Well… yea. But also no. That’s a big part of the problem. You can’t really discuss something with someone if you’re talking about different things. Confusingly- gender can refer to the concept of gender identity OR biological sex. Biological sex is not an identity and cannot be changed with current science. If you are XY you are XY and XX is XX. Your identity however, your traits, they can be changed. They are subjective. So when person A says they are not their biological gender and person B starts yelling about that being impossible, person B is likely conflating gender to biological sex at birth and A is reflecting to identity.
Complicating things are ambiguities and misunderstandings and differing interpretations of key concepts like “sex.” Gamete production is generally used to sex animals- males tend to have small and mobile gametes (like sperm) and females have the large immobile gamete like eggs.) two problems. Firstly, it is possible for humans to produce both gametes, ambiguous gametes, or neither gamete. Confusing things further, you can produce no gametes at birth, or you might later produce no gametes. A post menopausal woman produces no eggs, a man who has undergone total removal of the tested produces no sperm- so “natural” or man causes factors can change gamete production after birth as well. Since gametes are the main but not only way to classify sex (secondary traits are often considered as well) things get MORE confusing.
And then we get really confusing because… one can argue that the type of gamete one MIGHT produce could be used to define sex- for example while women no longer have or produce viable eggs after menopause, the fact they COULD produce eggs if not otherwise changed in state from fertile, could be used to argue they are women. Of course, we can apply a common rebuttal to trans individuals and others and say that what they MIGHT do or FEEL like doesn’t matter because their biology doesn’t support it.
In other words such anti trans arguments as “it doesn’t matter what you think or feel, your body is male/female so you are that…” would logically imply that a woman who doesn’t produce gametes- who has no eggs- is not a woman. A man that doesn’t produce sperm would not be a man, because the fact that he maybe could if his body was different doesn’t change the fact he doesn’t, and if we are using gametes to define men as having sperm and women having eggs… if you don’t have sperm or eggs you can’t be a man or a woman.
Now, one might make an argument not to use gametes but to use genitals to define male and female- but genitals can be changed. Surgery can do that. So… then anyone with the requisite genitals would be that sex no? Of course one might argue that sex be based on the genitals you were born with- though that is a faulty argument because if you no longer have those genitals- the information is obsolete. If you were born with a billion dollar trust fund and spent all you wealth- are you still rich because you were born rich? What a silly idea. Nothing really works that way. Babies often change eye color, hair color, they usually change height. So the argument that someone who had their penis friend to a vagina and would be called a woman is delusional also implies that to everyone.
So here is a 27 year old man who is 6 feet tall and 180lbs with brown hair and blue eyes, but their drivers license should say they are 10lbs and 14 inches tall and have gray eyes and blonde hair because that is what was true when they were born? That seems silly doesn’t it? So we can’t use gametes. We can’t use genitals. We can’t use breasts. We can’t use body hair. We could use chromosomes- but you can’t actually know someone’s chromosomes without a DNA test so that’s not very helpful in daily life.
It isn’t that these things can’t be sorted out- it’s more that most people argue on what they feel. Accept the irony when you can’t clearly define the criteria for a man or woman and have those criteria stand scrutiny, so are effectively saying that someone is a man or a woman because you feel like they are- while telling that person that feeling like a man or a woman doesn’t make them one. That’s a bit odd isn’t it? Likewise the opposite, how does one tell a person that they can’t define male or female but are one because they feel that way, and that feeling like they aren’t doesn’t change their identity.
That’s the root of it. You can have two people arguing from the same place with no common rules or definitions. If you look at a color and say it is gray, and I look it and say it is white, but we don’t have a way to define what is gray and what is white- how do either one of us say the other is wrong because of what we feel?
That’s why in almost every place or matters we have specs. Every shade of every color can be measured and assigned a set of values. The ultimate definition of white or gray is a subjective matter as every sensor can read differently and every program must be taught what to consider what and so there is always a bias. So we wouldn’t say “white” if we needed a specific shade- we would specify the values or a numeric short code to specify the exact color- or we would compare to a reference standard.
But we don’t have a reference standard per se when it comes to identity. Sex can be called on convenience. Science is full of convenience and disagreement over classification. But someone has to speak the standard by which we assign the terms and that is… ambiguous at present.
So really that’s the issue. We can’t really discuss the issue productively if we are all talking about different things.
That’s why in almost every place or matters we have specs. Every shade of every color can be measured and assigned a set of values. The ultimate definition of white or gray is a subjective matter as every sensor can read differently and every program must be taught what to consider what and so there is always a bias. So we wouldn’t say “white” if we needed a specific shade- we would specify the values or a numeric short code to specify the exact color- or we would compare to a reference standard.
So really that’s the issue. We can’t really discuss the issue productively if we are all talking about different things.