Fair. I do indeed endorse the claim that Aella, or other people who are similar in this regard, can be more accurately modelled as a man than as a woman—that is to say, if you’re trying to predict some yet-unmeasured variable about Aella that doesn’t seem to be affected by physical characteristics, you’ll have better results by predicting her as you would a typical man, than as you would a typical woman. Aella probably really is more of a man than a woman, as far as minds go.
But your mentioning this does make me realize that I never really had a clear meaning in mind when I said “society should consider such a person to be a woman for most practical purposes.” When I try to think of ways that men and women should be treated differently, I mostly come up blank. And the ways that do come to mind are mostly about physical sex rather than gender—i.e. sports. I guess my actual position is “yeah, Aella is probably male with regard to personality, but this should not be relevant to how society treats ?her.”
Because I want to keep the option of being able to make promises. This way, people can trust that, while I might not answer every question they ask, the things that I do say to them are the truth. If I sometimes lie to them, that’s no longer the case, and I’m no longer able to trustworthily communicate at all.
Meta-honesty is an alternate proposed policy that could perhaps reduce some of the complication, but I think it only adds new complication because people have to ask you questions on the meta level whenever you say something for which they might suspect a lie. That being said, I also do stick to meta-honesty rules, and am always willing to discuss why I’m Glomarizing about something or my general policies about lying.