I still don't agree with you, but I'll think about it.
Well, I did think about it. I don't like to adopt an entrenched position in relation to a novel proposition, no matter how ludicrous it seems at first blush. Now I've thought about it, I still think it's ludicrous. Noting the fervent zeal with which Steersman is putting forward his interpretation I see little to no chance of a meeting of minds, but here goes.
There are a number of reasons for needing to define words, but the most common are the dictionary compiler trying to find a way to describe
actual usage for the benefit of learner and native speaker alike, and the taxonomist trying to find language to describe new categories or objects. I think we're conflating the two here.
The words male and female, when we're dealing with mammals (so let's leave clownfish out of it, I think Emma has dealt pretty well with the wider ramifications in non-mammalian life anyway), have been used for a very long time indeed to refer to the two sexes. There has never been any requirement for a specific individual to be fertile, either at the time of speaking or indeed ever - past or future - to be referred to as male or female. We commonly talk about pre-pubescent males and post-menopausal females. In my profession, when registering a new patient, we first ask the sex, male or female, then we ask if the animal has been neutered. The answer to the second question does not negate the answer to the first question. A castrated male is still considered male and a spayed female is still considered female. The difference is important for all sorts of medical reasons, but somehow we don't have words for these individuals that don't still include "male" and "female" - because they have always been regarded as male and female, not as something else.
The binary male/female distinction is paramount and fundamental, and it extends to abnormal individuals also. A freemartin heifer is still female - indeed, if she had not been conceived as a female embryo she could not have become a freemartin. We've discussed various human DSDs here and I have pointed out that most DSD conditions are sex-specific. Klinefelter's occurs only in males, Turner's occurs only in females, and so on. This is accepted as a given in any clinic dealing with these conditions.
Most chimeras and mosaics are similarly easy to classify, as pretty much always (really, always - every time someone thinks they have a gotcha, they haven't) one sex is dominant and there are only remnants of tissue that are classifiable as the other sex. The individual as a whole organism is clearly male or female. Fertile or not.
(CAIS is only an argument about taxonomy. We know what CAIS is. We're only arguing about which box to put CAIS into. CAIS individuals aren't a third box, nor do they negate the integrity of the two boxes we have.)
This is how the words male and female are normally used, not just in common parlance, but in medicine and biology. Just to take one example from the medical field; in embryology, it's normal to refer to male and female embryos. We don't have other words to refer to embryos which have the potential to become female as opposed to embryos which have the potential to become male. We don't need them.
So if you're writing a dictionary definition and you come up with something that doesn't match this common usage, you're doing it wrong. The dictionary-compiler doesn't create the usage, it's the other way round.
On the other hand, you may be a taxonomist looking for a name for a new category in order to discuss it. That's different, because in this case your definition will create the usage.
One thing you should really try to do here is avoid words that are already in common usage meaning something else. So if I'm a biologist who has found a new species of rodent in the jungle, it's a good idea not to give it a name that's already in use for a different species of rodent. That's likely to cause confusion and get push-back.
Closer to home, maybe a word is needed for men who think they're women, or who want to be women. "Transwomen" might work well enough. However, if you insist on appropriating the word "women" for these people and that the beings formerly known as women are now to be called cervix-havers or menstruators, you
will get pushback.
So how did this "only currently fertile individuals are male or female, everything else is something which is neither but which we unaccountably don't have any words for" thing happen? Was it a dictionary compiler or a taxonomist?
It seems to me that this has originated as an attempt at dictionary compilation. I see no reason to believe that the 1972 definition that is being relied on here was an attempt to re-purpose the words male and female to refer
only to fertile individuals. This was not accepted usage at the time, and there was (and is) no requirement for such usage. We don't
need words that only refer to fertile individuals, we're doing just grand with "fertile male" and "fertile female" and similar constructions. The guy who wrote that definition was not trying to name new concepts that needed naming. He was trying for a definition that described existing usage.
We seem to be the victims of an over-literal interpretation of wording which at the time was entirely unexceptional, using the present habitual tense in English. The sex that produces small motile gametes, the sex that produces large immobile gametes. Produces, in the same sense that I sing in a choir, even when I'm at choir practice but not actually singing at that moment, even when I'm not at choir practice right now, and even when the choir is on its summer break.
Also, "the sex that..." does not mean that every single member of that class has to do this thing. It was absolutely accepted in 1972 that there were two sexes. I look at a freemartin. What sex is she? She is obviously a member of the class of which (normally) produces large immobile gametes. She was conceived as an embryo with XX chromosomes and developed along the pathway to produce large immobile gametes, until her twin brother screwed all this up by handing her a dose of androgens. If she had not been female, her brother's androgens could not have had this affect on her. There is no farmer, vet or biologist (outwith the few who are infected with this crazy pedantry) who wouldn't agree that a freemartin is female. Lots of things don't conform to the strict dictionary definition that describes their normal condition, but they still belong to that class of things. A hand affected by polydactyly, or paralysis, or which has lost several fingers, is still a hand.
As far as I can see, the 1972 definition was an attempt to describe the two boxes, male and female, only two of them, in a rather more scientific way than had been done before. It was not an attempt to re-define the words into new definitions at odds with long-standing and common usage. In 1972 it wasn't usual to add extra verbiage (and make dictionaries twice as long) to point out that what is being referred to is the
class of individuals which
typically does this, or presents like that, or looks like the other. People were normally considered to be bright enough to understand that that was what was meant.
Then we get people in non-jobs such as "philosophy of biology" who have to justify their salaries somehow and enjoy verbal fencing and salami-slicing, taking this perfectly unremarkable definition, not understanding the present habitual tense, and not understanding the concept of categories.
And we end up with people who really should have better things to do with their time actually assisting the agenda of the vested interests that are trying to muddy the waters by claiming that only a tiny proportion of mammals are actually male or female. As opposed to, you know, all of them.
