How do you view intersex people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

Exceptions do not invalidate categories. We do not say that humans have between 0 and 2 hands because some humans are born missing one or both of their hands. Such people are exceptions.

The statement "there are two genders" is only controversial because it is said in order to suggest that trans people are invalid or not real. If you accept that there can be exceptions, like intersex and trans people, then no one would disagree.

FWIW, that trans people want to transition seems to support the stance that there are only two genders, since they are seeking to switch genders, rather than exist at some intermediary point. So stating that there are only two genders does not seem, to me at least, to be a statement which invalidates the existence of trans people.

I could be mistaken in my understanding, though. It’s hard to keep up with the latest developments in the gender identity space.

Some trans people (so-called "binary" trans people) do indeed transition to being male or being female. Other trans people present their gender as neither female nor male but somewhere in the middle, and they are called non-binary. So both types of trans people do exist.

The "there are only two genders" people, in my view, are trying to invalidate all trans people because the statement is usually accompanied by, "and they're determined by your chromosomes." Even without that second part (which is a rare case in my estimation), the statement attempts to erase non-binary trans people, which other (binary) trans people do not agree with.

For someone who doesn't know much about gender identity, you are hitting on a relevant and interesting issue for trans people: the slightly conflicting desires of binary and non-binary trans people. A binary trans person will often want to embrace the stereotypes and norms of their gender as a tool to help them be seen as the gender that they identify with. This means, for women, wearing things like makeup and dresses, and for men, growing a beard and dressing in more masculine ways. However, non-binary trans people are in a sense defying and blending gender norms to reinforce that gender is a spectrum, not a binary. While both groups of trans people generally have similar views on gender (I think nearly all would say that there are more than two genders), in their personal lives they tend to skew in two different directions.

This is also relevant when it comes to gender pronouns. Non-binary trans people often advocate for everyone to share preferred gender pronouns rather than assuming, while some binary trans people would prefer to have their pronouns assumed, so long as the assumption is correct, because such an assumption validates their gender identity. There was a recent controversy where Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints), a binary trans woman, expressed her preference for gender pronouns to be assumed while acknowledging and supporting non-binary trans people's desire for no assumptions, and she was widely criticized (wrongly, in my view) for this.

Fair point. There are two genders, and you were either born (male or female) or (with a medical condition).

If you adopt more accurate terminology by substituting "gender" for "sex" you shouldn't have an issue.

I mean, there are some extremely rare, extremely weird biological corner cases, but for the overwhelmingly majority there are only 2 chromosome configurations: XX and XY

Yup, you're referring to "sex" also.

Is this something Paul Graham has said?

Honest question, has anyone ever been fired, imprisoned, or killed for saying that?

My brother in law was fired from a law firm for stating (at a casual drinks night) that he believed that, legally speaking, people should not be allowed to change their gender on their birth certificate.

He had worked there for six years as a para-legal, soon to be lawyer. I don't think his cause was helped that the director of said firm had a transgender sister (or brother). He was unaware of this.

EDIT: Typo.

I think there is a law in Canada against mis-gendering people. Lot of popular tech companies have explicit CoC guideline against mis-gendering. StackOverflow recently fired a moderator for proposing to use gender neutral pro-nouns instead of individual preferred pronouns, even when there is no official CoC defined as such.

The Canadian Human Rights Act states:

> Every person who is an employee has a right to freedom from harassment in the workplace because of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression by his or her employer or agent of the employer or by another employee.

(there is also a similar paragraph for landlords)

> “harassment” means engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome

This is not an example of someone being fired for saying or believing that there are two genders. This was someone deliberately misgendering and ungendering a trans boy (not non-binary) in class after having been ordered to stop.

The teacher felt strongly that the student's gender was biological and not something the student could arbitrarily choose to change. The teacher felt that using a pronoun other than a biologically consistent one was "lying", and it was against the teacher's religion to lie, so the teacher would not use the student's chosen pronoun. Did I miss something?

Your response to my comment was flagged, but you seem to be laboring under some misconceptions here. While biology is what it is, the mapping from biology and other factors to social categories is determined purely socially. Categories and labels are not true or false, they are socio-political processes that can uplift or oppress minorities just like other such processes.

I would recommend reading "THE CATEGORIES WERE MADE FOR MAN, NOT MAN FOR THE CATEGORIES": https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-ma...

What in the world is a biologically consistent pronoun?

A pronoun operates in a purely social context.

I don't know what really happened but assuming he just refused then I assume that will in the future more been like a teacher who refused to stop calling his black students negroes than an example of PC hysteria.

But who knows