OK, so what word do we use to describe the 51% in Afghanistan who live as virtual slaves? That would be those with female bodies. Adult human females. The collective noun for them used to be "women".
Let's think about this. I mean, being able to name oppressed groups matters, right?
You've made it very clear that "woman" is no longer accurate - this would be to suggest that this group's enslavement is the consequence of their self-perception, or way of life. In the context of what they're enduring, that would be unthinkably inappropriate and supremely distressing. And we can't use "cis-women" - their status in society is entirely unrelated to how they "identify". Certainly, "womanhood" is irrelevant here - as I think you may already know from your canny insertion of it to bolster a weak argument above, it refers to the societal and cultural constructs associated with being female, not the female sex itself.
So, what word do we have left for that group? There's an equivalent word for female dogs, female cattle, female foxes... (Huh - note how all my examples are derogatory! There's a pattern in what often happens to words for groups of females, animal or human - negated, reframed, appropriated...)
So. Those people over there in Afghanistan. The.. er... hang on, er... females, I guess? Or not, since toddlers have a brief period of freedom before the horror... So... female humans, specifically? Adult human females? Hm. That sounds pretty degrading in that context, doesn't it?!
"You have lost nothing." Really?!
We've lost the right to name ourselves as a distinct group, Butterfly! We've lost our word. We've been forced to adopt a nominalised adjective of the kind rightly seen as dehumanising in any other comparable context (cf. "blacks", "gays" etc.) Females. You see it more and more in the paper in place of women. It makes me squirm.
So. No word for one of the most oppressed groups in the world, the women of Afghanistan (#bythatImeanfemalebodiednotcisortransitscomplicatednow). No word for the same group who were forbidden a bank account & property to be raped by their husbands within the last 30-50 years ie. in my very lifetime, British women (#bythatImeanfemalebodiednotcisortransitscomplicatednow).
"You have lost nothing." Are you serious?!
I can't think of a clearer, more terrifying, example of oppression than the absolutist removal of the oppressed group's ability to name themselves in clear, unambiguous terms, and the corresponding insistence that this is wholly insignificant and to resist is bigotry of the worst order.
I've experienced fear before - the daily wariness and occasional bolts of terror that are unique to living in a female body, an exhausting, cumulative weight of daily, weekly, monthly verbal and physical reminders of what any man could do to us, any time, if he wanted... But honestly, the realisation that our collective experience of universal historical subjugation and extreme physical vulnerability isn't deemed worthy of a single word enabling us to distinguish it and advocate for change? That's been a whole new kind of fear for me.
If you think I'm exaggerating...
I speak to kids now who are so certain that "woman" relates to self-perception that they don't fully grasp that the oppressed group in Afghanistan the female sex. They certainly can't articulate it - I've watched them struggle. It's painful. I mean, fuck, even Amnesty International couldn't articulate it recently.
This is happening.
What have we lost?
We're genuinely scared that we're losing everything, Butterfly.
Think of ti this way. We may not see or feel the impacts of this every day - but nor did we see or feel them in this way when we didn't have the vote. That didn't stop us needing the vote - a political, societal voice. And your arguments don't stop us needing our words - a political, societal identity.