GC: What are the true definitions of male and female that do not exclude people that have removed all of their genitals and/or can't produce sperm or egg? And why doesn't sex change when secondary sexual characteristics change?

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[–]levoyageur718293 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Because the sex categories not only include members who can actually perform the reproductive role, but also those who have a facsimile of it - they either could in the past, reasonably will be able to in the future, or are clearly deficient in performing it. I like to invoke an old Soviet joke to make the situation plain.

A man walks into a butcher's shop and sees that all its shelves are empty. He says to the clerk, "are you completely out of meat?" "No," says the clerk, "this is a bakery and we're completely out of bread. The butcher's shop is next door, they're the ones who are completely out of meat."

Sex functions exactly the same way in humans as it does in other mammals, and while there are words for castrated males and words for spayed females, there has never been a word that applied to both of them equally. An ox is never a cow. Why do you think that is?