I have a lot of issue with those words as well! In fact recently, in my college Biology class my teacher continued to refer to intersex people as "hermaphrodites" even after I politely corrected her. It drove me up the wall, because she was TEACHING which implied she knew what she was talking about.. ;/
The discussion was over whether or not parents should "choose" the sex of an intersex infant. I was disagreeing, saying that there is a huge chance for error in the choice of the parent and the child should make the choice when they
feel what gender they are.. It was very frustrating to me. The class was just confused in general, one teen said he'd have wanted his parents to choose so he wouldn't have to have the difficulty of doing it when he was older..

I don't like the term ->-bleeped-<-, because it's used more frequently to describe a crossdressing fetish, so if used in discussing transsexuals/trangendered people it becomes problematic.