It is of course true that different cultures will place different emphases and interpretations on various ways in which people can differ: being prepubescent or a parent might have special significance in some cultures that outsiders could never understand. But to say that prepubescents might as well be a "gender"—well, at this point I must confess that I'm really not sure what this "gender" thing is the author is trying to talk about.
And I guess that's the problem. People who favor the "adult human female" definition of _women_ aren't trying to invalidate anyone's "gender"; they're trying to talk about _biological sex_ using simple, universally-understood words. Biological sex is obviously not the only category in the world—in a lot of situations, you might care more about whether someone has living children—or for that matter, whether an organism is yellow—than what sex it is.
It is of course true that different cultures will place different emphases and interpretations on various ways in which people can differ: being prepubescent or a parent might have special significance in some cultures that outsiders could never understand. But to say that prepubescents might as well be a "gender"—well, at this point I must confess that I'm really not sure what this "gender" thing is the author is trying to talk about.
And I guess that's the problem. People who favor the "adult human female" definition of _women_ aren't trying to invalidate anyone's "gender"; they're trying to talk about _biological sex_ using simple, universally-understood words. Biological sex is obviously not the only category in the world—in a lot of situations, you might care more about whether someone has living children—or for that matter, whether an organism is yellow—than what sex it is.