What actual gender? You mean legal sex/gender (which is a form of externally-ascribed gender)?

Or do you mean gender identity and, if so, on what basis do you assess it?

'Sex' is their biology.

I usually do 'gender' - which is an identity thing, I mean, that's the polite thing to do.

But Manning was a 'he' when the disclosures happened, so when talking about that, I usually use 'he'. It seems fair to me.

But this is HN and we like not to consider empathy here (no offence, I exhibit this exact thought pattern too), we need a "logical" explanation. So what about: a person with a third arm does not have that defect anymore after it is surgically removed. You won't refer to someone like that as a person with 3 arms, for a couple of reasons.

Gender identity is how people identify.

(gender disphoria is a mismatch between gender expression and gender identity)

It's possible that at the time of disclosures, Manning would already identify herself as woman, even if her gender expression was entirely masculine. Using the feminine gender is a matter of respect.

We don't alter history because of how someone possibly may have felt at the time. We don't know how 'he or she' may have internally identified back then.

Esp. because we're talking actual, objective facts, and not 'to them' or whatever, I think it's reasonably to use the gender that they used to identify to the world at that point.

I also think it's a little absurd the level of linguistic policing we have to get in. I think that we're only scratching the surface of how far you could take it.

Point - your language is fairly 'gender binary normative' - and a bunch of people are now even offended by that. There's so many ways to 'identify'.

The Uni of Oxford student union is now recommending that you haver use 'gendered pronouns' i.e. 'he/she' until the person you are talking about has specifically expressed to you their gender preference.

Meaning - that person with a big beard, beer belly, deep voice name 'Joe' - you can't say 'he' - until he has specifically told you 'he prefers' 'he'. Or you're 'not being respectful'.

It's getting absurd.

Manning seems to identify as a 'she', I'll have no problem referring to her as 'she' if I see her or talk about her presently - but I'm really not interested in being policed or moralized beyond that.

There is a binary category in which you fall into that defines if you can procreate with the other or not.

If you'd like to exclude such people from your definition, and restrict it to people who are (for want of a better term) "stereotypical" male or female, that seems like a circular definition.

Given the problems we see in society, this definition is clearly not good enough for everyone and not good enough to satisfactorily deal with the problems arising; I might wonder what use a definition is if it doesn't actually guide us in solving problems. Perhaps this definition must be compromised when encountering reality in these situations.

Why do you need one? Why not just accept reality as it is - that reality simply doesn't match the simple, "everyone is a man or a woman" model? Sure, sometimes reality is just too complex to work with and we need to create a simplified model of it to work with, but this really isn't a complicated concept.

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about the wider problems caused by refusing to accept reality; gender segregated facilities, for example, that cater only to those who fit neatly into a binary definition. Problems caused by legislating, for example, that the only acceptable genders of record are "male" and "female", and in doing so excluding people who don't fit. Those kinds of problems.

In which some people fall. This definition seems to exclude many people from the definition completely. If you're happy with that, good for you; many people aren't happy with it and find this binary label system just doesn't work when applied to the world of actual people.

If the etiquette rules for pronouns are confusing, just use the same rule you would use for any other name. For example, you would say "Pope Francis used to work as a nightclub bouncer" even though he was called Jorge Bergoglio at the time.