At first glance, the phrasing potential capacity to produce - or in human females potential capacity to mature and release - either large gametes (ova) or small gametes (sperm) might indeed appear to suggest that this is something that will or could occur only in the future.

But that's only at first glance. Fact is, you are overlooking and erasing a key part of the definition of sex, which says that sex is defined by having developed in utero the anatomy organized around the potential capacity to produce male or female gametes at some point in (later) life.

The key words and phrases here are developed, "in utero" and at some point in (later) life. We are talking about the development of a potentiality that occurred in all of us when we were still in our mothers' wombs, prior to our birth - and will occur in the lives of all future humans when they are still in their mothers' uteri as well. It's not a potentiality from this moment on right now this very instant forward nor from every future moment of our lives forward no matter what age we are.

Every human being who has ever lived started out as the fusion of sperm and ova, which then developed into an embryo, and the embryo then became a fetus. All of this occurred within our mothers' wombs. This is when the key elements of sex development - forming the anatomy meant to support the potential/eventual production or maturation and release of either female or male gametes at some point later in life - occurs.

You also are taking a very male view of this topic. Once puberty has started, only male humans theoretically can produce gametes for the rest of their lives.

This has never been the case for female humans. Whilst we are born with all our gametes already extant in our ovaries, we can mature and release them during only about half (or less) of the present-day typical or average female human life span. Menopause is a real and entirely natural thing.

Please go talk to your mother and - if they are still alive - your grandmother(s) about this. You seem to want to deny that the woman who conceived, gestated and gave birth to you, and the women who gestated and gave birth to your mom and dad, are female coz they are no longer of the age where they have either the potential or the ability to mature and release ova. Indeed, you seem to want to say that if your mother, your grandmothers, your great-grandmothers and so on had the temerity to live beyond their early 50s, when menopause usually occurs, it means they spent the last part of their lives as no longer female but as sexless freaks.

The ageism and sexism behind your viewpoint takes my breath away. According to you, because I am in my 60s and no longer fertile, it means I am no longer female. In the view you keep espousing, the fact that I no longer have the potential capacity to mature and release ova means that when I was in my mother's womb, I never developed the potential capacity to mature and release ova to begin with. It also means that the ovulation and period pain I had for nearly 40 years, the miscarriages I had, and the children who grew in my own womb from my fertilized ova and later gave birth to all must be figments of my imagination.