I kinda follow your train of thought but not quite, and it's okay. I suspect this is in part because a word like "gender" is used to mean many different things and it can take some effort to figure out what it means in each given instance. I'd recommend (not to try to change your mind or bring you over to my position or anything like that, but because it's great at clarifying the terms we're stuck with) Kathleen Stock's book, written with the express purpose of thinking through these issues (esp that of language) in the most lucid, rigorous and accessible way possible. For instance she lists four distinct meanings of the word "gender" in current usage.
Her discussion of why we want to preserve the word "woman" for natal women and the word "man" for natal men seems to me very compelling but I'd love to hear it challenged (if only because that's how we develop better understanding of complex ideas).
|