From your link:
I will say that I don't think Coyne is always very clear on this topic.
In my view, the blips in between are incorrectly plotted.
A (true) hermaphrodite, for example, is
both male and female and would be counted in both "bins." There really isn't a continuum between sexes, or an in-between bin you could put them in ("both" is not a position on an axis between male and female).
They both recognize that intersex conditions exist, but they still contend that sex is binary.
Look at it this way:
"Are you male?" and "Are you Female?" are discrete questions that are answered independantly. Usually, one is yes and the other no, but they can both be "yes." (Or no.)
There is no "degree of maleness" or "degree of femaleness." Each question is it's own binary.
Gender and sex-linked characteristics, however, are not binary. You can, by some set of standards, chart how masculine or feminine someone is, breast size, beard thickness, And you can plot these for males and females. but you would do so as different plot lines as male/female can't be placed on a numerical axis. (x axis beard density, y axis n. One series for male, one series for female.) Note that beard density does not make you more or less male and breast size does not make you more or less female.
Plotting male/female on an x axis and n on a y axis doesn't make sense unless you have some criteria for "degree of maleness/femaleness" which doesn't exist. You could do a bar chart, and put a bin for "both" and "neither," but these are categorical bins, not numerical. Also, bear in mind that you would not actually have a "male" bin or a "female" bin. Instead you would have a "only male" bin and "only female."
But none of this has anything to do with policy decisions or how people should be treated.
No.