in Victorian England. It has become super charged. I don’t know how you can be so sure that “most Americans” have no problem with the word sex, particularly in the kind of situation I was describing. I also have no idea how much impact the Stalinist left has had on my behavior and thinking. Probably none. I started using the term gender in the late 80s because of a bad experience and it became a habit. Don’t care to analyze it any further.
I have no problem with anyone using the term sex rather than gender in any situation they please. But I’ve found the rules of the game in the academic research environment to be far different from that of the theater where I also have spent an important part of my life ... and with no worries about any kind of usage whatsoever.
I still say, if you do not involve underage humans in your bedroom bacchanalias, do WTF you want. But do not make a public statement about it as it is the perfect definition of TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!!!!!!
(TMI)