Before people start saying "you can't be neither sex" (theres already one deaded), I would like to remind us that intersex people exist and can be indeterminate.
Wouldn't it just make sense to let the person choose if they would like to be defined as their current sex or what they are transitioning to? So for example, if the person is MtF and they want the government to call them F, they can just ask the government to switch their sex status.
Having a "T" class doesn't make much sense since it doesn't really model what is happening. T is not in itself a sex, it's the representation of people transitioning from one sex to another. That inherently means it is not a state but instead it's a mutation.
Intersex people are not a fan of it for the most part and are calling for the practice to be illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
What you are describing is transgender people which is not intersex people, however both could have an ambigous gender.
So really none of it is that ambiguous.
Do you think that none of this has to do with socialization? Should we avoid any potentially gendered toys/activities (that are masculine or feminine) lest we ruin the child's natural, inborn gender?
Or should we take the much saner approach and not try to categorize children based on ridiculous buckets of traits?
All that self-identifying with a gender does is perpetuate the harmful stereotypes that surround the socialization for children of that sex.
Intersex people may have an ambiguous socially ascribed gender, and are probably more likely than most to have unclear gender identity. (Given that gender identity, while obviously highly personal, is also clearly influenced by social cues, including both ascribed gender and social expectations about the relation between gender and physical sex traits.)
That's interesting, because of the numerous population studies in intersex people, this has never been one of the conclusions. Same sex attraction is more likely, however.
I think you have a misconception regarding intersex people -- their presentation aligns with their birth sex. I.e. if they are a female, they will have female secondary sex characteristics.
Therefore it makes sense for the government to offically allow it, and if we allow people to change from male to female and female to male, why not either to no sex?
I think it's a shame that on HN people can't voice opinions like the one in that comment. To me the comment didn't seem bigoted, but seemed worthy of discussion.
Edit: the comment is no longer dead, at least at the time of writing this.
Emphasizing that being nonbinary is rare only serves to legitimize labelling it as other as something that's not normal and to draw boundaries - where they don't belong - that inevitably bring discrimination with them.
The comment may be "reasonably" worded but it's just a thinly veiled call to legitimize discrimination. A difference between that comment and "you can't be neither sex" exists only rhetorically but not in what's conveyed.
Is it normal?