> You know I've always been wondering something. It's fashionable to use 'gender' instead of 'sex' when asking whether someone's male or female. My english teacher in high school would always make a fuss about it and say that 'sex' should be the proper word because 'gender' only refers to nouns and stuff.
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> I'm wondering, will the use of gender become commonplace, or do I still need to distinguish between them in case someone gets angry about it?
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I think the distinction is that 'sex' refers to an actual biological classification between being male and female, and 'gender' refers to which of these one identifies oneself with (see definition #2 of 'gender' at www.dictionary.com). Of course, this is probably only a connotation, and in most circumstances the two words are used interchangeably.