A less succinct way of phrasing it would be something like: which gametes are produced, were produced, or should have been produced.
There are messy edge cases. Not all people have 8 fingers and two thumbs, but we don't say digit count is on a spectrum because some people are born with more or less, or that some people have had digits amputated.
The vast, vast majority of people are not messy edge cases. And some of them find language like "pregnant people" or "people with protates" awkward and vaguely dehumanising as opposed to the more understandable and specific terms: "women" and "men".
Like you, I find those terms awkward, at best. I refuse to use them.
Yet, "what should have been produced" is no better. Everytime I hear it, from you and anyone else, it sounds like numbskulls all too pleased at themselves for what they believe is a clever definition, without realizing it's merely "because I said so".
Maybe I'm missing something, and one day I will hear it differently. Not many such things change for me after years. Maybe I'll win the lottery, too.
Since you mentioned fingers... I used to know a shop teacher who adamantly wouldn't count themselves among the 10-fingered, and would give you a safety lecture if you brought it up. Just like that lecture would ignore your joke about opening soda cans and proceed into a near-diatribe that, 30 years later, is still an effective reminder on machine safety, this exemplifies the crux of the gender terminology problem: you're focusing on the wrong thing.
Why are you so insistent on telling other people about their bodies, to the point of declaring to them what their body "should have produced"?
You appear as the middle-schooler that thought youself clever, and your close group of friends seemed to agree, but most everyone else is trying to ignore you. This only became a problem when that close group of friends started stealing lunch money, saying it "should have" been given to them.
> A less succinct way of phrasing it would be something like: which gametes are produced, were produced, or should have been produced.
So how can we determine what "should" be from a scientific basis if all study of these outliers is policed and censored like this?
This seems to be missing the point that would and should are objective vs whatever YOU and yours decided... Almost universally decided by religious or cultural dogma ... And not biology or science
We've been able to observe that there are two sexes since time immemorial based on secondary sex characteristics. There is a very strong correlation between these characteristics and gametes produced. This isn't what I or anyone else has decided nor is it based on religion or culture.
Why is a strong correlation need to forced into a false binary true or false by the law or government?? Myself and others have already gone over the outliers... Again you are focusing on "should be" vs what objectively and scientifically just IS. which is the very definition of culture vs science.
It's not a forced binary. There are no in-between gametes. There are large gametes (eggs) and small gametes (sperm).
The law and government doesn't get to decide this, as you say, it just is. How the law reacts to the scientific fact of the sex binary is a different matter.
There is plenty of in between on what to classify someone who doesn't produce either gamete. And the only answer you seem to have it's that it's obvious because 'should'. While also thinking it's acceptable to use the law to force this conclusion against scientific research. Much like a religious dogma...
Anyways I'm done with this conversation, the whole point was to tease out how absurd and non objective your argument was and I think I have achieved that well enough for others to read for themselves whether this circular logic makes sense or is just to rationalize bigotry.
The problem here is that you’re hand-waving people’s identity behind what you believe it “should” be - which isn’t actually easy to tell! You can have ovaries, XY chromosomes, eggs, male characteristics, and on and on and on in infinite permutations.
Of course, they (meaning people who identify different than you think they “should”) also hand-wave everything away. The difference is they are… them. Their opinion on their identity is more important.
There are messy edge cases. Not all people have 8 fingers and two thumbs, but we don't say digit count is on a spectrum because some people are born with more or less, or that some people have had digits amputated.
The vast, vast majority of people are not messy edge cases. And some of them find language like "pregnant people" or "people with protates" awkward and vaguely dehumanising as opposed to the more understandable and specific terms: "women" and "men".