The issue with posters such as @ilovesooty and @DataNotLore is they seem to be so far removed from reality they actually have no grasp on how society functions. They live in la la land created by people with extremely questionable motives but for some reason want to buy into it.
in order for language to work each series of sound(spoken) and symbols (written) has to mean exactly the same thing to everyone using them. Can you imagine the carnage if some people thought the word “stop” also included moving sideways, if the word helicopter included cars (and someone launched it off a building believing it could fly). Conversations only make sense if the words mean the same to everyone, otherwise it’s just people making guttural sounds or squiggles on paper. This especially means words cannot have circular definitions.
like another poster has pointed out, pin point definitions are extremely important in law. So important that words are often actually defined in the law to stop confusion arising. This is why it’s important to protect the definition of woman.
There seems a lot of discussion about how gender is as old as the houses. What is happening here is anachronistic. Many ancient religions did have concepts of male and female (generally presented as gods and goddesses). It was a grouping together of characteristics often stereotypically seen as male and female, male was projective usually female usually receptive. Ie having a penis or a vagina It’s one of the reasons why there is often a male sun god and female moon goddess. This gender split was a way of showing opposites, literally night and day. It was never meant to reflect actual humans. There was never any suggestion of changing genders. The moon goddess never became the sun god.
Of course there were examples of societies where some people existed seemingly In between -often eunachs or as priests, not tied into extremes symbolically containing both male and female elements (note this was not moving between sexes) as a way of symbolically being everything or being balanced, of not being distracted by stereotypical binary behaviours.
Whichever way you cut it, genders have always been based on stereotypes. Genders (until very recently) have been immutable when used. What people are saying when they say they are a different gender is that they believe in stereotypes of men and women, they believe that men and women are limited to behaving according to these stereotypes. If you don’t behave according to the stereotypes of your sex it must mean you are the other. Gender ideology is by its nature binary and inherently prejudiced and enforces stereotypes.it is a way of expressing power. Every single one of the 72 genders is an expression of these stereotypes ie prejudices. Being a feminist is completely incompatible with gender ideology, if you believe in gender ideology you are not a feminist. Some people call themselves feminists because it’s a term that certain people like using those people are pseudo liberals rather than actually supporting women (which never can include men).