Among animals other than humans, sex is determined by fertility. That is, an animal capable of gestating a new creature internally is female and an animal capable of causing a female to begin a new creature is male. Creating a new animal is very complex but unseen, so many beginnings fail along the way -- in the case of humans, maybe as much as 50% when we learned to see what was happening. Birth is sacralized by Christians.
There are always animals who for one reason or another neither conceive nor fertilize. In fact, we create these null animals one way or another -- usually surgically. But there are always animals that look like females or males, who can't perform. Their uses and place among their species are complex. Human names for them abound. When I googled for a list, only dogs and cats came up because those are the animals techies know. But livestock people know steers, freemartins, wethers, and "supper." For someone who raises animals for profit, fertility counts and defines male v. female.
Fertility is also the preoccupation for those who pass entitlement to power and privilege down the generations. Wives who can't produce a healthy heir can be discarded or even killed. Husbands who are sterile or contribute bad DNA are discredited or simply denied. These very basic considerations are overturned by modern effective contraception and the ability to trace DNA to parents.
In our modern times when sexual pleasure is more important than anything else except wealth, and there is active opposition to any particular family being automatically entitled -- or so we pretend -- sex categories are defined by who is desired, same or opposite.
Who is desired is dictated by advertising, which means it is product or procedure based. Desire cannot be seen by looking at someone -- not like birds displaying -- except in ways usually hidden by clothes. It is felt. All sorts of things are assumed about it. Fertility is irrelevant. Physical aspects such as genitals are forced into two categories even though how the baby is born looking may not really fit either category by appearance and what is internal is not considered . Now we are able to determine chromosomal indications (X for female and Y for male) which confuses the picture even more.
Looks may not match the binary one "feels" to be? Also, there is major variation in intensity, mode of sensory response, change over time and experience, and how one fits into society. Let alone opportunity. Cultures press people different ways, which we call "gender roles," so that in one group one's sex counts for status and power, but another one ignores all that. Then there is the temperamental ability to complete birth by protecting and teaching the child. Some are better suited than others. Some males are very good at it and some females are not. A condition called post-partum depression, which is the functioning of the female body according to hormonal conditions triggered by birth, can be akin to madness. Some cats going into winter will give birth but kill the kittens right away, because unless they are pets, they are unlikely to survive anyway and the mother cat will need all her resources to survive herself.
Before modern medicine, many women lost their babies or died in childbirth. Nutrition, medicines, housing, must be present no matter the complex physical functions that happen at the cellular level, hormones in circulating blood, organs that can cope and so on -- let alone disease. In my family, in my generation and those just before mine, the many birth deaths, esp of the mother, were only covertly recognized. A cousin who lost a first infant was the most secretive. My grandmother lost her first child and her sister died when birthing a second child who also died. I have never even a hint about abortions.
Family on my father's side lived on the American prairie but was from the genetically Scots-Irish population. The Great Plains is a water-conserving place where one tried not to drink a lot of water unless working. The second was wet, islands always damp. Though no one has ever researched this that I know of, bodies must have learned to conserve water on the prairie while discarding excess water on the other. The upshot is not obvious in childbirth but is highly relevant in excretion which requires lots of water to pass through the body.
To be blunt we tended to be constipated because adequate water is necessary to form and eject fiber. As a child this was a terrible problem for me and the remedy, enemas, were -- in the hands of my brisk, farm-raised mother, equivalent to rape while she scolded, "Just relax." If this battle were avoided, I spent time struggling painfully, Then my mother would say, "It will hurt a lot more if you have a baby! You'll find out!"
As a becoming-fertile female, I made two resolutions: I would not entertain a relationship with any male who was fertile nor one who didn't have an income. I desired but I deflected. My gender identification didn't fit my society.
Being female meant a lot of strategy and equipment. I was warned off internal menstruation blood control and taught to hide any evidence of a pad in my panties. An elastic belt held the pad close. The ends were gripped by a little metal buckle. It all had to be explained in the beginning. I never had cramps beyond passing discomfort. My mother had been one of four sisters on a farm before the invention of commercial pads, so they made their own from rags. When all the females were "of age" and tending to share timing, they boiled the rags in a big pot over an outside fire. Decency was next to secrecy.
As a teen in the Fifties, I enjoyed more frivolous female things like the invention of liquid mascara so as to escape the unsanitary little red slide box of cake mascara with its little brush one spat on to get it to pick up color. Garter belts were necessary as soon as one wore "nylons" which was almost impossible during the war and a continuing major expense. I vividly remember the revelation of pantyhose. I wore crinolines and dipped them in strong sugar water as a kind of starch, but it made them sticky if they got wet.
"Torsolettes" were a boned version of a corset that combined with a garter belt. They hooked up the front and were rather painful, but nothing like the Playtex girdles meant to keep one's stomach flat. They were latex (hence the name) and zipped but were still nearly impossible to pull on. The idea was to look virginal. My mother's underwear drawer smelled of latex and when I was in a sexual relationship, so did my sculptor husband who made molds of latex. I mentioned this to a female friend and she became very angry and emotional. How Freudian.
So my gender role is complex, nearly secret, and has no name. I dressed "like a man" sometimes and a woman others. I don't care which side the buttons of my shirt are on. On grand occasions I tend toward glamour that is almost campy. I've been able to do brave physical things and tender nurturing things so long as the infants are not my species. In the more recent past years I've discovered female authors who identify as boys in their books, like Mary Renault or Patricia Neal Warren. Boys can do things and take risks without fear of pregnancy.
How does one name a female body that desires freedom, which means no babies? There are plenty of places in society for them, but they are somewhat covert. They interfere with production and merchandizing of the sexy gendered kind.
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