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[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It is not about whether or not you produce gametes now, it is about which gametes was your body supposed to end up producing.

Also, what determines sex is which type of gamete - egg or sperm - a body develops in utero to have the potential capacity to produce - or mature and release - at some point over the course of (later) life.

The potential capacity to produce ova or sperm doesn't have to be realized for it to count and for a person to have a sex. Sometimes the capacity isn't ever realized for various reasons, such as DSDs and many other conditions and situations, but that doesn't mean a person doesn't have a sex. Everyone has a sex coz even those whose potential capacity to produce gametes is never realized still began life in utero with the potential capacity to do so at a later point in life.

Similarly, people don't have to have the capacity to actively produce - or, in the case of human females, to mature and release - gametes in every phase of life for all of us to have a sex. Nor do we only have a sex in the moments we are producing or releasing gametes, either.

I've used the the terms "mature and release" gametes rather than just "produce" gametes when speaking of human females coz the fact is, we are born with all our gametes already; all our eggs are extant inside us when we are still in utero. With puberty, human females obtain the ability to mature and release our gametes. Female humans normally mature and release our eggs one by one - though on occasion, perhaps two or three at once - on a cyclical basis that usually occurs monthly known as ovulation.

It's only male humans who have the capacity to produce/create male gametes anew and in vast numbers during their lifetimes.