Hey, Doctors! Stop Operating on Intersex Babies

An activist group called the UK Intersex Association (UKIA) is campaigning for better rights for British intersex people. I spoke to UKIA's director, Dr. Jay Hayes-Light, to learn more about the organization and its mission.

 Intersex, and Erased Again

Imagine knowing that every aspect of your physiology, from your height to your cup size, was chosen off a menu — not by nature but by doctors and family members.

 Not everyone is male or female – the growing controversy over sex designation

But sex designation is not as simple as a glance and then a check of one box or another. Instead, the overwhelming evidence shows that sex is not binary. To put it another way, the terms “male” and “female” don’t fully capture the complex biological, anatomical and chromosomal variations that occur in the human body.

 The Body, The Self

The care of people with intersex traits evolves as clinicians and researchers learn more—and listen more

 The Intersex Spectrum

Physical gender is not always just a matter of XX or XY, girl or boy. In approximately one out of every 100 births, seemingly tiny errors occur during the various stages of fetal sex differentiation, causing a baby's body to develop abnormally. Problems in the formation of chromosomes, gonads, or external genitals can lead to a range of intersex conditions.

 What Does It Mean To Be Intersex?

In the area of 1 in 2,000 people are born intersex. These individuals may have mixed genitalia, meaning some combination of ovaries and testes. This comes about either because ovarian and testicular tissue grow together in the same organ or because a "male side" and a "female side" develop in the body.

'We don’t know if your baby’s a boy or a girl': growing up intersex

For generations, children with male and female characteristics have been assigned a sex at birth. Is there an alternative? Parents, doctors and intersex adults share their experiences.

Are You Still Queer if People Can’t Always Perceive Your Identity?

What it’s like to be intersex and nonbinary in a checkbox world.

Emily Quinn: Male Or Female Is The Wrong Question—How Can We Rethink Biological Sex?

Most people assume that you're biologically either a man or a woman, but it's actually a lot more complex than that. There are so many ways somebody could be intersex.

In the intersex community, we’re desperate for quality care. Doctors aren’t listening

Half a century ago, medicine became focused on “fixing” the bodies of intersex infants and children, often via drastic surgical interventions like clitoral reductions and vaginoplasties, in order to make their bodies conform to typical notions of male or female.

Intersex, and Proud

“I just knew it. I felt it in my gut. I’m a girl,” Tatenda says in the short documentary She’s Not a Boy,

I’m Intersex and Wish the Gender Recognition Act Was More Inclusive

Intersex people are assigned gender markers that damage our wellbeing, and even the UK's progressive reforms of the GRA don't address this.

New Documentary Explores the Realities of Being an Intersex Person and Their Treatment By Society

Devigne decided to explore how intersex people are treated by society, by filming M and Deborah in their ordinary environments over the course of several months, interspersed with home videos and animation segments.

Should We 'Fix' Intersex Children?

M was born with genitals that were not clearly male or female. Also known as disorders of sex development (DSDs), the best guess by researchers is that intersex conditions affect one in 2,000 children. The response by doctors is often to carry out largely unregulated and controversial surgeries that aim to make an infant’s genitals and reproductive organs more normal but can often have unintended consequences, according to intersex adults, advocates and some doctors.

Surgery to make intersex children ‘normal’ should be banned

Intersex children are born with sex characteristics, including genitals, gonads (testes and ovaries) and chromosome patterns, that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.

The Dangerous Denial of Sex

The time for politeness on this issue has passed. Biologists and medical professionals need to stand up for the empirical reality of biological sex.

This is What Intersex Means

Intersex babies are not obviously male or female to begin with, according to society’s general rules about what one’s physical characteristics and chromosomal makeup are supposed to signify.