We have distinct sex organs for each role. But as moderately dimorphic mammals we do nto have to observe directly those sex organs as we can take in the myriad of clues from our body shapes, gait, voice, hair, facial structure and so on. And rcognise sex in adults in the high 90's%.
The reasons we get a few wrong can be due to several factors: Secondary sex characteristics do overlap - not much, but enough to introduce a percentage point of errors or so. That does not mean such people are not male or female, but atypical in body characteristics.
Younger people who have not matured are less dimorphic and may introduce a little error. Older people may lose some body shape etc. And some people try to disguise their sex with varying degree of effort - including surgery. Another tiny percentage of error.
None of these errors requires us to abandon the sex binary - two reproductive roles based on a gamete type. This is the fact you so much wish to deny so that men who say they are women can transgress into women's spaces.
See, you’re doing that thing where you fight tooth and nail against a claim that no one actually made, while hoping we don’t notice as you gloss over the parts that you don’t know how to deal with.
People who are “atypical in body characteristics” aren’t a footnote. They’re your core problem. Those are real people with real bodies that you don’t know how to define. You’re loud and confident about how easy you think it would be. But you can’t even do it in the abstract.
We recognise male and female bodies by which of the two development pathways they have undergone. Example: a male baby with 5-ARD may have ambiguous genitals. And may be mistaken fir a girl.
But understanding the condition of 5-ARD means we can say the baby is male as he is XY and has an active SRY and undergoes male development, and masculinisation through testosterone from his testes, but with a retardation of growth of the penis until puberty.
Your problem, as always, is that those “pathways” have no strict definitions, or any single characteristics that are necessary or sufficient. Some people with a Y chromosome develop normally as a female, and even have children, as you well know.
Maybe you need to understand the univariate fallacy before we go on. www.lesswrong.com/posts/cu7YY7...
And yes, you’ll say “but those people have conditions X, Y and Z that put them on a different pathway.” And all you’re doing is proving the point that the sexes only exist as broad patterns to which individuals conform to a greater or lesser degree. The best you can do is say that a “male” is
someone who has enough phenotypical traits in common with other males. That’s definition by coherence—bimodal, not binary. And it works a lot of the time. But it’s not the definition you’re seeking.
That has implications for the real-world policy that you think is such a no-brainer to implement. You’re more concerned about bathroom predators that statistically don’t exist than about real women. Even cis women, with all the bits you’re expecting to see, but have PCOS or intersex conditions that
affect their height, stature, bone structure, facial hair—all the ways that ideologues can “tell”—and so they get harassed and filmed and reported to security and have their genitals questioned by strangers, all for doing exactly what you prescribed for them to do.
This is just in your imagination. Women are not attacked for having PCOS or being on the fringes of female traits, like being tall, or a more masculine face.