We can sit here all day listing issues that could potentially arise during the development of babies, but that isn't relevant to most of the population is it, hence why I said if everything goes as it should. If you're a female with an XY chromosome pair, then that is not normal. I'm sure there's a medical term for that...
It's not normal to have hair of a very pale colour. There's a medical term for that. Does that mean that any definition of hair colour should exclude very pale hair colour?
A definition has to cover more than what usually happens (which is what "normal" means).
I think your definition of sex fails on three points:
1) It's not about sex. Sex is about phenotype, not genotype. There's a connection, but they're not the same thing.
2) It doesn't cover enough.
3) It's based on inadequate knowledge. Even the best experts in the world have a far from complete understanding of genetics, but they're well past the over-simplification of XX and XY alone.
It's a simplification that
usually works. That's not good enough for a proper definition.
I'm talking about people that have been born exactly how they should have - no issues whatsoever - then going ahead and mutilating themselves/taking hormones because they are not happy with what life has selected for them.
Your statement contradicts itself. If they had "no issues whatsoever" with their sex, then they would be content with it. They wouldn't be suffering as they were and they wouldn't be going through the lengthy hassle of a sex change.
Since you don't fully understand genetics and epigenetics (nobody does), you can't accurately state that everything is as it should be. In any case, who decides what should be and why do they get to decide?
I'm sorry, but you cannot change. You will always be what you are.
I was a single-celled fertlised egg. I'm not that now. I was a baby. I'm not that now. I was a child. I'm not that now. I was a young adult. I'm not that now. The same is true for you and everyone else. People change. It is silly to deny that.
No, obviously I don't think that. People were single-celled fertilised eggs, and then they were newborn babies. Because that's a natural change. What isn't natural is chopping off your penis and expecting everyone to think you're a bona fide woman. There's no change there.
So we're back to "natural", which is a false appeal to authority fallacy and can therefore be dismissed out of hand because it has no merit.
I have a hole in my earlobe. It's there because I had a needle poked through my earlobe and a metal ring put into it. That is not natural. It's certainly not genetic. But it's real. The hole is there.
Much of a sex change process is more natural than that, since it's a built-in response to hormones. Ultimately, sex is about hormones since it's hormones that determine what sex a person is. Even after the initial sexing process during gestation, hormones account for a lot of the difference (which is why they're a big part of a sex change). Men and women aren't fundamentally different. The basic template is the same - adult human - and even after the initial development there's a lot of wiggle room for switching between the two to a significant extent solely by triggering natural processes controlled by natural hormones. I am, of course, deliberately belabouring the "natural" aspect because you attach so much importance to it.
I'm also fine with a casual definition of sex for common usage, but mine is based on physiology, i.e. what sex is actually about, and for casual use I'm fine with the "duck" approach. If it's enough like a duck, it's a duck. If he's enough like a man, he's a man. If she's enough like a woman, she's a woman. That'll do for me as a casual, daily usage definition. I don't have an accurate definition because I know just enough about the subject to know that nobody knows enough for that. Any definition of sex must be somewhat arbitrary.
I'll add a bit more in case anyone overlooks the word "physiology". When I say "enough like a man" or "enough like a woman", I'm talking about physiology, i.e. male and female. I'm not talking about behaviour, i.e. masculine and feminine. That's not the same thing at all. I'm talking about sex, not gender. Two very different things.
