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Vaniver comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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It's not clear to me why you're presuming social effects are the primary selection pressure pushing against hermaphroditism. I don't know the genetics / biology / embryology involved, but my prior is that deviation from normalcy decreases the chances of fertility for that individual, and possibly more importantly, their children.
[Although I am not proud of this, reflecting on your question "why you're presuming social effects are the primary selection pressure," the conclusion I came to was] Because it is the political position I was indoctrinated into. in undergrad anthropology we covered feminism and the idea of sex as a social construct is pretty much the big idea of third wave feminism. It was such a unique and interesting idea that I accepted it into my own ideology pretty readily. However honestly, the counter-arguement that there there are other genetic factors that are more primary is potentially acceptable.
As to your prior
I would respond that what is normal depends on the in-group of the individual/community defining normalcy. Since people to some degree define their in-group based on the people, symbols, media, and cultures they interact with, I would argue that the process of labeling what is normal is a social construction.
That's a rather startling thing to say, at least on LessWrong.
As is this.
Leaving aside the particular questions of sex, gender, and normalcy, what do you, and those who have influenced you, judge to be "acceptable" forms of argument? What should, or should not, give you a reason to believe something?
Is it startling to be honest? Perhaps I was not careful enough with my wording, or my tone did not come across correctly, but the statement "Quite honestly it was such a unique and interesting idea that I accepted it into my own ideology pretty readily" was confessional. I said "potentially acceptable" because I feel that the speculation here is not grounded in expertise, and I don't want to repeat the mistakes of my youth and be just as easily indoctrinated by your flashy idea as the previous one. I really am not too familiar with this community, but personally, I try to be as critical and reflective as possible of the discourse that encompasses my beliefs. It is somewhat embarrassing that I never thought to question the biological fitness of hermaphrodites in general, but the truth is I didn't. It would be nice to chalk that up to youthful naiveté at the time of indoctrination, but it just as easily could have been a blind spot in my reflections.
Sorry, I had read it as being your current justification for the belief.
No problem, any fault is probably more due to my writing than your thinking.
That definition of "normal" is irrelevant to the biological effects of mutation on fertility.
Here: If the human reproductive system has evolved over millions of years in a condition where the vast majority of the population are one of either two sexes, with particular chromosomes even being present in only one of the sexes, then a mutant that somehow ends up with both sexual organs is almost certainly going to having all sorts of problems fertility-wise. That kind of mutation breaks the assumptions the reproductive systems have evolved under (assumptions such as amounts of testosterone/oestrogen/whatever other hormones in the blood, the physical arrangement of the sex organs, and probably all kinds of other stuff).
Upvoted for honesty and chasing down assumptions.
nshepperd explains well what I meant by "normalcy."