There is no objective fact of the matter about what words mean.
Words are defined by usage. Does anyone disagree?
Moreover the meaning of words and phrases is not a simple thing. There are layers of meaning and overtones.
It is my position that the general usage of words like "sex", "male", "female", "man" and "woman" does not refer purely to biological sex, but rather to a social category built on top of biological sex which includes expectations and obligations to present and act in a certain way.
This presentation and behaviour that is expected is more or less arbitrary, differing from place to place and time to time.
You can make up whatever meaning you want to for common terms, and use them however you want to. I'm not the boss of your mind.
That said, however, if you insist upon using words in the way you want to, and ignoring the general sense that they're being used in this thread, you're not going to make any headway at all in understanding. You'll pretty much be left yelling at a wall and being baffled as to why the wall isn't answering you.
I take it that the position of those who disagree with me is that, in general usage words like "sex", "male", "female", "man" and "woman" refer to biological sex and nothing besides.
If you think I am misrepresenting your position, please say so.
You keep trying to force ALL of the terms to be either strictly
Once again... take a moment and give some though to the difference between figurative language and literal language.
You keep trying to force the terms to be ALL strictly figurative, or to be ALL strictly literal... and you're making the false assumption that everyone else is doing the same thing.
Generally speaking, most of the posters in this thread use "sex", "male", and "female" as literal language, referring to the reproductive configuration of our bodies.
Most of the posters use "gender", "man", and "woman" as figurative language, referring to social roles and presentations.
There are a very few exceptions... which makes communication difficult. Rolfe, for example, uses the terms "man" and "woman" as synonymous to "male" and "female", and uses them ALL in a literal sense. Rolfe gives exactly zero ***** about social roles and presentations.
(I agree with Rolfe, but I have gone a different direction and instead of trying to fight that particular battle, I've simply opted out of it completely and refuse to use figurative language unless I'm being very, very clear that it is figurative).
A few others, like London John, use the terms interchangeably, but they also consistently conflate the literal and the figurative senses... making the entire discussion a bit of bait and switch game.
Pick how you want to use them, be explicit about how you're using them, and be consistent.
