[jhrmnn]

1. I didn’t say that sex is binary, just that it’s objective. You’re male, female, or intersex, and this is decided by objective facts. Gender is not.

2. Transgender is not new. But the broader public debate about the distinction between sex and gender is recent.

[lordCarbonFiber]

Two limits with a large space of indeterminate in between sounds an awful lot like an analogue signal. A system that classifies as A, B, other: grab bag of unrelated conditions isn't particularly useful in a societal nor medical context (and why it isn't used anywhere). You can objectively measure certain karyotypes, measure how someone's body reacts to hormones (and what hormones they produce), how that makes them feel, what that body can then do reproductively, (almost like a spectrum of correlated traits) but not make nice neat boxes that fits in the reproduction section of the text book you had in the 6th grade. By that measure, gender is just as "objective". Ask a person what gender they are, exactly 1 measurement required boom you're done (and with better accuracy than trying to measure anything else to boot).

Your specific exposure to the public "debate" is recent, sure. But just because you hadn't heard of it before the heritage foundation spent millions of dollars to insure you did didn't mean it wasn't happening.