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Notes -
It doesn’t hinge on definitions, it hinges on the utility of language versus power dynamics.
When liberals think of definitions, they think about what a specialized academic body has defined. This is, in fact, not actually a definition. This is a “term of art” or jargon which can (at most) act as a lesser definition. A legal definition of argument is different than the real world definition of argument. The legal definers do not get to force their definition upon the normal, everyday majority usage. So it is with all terms of art.
Per a survey 20 years ago, the majority of people believe the word is rooted in male/female division. Only 10% bring up social roles or “socially defined”. A self-perception origin of the word only accounted for 19% of origin beliefs, but because only 42% of definitions supplied a statement on origin, this is more like 8%.
Now, the power dynamic today may be that the academics do get to foist their “social construct” definition on the word gender. For a time, there will exist a purgatory of definitions where the previous majority definers are tricked into believing that this is the real definition. But what will happen is that most people will discount the importance of “gender” as a word. It would be as if someone created a new word, “spashiboo”, which refers to a social construction — the majority will simply not care about “spashiboo” and go back to caring about the male/female sex distinction.
But why is the male/female sex distinction so important and resilient to attempts at obfuscation? And here is where the significance lies: words are used for their utility. There is hardly a definition in social affairs more important than the male/female division, because it dictates our sexual aims (and thus our evolutionary and biological aims, and our social aims), and it efficiently categorized the psychological differences between men and women.
This is more important than anything that the ivory tower gender wizards can brew in their textbooks. Normal people care about having sex and procreating, and they also want to divide humans according to useful social categories. The first reason mandates the priority of a male/female definition. The second reason encourages a male/female definition, because men and women act differently, and I have seen no evidence than MTF are more womanly in their psychological orientation (in fact I have seen evidence to the opposite: excelling in video games, typical male autism, masculine faces, etc).
I wonder if this is a partial explanation for the use of "females" among some types of young men.
"Males" is a common construct supported by the social justice movement, usually in the phrase "white males". It's unsurprising that some people would not recognize that the social justice movement is engaged in double standards where "males" is acceptable but "females" isn't.
Those men don't seem to be taking many ques from the social justice movement. If anything, it's the exact opposite, something like "I'm talking about people born with pussies, not whatever the fuck you wierdos are on about."
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