One of the issues that is sometimes overlooked is the intrinsic confusion older Americans have with the sex vs gender distinction. The confusion exists since for most born in the previous century sex and gender were synonymous. Consider the definitions from Websters Deluxe Unabridged Dictionary (2nd Ed, 1979).
Note that the common usage of sex in 1979 referred to both the biological (def 1) and character (def 2) and gender was a colloquial alternative. This combined usage would spill over to areas like electronics where the gender of a connector was based on its relation to the equivalent sex. Current usage of gender in the context of transgender (which didn't have an entry in among the over 2000 pages in the 1979 dictionary) would be seen back then moving it exclusively towards definition 2 of sex.
Of course words in a language change meaning over time - that's part of what defines a living language. But that doesn't change people who grew up learning one meaning for a word then come to hear a nuanced different meaning much later in life. It can take a lot of time for enough of the population to get used to changed meanings. Until then I expect cognitive clashes over sex vs gender to continue.
