Intersex & Sex Characteristics
Intersex & Sex Characteristics · 3 entries
This small group carries 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.
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. The widest prevalence disagreement on the site is also here: the same organisation gives two figures thirty times apart because they count different things.
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 single 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 WorldThis is the largest group in the catalogue, and the one most readers arrive at by searching for a third gender.
- Pronouns & Forms of AddressThe words in this group do not name a kind of person.
- Gender Expression & PresentationWhat these gender expression terms report is presentation, stance and the scene a person comes from, rather than an answer to the question of what their gender is. [[butch]] is the clearest case: Wikipedia files it inside the lesbian subculture, with its own traits, behaviours and styles, and the word grew out of working-class bar culture in the 1940s, not out of any theory of identity. [[genderpunk|Genderpunk]] and gender bending belong here for a related reason, since both describe an active stance against a norm.
- Trans & Binary IdentitiesMan, woman, trans and cis: every term for the relation between a person and the sex recorded for them at birth.
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.