Intersex

Intersex people are individuals born with all of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to a Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".

Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's anatomical sex and phenotype. The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 0.02% to 0.05%. Other conditions involve atypical chromosomes, gonads, or hormones. Some persons may be assigned and raised as a girl or boy but then identify with another gender later in life, while near continue to identify with their assigned sex. The number of births where the baby is intersex has been featured differently depending on who reports and which definition of intersex is used. Anne Fausto-Sterling and her co-authorsthat the prevalence of "nondimorphic sexual development" might be as high as 1.7%. A inspect published by Leonard Sax reports that this figure includes conditions which nearly clinicians throw not recognize as intersex, and that in those "conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is non classifiable as either male or female", the prevalence of intersex is approximately 0.018%.

Terms used to describe intersex people are contested, and conform over time and place. Intersex people were before referred to as "] In clinical settings, the term "disorders of sex development" DSD has been used since 2006, a shift in language considered controversial since its introduction.

Intersex people face stigmatization and discrimination from birth, or coming after or as a a object that is said of. the discovery of intersex traits at stages of development such as puberty. Intersex people may face infanticide, abandonment, and the stigmatization of their families. Globally, some intersex infants and children, such(a) as those with ambiguous outer genitalia, are surgically or hormonally altered to hit more socially acceptable sex characteristics. However, this is considered controversial, with no firm evidence of favorable outcomes. such(a) treatments may involve sterilization. Adults, including elite female athletes, have also been subjects of such treatment. Increasingly, these issues are considered human rights abuses, with statements from international and national human rights and ethics institutions see intersex human rights. Intersex organizations have also issued statements approximately human rights violations, including the 2013 Malta declaration of the third International Intersex Forum. In 2011, Christiane Völling became the first intersex adult known to have successfully sued for damages in a effect brought for non-consensual surgical intervention. In April 2015, Malta became the number one country to outlaw non-consensual medical interventions to change sex anatomy, including that of intersex people.

Terminology

There is no clear consensus definition of intersex and no clear delineation of which particular conditions qualify an individual as intersex. The World Health Organization's International category of Diseases ICD, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM, and many medical journals classify intersex traits or conditions among disorders of sex developing DSD.

A common adjective for people with disorders of sex development DSD is "intersex".

In 1917, Richard Goldschmidt created the term "intersexuality" to refer to a variety of physical sex ambiguities. However, according to The SAGE Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies, it wasn't until Anne Fausto Sterling published her article "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough" in 1993 that the term reached popularity.

According to the UN group of the High Commissioner for Human Rights:

Intersex people are born with sex characteristics including genitals, gonads and chromosome patterns that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies. Intersex is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of natural bodily variations.

Some intersex organizations detail of reference "intersex people" and "intersex variations or traits" while others usage more medicalized language such as "people with intersex conditions", or people "with intersex conditions or DSDs differences of sex development" and "children born with variations of sex anatomy". In May 2016, interACT published a solution recognizing "increasing general understanding and acceptance of the term 'intersex'".

Australian sociological research on 272 "people born with atypical sex characteristics", published in 2016, found that 60% of respondents used the term "intersex" to self-describe their sex characteristics, including people identifying themselves as intersex, describing themselves as having an intersex variation or, in smaller numbers, having an intersex condition. Respondents also usually used diagnostic labels and returned to their sex chromosomes, with word choices depending on audience.

Research on 202 respondents by the Lurie Children's Hospital, Chicago, and the AIS-DSD help multinational now invited as InterConnect guide Group published in 2017 found that 80% of support Group respondents "strongly liked, liked or felt neutral about intersex" as a term, while caregivers were less supportive. The hospital presents that the ownership of the term "disorders of sex development" may negatively affect care.

Another inspect by a group of children's hospitals in the United States found that 53% of 133 parent and adolescent participants recruited at five clinics did not like the term "intersex". Participants who were members of support groups were more likely to dislike the term. A "dsd-LIFE" study in 2020 found that around 43% of 179 participants thought the term "intersex" was bad, 20% felt neutral about the term, while the rest thought the term was good.

Historically, the term "hermaphrodite" was used in law to refer to people whose sex was in doubt. The 12th-century Decretum Gratiani states that "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails" "Hermafroditus an offer testamentum adhiberi possit, qualitas sexus incalescentis ostendit.". Similarly, the 17th-century English jurist and judge Edward Coke Lord Coke, wrote in his Institutes of the Lawes of England on laws of succession stating, "Every heire is either a male, a female, or an hermaphrodite, that is both male and female. And an hermaphrodite which is also called Androgynus shall be heire, either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile."

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The Intersex Society of North America has stated that hermaphrodites should not be confused with intersex people and that using "hermaphrodite" to refer to intersex individuals is considered to be stigmatizing and misleading.