The claim that 1-2% of the population is intersex is a common myth: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ "Many r

The claim that 1-2% of the population is intersex is a common myth: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ "Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia." "...the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%" It's often commonly claimed it's as common as red hair, too - it isn't. https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/intersex-is-not-as-common-as-red https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/intersex-is-not-as-commo... Personally I've always found the "argument from commonality" to be shaky philosophically and morally. A population's degree of minority doesn't make discrimination or mistreatment more acceptable, so why massage stats to make them seem more populous than they really are? As to your question as to why does "woman" have to mean "adult human female" - because that's the dictionary definition. I totally agree with you that there are some people whose sex is hard to judge immediately, often, but not always, because they've gone out of their way to make it ambiguous. Everyone else can be clocked at 100 feet in a dark alley - we're evolved that way. A few awkward social faux pas over people who look or act androgynous - for whatever reason - doesn't justify exploding a category that works and serves everyone well almost all of the time. I don't feel guilty over my use of sexed pronouns even if I occasionally get it wrong and this insistence that I should... isn't convincing. Notice that arguments about the treatment of "intersex" people (those with disorders/differences of sexual development) are used to buttress the position of people who feel like they're the other sex, but are otherwise biologically completely normal. These groups really have nothing in common but it's useful to conflate them.