Really, really good points.
Gloria Steinem's essay If Men Could Menstruate
I really love Steinem <3
Here's the thing. 'Gender Trouble' came out in 1990, so these ideas are now 26 years old. Surely you'd think that someone would have pointed out the inherent flaws in her argument by now.*
Once you explain Butler's ideas using simple, logical language, it immediately becomes obvious that her arguments don't make any sense (as literally everyone here has pointed out.)
Yeah, I guess we can 'technically' decouple the word sex from biology. But then we're just left with no words to describe biological facts (like the fact that only females can get pregnant), while the word 'sex' itself becomes meaningless. We'd still be back to defining pregnant-potential people in one way or another.
But when I hear the rallying cry that, "sex is just a construct", or that "we fancy people not genitals" etc... I can't help but think these arguments all come back to Butler.
mistakenly conclude that gender is exceptional in its ability to be philosophized about.
That's a really good way of putting it.