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Natsu nicely provided the clarifications she asked for. I do indeed think people should free free to identify themselves as male or female, homosexual or heterosexual. Or anywhere along a spectrum/across a combination of these. I personally know many people who would in fact prefer to have some leeway in this regard, and suspect many others would as well.

The point is not that whether or not there are bodies that don't fit well into a male/female dichotomy (though there are) nor whether or not there are genomes that don't fit well into a male/female dichotomy (though there are). The point is instead that the empirical evidence is increasingly telling us that sex/gender doesn't reflect any single underlying dichotomous variable at all but is instead influenced by a number of different variables including genes, bodies, hormones, culture, and personal choices. From this perspective, it makes sense that some people would be content with the traditional male/female, homosexual/heterosexual dichotomies and others would prefer more fluidity along more continuous scales.

And this in turn relates to my larger point, which Natsu also nailed on the head:

"there is an issue in conducting research with the sole purpose of trying to find a distinction between the two genders by putting each subject into the "male group" or the "female group", because there really are no set of criteria which would allow people to be 100% male, or 100% female, and even if there were, there would be no group of individuals who would fit all the criteria."

There is indeed something to be gained from recognizing that individuals are different from one another and so may, among other things, respond differently to different therapeutic procedures (or educational environments). And to the extent that studies comparing "males" and "females" (or "homosexuals" and "heterosexuals") help us to appreciate individual variation, they are useful. But when they are conceived as (or understood as) validating the hypothesis that "males" and "females" (or "homosexuals" and "homosexuals") are different, the studies are simply bad science: the conclusion follows from dichotomous presumptions that determined the methods of data collection, and not from the observations themselves. In fact, what the observations themselves typically actually show is very large and continuous variation in both sample populations with at most small differences in population means.

As Natsu also points out, a doctor (or an educator) may find it useful to know about these small differences in population means when they first meet a patient (or a student), but it would be a serious mistake to treat (or educate) someone based on this information alone. One needs much more information about the individual than is available from their classification in any dichotomous scale. The situation, as usefully suggested during our discussion, is much the same as knowing whether someone is a left-hander or a right-hander. Different people may be in the dichotomous categories for different reasons, and there are lots of things for which knowing whether someone is left or right handed is irrelevant entirely.