Definition: Intersex

Since we just recently had the Intersex Day of Awareness I wanted to share a little bit of information on what it means to be intersex and what their pride flag looks like. Intersex people are born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that don’t into fit into our society’s understanding of the binary constructs of male or female.  Some intersex individuals have a combination of reproductive anatomy, so this might mean having a combination of gonads (ovary and testes) or they may have a-typical chromosome combinations (XXY – Klinefelter syndrome or XO- Turner syndrome).  Some people live their whole lives not knowing they are intersex, some find out at puberty when things start to change based on their hormone activity. Every year approximately 1 in 2,000 babies are born with ambiguous genitalia. And prior to 2000, doctors were taught to make a determination regarding the sex of the child based on length of penis. A child was considered male if the penis was longer than an inch, if shorter the child was deemed female. Doctors typically recommended surgery to make the genitals appear more traditionally male/female and parents were told to raise their child accordingly. This led to painful surgeries and sometimes a mismatch between the sex assigned by the doctors and the gender identity of the individuals. For more information check out the Intersex Society of North America’s website www.isna.org