Do you also, then, consider the words “masculine” and “feminine” to be no more than grammatical constructs that are not rooted in biology, since they refer to the two categories that are described by the grammatical term of “gender”?
I would argue that the insistence that gender (and by inference, the words “masculine” and “feminine” and their derivatives) is no more than a grammatical descriptor that has no root in biology feeds right into and may even be a primary driver of the ridiculous notion that maleness and femaleness are no more than societal constructs imposed on genderless children at the moment of their birth (or first ultrasound). In this case, then insisting that the word “gender” refer to the natural biologic reality becomes a critical weapon in the fight against “transgenderism.”
As I mentioned before, the strong emotional opposition against using the word “gender” to refer to biological genders (even though the grammatical terms “male/masculine” and “female/feminine” quite plainly refer to biological as well as grammatical gender) is very puzzling and curious to me. The arguments used to support the opinion that “gender” should only be used in reference to a grammatical category that doesn’t even exist in English (begging the question of why nearly everyone knows the word) suggest that there is a strong cultural/temporal/dialectical basis for that opposition. I engage in these discussions not to change opinions, but to try to understand the basis of the opposition.