The I in LGBTQIA

Some people are born with a mix of male and female biological traits that can make it hard for doctors to assign them a male or female sex. These people are intersex.

For too long, intersex people were hidden; denied the truth about their bodies and medical histories, sworn to secrecy about their experiences, and weighed down by a legacy of stigma and shame. Intersex people have always existed, but in the 1960s, doctors began to treat being intersex as a birth defect that needed fixing—often by doing medically unnecessary “normalising” surgeries and telling parents to keep their children’s intersex status a secret—sometimes even from the child themselves. The marginalization and abuses intersex people have endured were only possible because intersex voices were silenced.

Being intersex is a naturally occurring variation in humans, and isn’t a medical problem. It’s also more common than most people realize. It’s hard to know exactly how many people are intersex, but estimates suggest that about 1 in 100 people born is intersex.

There are many different intersex variations. Some intersex people have ambiguous genitalia or internal sex organs, such as a person with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Other intersex people have a combination of chromosomes that is different than XY (male) and XX (female), like XXY. And some people are born with what looks like totally male or totally female genitals, but their internal organs or hormones released during puberty don’t match.

If a person is born with intersex genitalia, they might be identified as intersex at birth. For people born with more clearly male or female external genitals, they might not know they’re intersex until later in life, like when they go through puberty. Sometimes a person can live their whole life without ever discovering that they’re intersex.

Many of these children undergo surgery in an effort to ‘normalise’ them, despite the fact that these interventions are often not emergency-driven, invasive and irreversible. These children are too young to consent at the time of the intervention and their parents are often not given adequate information and support to make an informed decision about what is best for their children. Such practices can constitute gross violations of their human rights.

While the last decade can be celebrated for its progressive nature in the rise to prominence of queer rights, it is arguable that intersex rights, and by extension those who are intersex, have been left behind. Intersex issues remain widely unknown, misunderstood or uncared about even in progressive or queer communities, never mind in wider society.

However, over the past year some positive strides have been made to effect change on a global level.

It appears that the ‘I’ in LGBTQIA is often ignored, but it looks like that is changing. With movements and campaigns taking place, it appears that it is finally getting the recognition it deserves, and hopefully those born intersex in the future will be born into a world that recognizes and understands their gender, and affords parity of esteem from birth. Let’s make sure we don’t forget the ‘I’.

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