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If you're measuring by gametes, then post-menopausal women are a third gender, and the same gender as a eunuch. Does that really seem like it cleaves reality at the joints?
Copy-pasting from my other comment:
Menopausal women's bodies once produced large gametes, but no longer do. That is a historical fact about their bodies. Just because someone has one of their legs amputated doesn't change the historical fact that they were bipedal from birth. Just as we consider prepubescent girls female because in most cases their bodies eventually will be capable of producing large gametes, we consider menopausal women female because their bodies once did produce large gametes: the arrow of time points both forwards and backwards. Likewise for eunuchs and prepubescent boys.
So, wait, you think people who lost their legs should still be considered bipedal? Like, you think they don't need a wheelchair, and we should laugh at them when they insist they've "transitioned" to needing a wheelchair?
How in the world is this cleaving reality in a coherent way, but "people who get treated as women" and "people who experience misogynistic sexism" are somehow radical ideas?
No, but just as the existence of such people doesn't invalidate the definition of 'human' as 'a bipedal mammal', the existence of various edge cases does not invalidate the definition of 'woman' as 'producer of large gametes'.
If someone loses their legs, you don't call them bipedal, though. So why are you calling someone who loses their gametes a "woman"?
Does it really make sense to say "well, but you USED to be able to walk, so I'm still going to call you able-bodied"?
For basically everything else, we care about what a person's current condition is: we don't draw a huge distinction between people who were born needing a wheelchair -vs- people who were in an accident. Why does reality "cleave at the joints" differently for gametes vs legs?
You call them 'handicapped', or something else if there's enough of them that a more specific new category would be useful -- you wouldn't call such a person a serpent, though. Are you sure this is the route you'd like to take?
My point was that we don't bother to differentiate between "born" handicapped versus "became" handicapped. They're both just handicapped/disabled/legless/need a wheelchair. The idea of "transitioning" between able-bodied and disabled is not terribly controversial. So why is it that when it comes to "female", you're suddenly against the very possibility that someone could change categories?
No, it's not -- but the analogous transition for cutting your dick off would be 'eunuch', not woman. I'm fine if you'd like some other category ('trans person' or something), but like I say this doesn't seem to me the road you'd like to go down.
But it's not cutting off your dick, it's turning it into a vagina. If the end state was a Ken doll, it'd be a very different conversation.
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