I quite like "gender-coherent", since my bodily appearance, sense of self, and fertility all cohere to one gender. Mind you, people keep thinking "Ashley" is specifically a girls' name.
So one who transitions sufficiently becomes gender-coherent and we only comment on people in self-identified gender-incoherent states? I think I can get behind that.
In trying to establish a biological basis for gender, the best I can do is this: no-one is ever both male-fertile and female-fertile, even at different times. Still, our concepts of "male" and "female" are certainly not restricted to the fertile! The consensus definition of "female" seems to be something like "appears that at some time in their life they might be female-fertile".
If ever transgender people become fertile in the other gender, then clearly they have sufficiently transitioned to be gender-coherent. But furthermore, this would mean transgender people who haven't become fertile in the other gender, but look like they might have, would also have sufficiently transitioned.
But appears at what level of detail and in what level of examination? Further, what about people who appear to not be but who are fertile? It's an arbitrary distinction, attempts to quantify it do everyone a flat-out disservice. See also when various states in the US tried to quantify race. (Some aboriginal groups still do at the insistence of the Federal Government for a number of reasons.)
The level of detail and examination depends on the individual observer. Each observer will make their own judgement, and maybe there's some kind of consensus and maybe there isn't. I can call myself "coherently male", and believe it reflects a consensus of informed observers.
This is for instance why I don't really distinguish "sex" from "gender". The average person in the street observes someone, and we call that "gender". The obstetrician observes the newborn, or the botanist observes the tree, and we call that "sex".
The obstetrician judges solely on reproductive organs, likewise the botantist (there are edge cases for both, which you gloss over) not so for people in the street, and neither can you reasonably say that they're inferring about genitals, they're inferring about gender/sex and thinking about genitals from there if at all. Fertility is a proxy, but not what the arbitrary distinction actually is, even if the arbitrary distinctions and assumptions themselves inform evolutionary processes that are fundamentally concerned about fertility. By that measure, all one needs to transition is hip pads and greasy hair. But those aren't the only factors being looked at, because social pressures and evolutionary ones have built up all sorts of standards perhaps best described as gender (in the linguistic sense of attributes/classes of nouns; since certainly other measures of fitness than simply fertility are evaluated) rather than sex per se.
My usual approach here is to consider whether information is hidden. If there is nothing you can reveal to dissuade a consensus that you are male, then you are male. If there's a consensus that can be dissuaded, then I suppose you have a secret identity.
How do people typically judge gender? In the case of both the obstetrician and the average person, they do so with reference to fertility, something like "resembles sometime female-fertile". For both observers, sometimes they will have no clear judgement. And they both make do with the evidence they have.
I don't have a citation to back this up, but from (possibly fallible) memory, "no-one is ever both male-fertile and female-fertile, even at different times." is provably and factually false.
It's *certainly* false when you consider non-humans, who do after all have a sex, and may well have a gender.
This may or may not be meaningful to your argument. :)
Also Also, plenty of people are non-fertile, by choice or otherwise. Do they no longer get to have a gender? Or do they just no longer get to be coherent?
The thing I like about "cis" and "trans" is that they are as devoid of moralistic connotations as anyone can reasonably expect from natural language.
"Coherent", not so much. I get your literalistic interpretation of "to cohere", but I don't think the concept of "gender incoherence" will ever escape sounding like, e.g., the Pope's declaration that homosexuality is "disordered".
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I have a problem with that *particular* word, just like I have a problem with a lot of very-poorly-chosen neologisms / language abuse.
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In trying to establish a biological basis for gender, the best I can do is this: no-one is ever both male-fertile and female-fertile, even at different times. Still, our concepts of "male" and "female" are certainly not restricted to the fertile! The consensus definition of "female" seems to be something like "appears that at some time in their life they might be female-fertile".
If ever transgender people become fertile in the other gender, then clearly they have sufficiently transitioned to be gender-coherent. But furthermore, this would mean transgender people who haven't become fertile in the other gender, but look like they might have, would also have sufficiently transitioned.
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This is for instance why I don't really distinguish "sex" from "gender". The average person in the street observes someone, and we call that "gender". The obstetrician observes the newborn, or the botanist observes the tree, and we call that "sex".
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How do people typically judge gender? In the case of both the obstetrician and the average person, they do so with reference to fertility, something like "resembles sometime female-fertile". For both observers, sometimes they will have no clear judgement. And they both make do with the evidence they have.
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It's *certainly* false when you consider non-humans, who do after all have a sex, and may well have a gender.
This may or may not be meaningful to your argument. :)
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"Coherent", not so much. I get your literalistic interpretation of "to cohere", but I don't think the concept of "gender incoherence" will ever escape sounding like, e.g., the Pope's declaration that homosexuality is "disordered".
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Gender doesn't have geometry. So what? This is really not worth undie-bunching.
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