Intersex & Sex Characteristics · 3 entries
Intersex & Sex Characteristics
A small group carrying one large correction. Intersex describes variations in chromosomes, gonads, hormones and anatomy, and it is not a gender identity, yet it appears on almost every published list of gender identities. The entries here exist to draw that line and to hold the terms that do sit on the identity side of it, such as ipsogender for an intersex person who identifies with the sex they were assigned.
The distinction matters practically and not only pedantically. Sex characteristics and gender identity are separate axes, and someone can be unusual on one and entirely ordinary on the other: most intersex people are not transgender, and the great majority hold a settled binary gender. The confusion has a source. For most of the twentieth century intersex variations were treated as conditions to be resolved, usually surgically and usually in infancy, so the literature is thick with language about assignment and correction that reads like a claim about identity and is not one. This group also carries the widest prevalence disagreement on the site, where the same organisation gives two figures thirty times apart because they count different things.
Emblem of the category
In this category
All 3 intersex & sex characteristics
3 entries
- IntergenderTwo coinages sixteen years apart, one intersex-only and one not, and a live argument about who the word belongs to. Both senses dated, both reported here.
- IntersexA fact about bodies that nearly every gender list files as an identity, and two prevalence figures thirty times apart from one source.
- IpsogenderAn intersex person who identifies with the binary sex they were assigned at birth, and the gap in cisgender that made the word necessary in 2015.
Keep going
The other categories
- Gender Around the WorldThe largest group in the catalogue, and the one most readers arrive at by searching for a third gender.
- Trans & Binary IdentitiesMan, woman, trans and cis: every term for the relation between a person and the sex recorded for them at birth.
- Distinct Nonbinary GendersThe microlabels here share one insistence, and their sources make it in almost the same words every time: this is not a partial gender, not a blend, and not a point between two poles.
- Fluid & Changing GendersGenders that move.
Common questions
Questions about intersex & sex characteristics
Why is intersex on a gender site at all?
Because it is on every other list of gender identities, and correcting that is more useful than omitting the word and leaving the error uncontested. The entry exists to say what intersex is and to say plainly what it is not.
Can an intersex person be transgender?
Yes, and most are not. The two categories are independent: one describes how a body developed, the other describes the relation between somebody's gender and their birth assignment. A person can be either, both or neither.
What does ipsogender mean?
An intersex person who identifies with the binary sex they were assigned at birth. It exists because the ordinary word for that, cisgender, was built around a model of birth assignment that did not have intersex bodies in mind, and some people find it a poor fit.
Why do the intersex prevalence figures vary so much?
Because they count different populations. The wide figure of about 1.7 per cent of births includes every variation of sex development, some of them late-onset and common. The narrow figure of about 0.05 per cent counts genital differences apparent at birth. Both are quoted as the prevalence of intersex.