gingerberrycat:

Is that people keep posting about ‘male’ and ‘female’ Andorians….
But it was established in canon (the TNG episode where Wes was getting dating advice, i believe) that Andorian marriages require four individuals and in the Deep Space Nine relaunch novels, four-person Andorian marriages were extrapolated into four sexes (thaan, chen, shen and zhen).
I know people can take and discard whatever they want from apocrypha, but it just bugs me to see no one acknowledging it.

The premise that Andorian marriages require four participants does not automatically require there to be four sexes.  The line about “groups of four” can be just as easily explained as two men and two women in a polygamous relationship, or maybe two couples share a ceremony with the idea that their future offspring will be betrothed.  Frankly the line from “Data’s Day” doesn’t even make it clear the the group of four in question refers to the people being married—Data might have meant that two Andorians can’t get married if fewer than two witnesses are present.

This is all nitpicking, I admit, but the point is that the line is ambiguous, whereas there is unambiguous evidence on other Trek television that Andorians come in male and female varieties and that they copulate in pairs.  (Shran mated with Talas, not Talas and two other people.)  The novels are stuck in the awkward position of trying to reconcile this with years of secondary canon about four sexes, but the fans are not.