A baby was born to parents who had been told, by prenatal ultrasound, to expect a baby girl, had told their family and friends and had equipped themselves with an arsenal of pink baby gear.  At birth…

Faking It’s Bailey De Young and Emily from interAct share everything you need to know about being intersex.

Of course, Chandler’s story — which she first published in a a Facebook post on Nov. 13 — was only deemed relevant by the media days later, because she supposedly has had a relationship with Olympian Michael Phelps. However, what is most revealing about this slew of headlines…

Emily Quinn is a 25-year-old animator who works at Cartoon Network. She is also intersex. For her this means that, while she has a perfectly normal-looking vagina, it’s not a uterus and ovaries she has inside—it’s a pair of testes.

At the age of 25 I never would have believed that I would be 100% open with the word Intersex and use it as a defining word for who I am.

I am a 25 year old woman, a daughter, a student , and I am Intersex…

In the months following its premiere, MTV’s Faking It got a whole lot of criticism. And even though I’m a huge fan, I’ll admit that at first glance, it looked like it deserved it. Why would any show aimed at teens want to make light of the struggle that so many people face in coming out? But the show has proven everyone wrong, and if you’re not watching, you definitely should be…

Emily Quinn To my Friends and Family — oh, and the rest of the world too: I’ve been told it takes balls to be in a PSA like this or to write a letter like this one. No, seriously! I have balls…

In the Season 2 premiere of MTV’s Faking It, which explores the spectrum of sexuality, a main character reveals that she was born with an intersex condition. Here’s what went into that decision — and why it was so important to get it right.

Season one ended with a cliffhanger for Lauren, who flipped out after rumors started flying about mysterious pills she was taking regularly. The season two premiere will reveal that Lauren regularly takes hormones and was born with Androgen Insensitive Syndrome…

Because of an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) policy, Dutee Chand, an 18-year-old Indian sprinter, was blocked from competing at the 2014 Commonwealth Games because her body makes too much testosterone…

About a year ago I was contacted about a new show set to premiere that was invested in writing an intersex plot line about one of it’s main characters. I was skeptical, to say the least, that this was just another sensationalist trivialization of intersex people’s experiences. Feeling a large responsibility to represent and defend my intersex community, I cautiously agreed….

Recently I spent several days in a public internet group for “gender critical” people, after a few intersex friends voiced some positive things about this line of thinking. Feminists who call themselves “gender critical” are a controversial bunch…

Recording artist,  Dalea talks about how having an atypical body taught her to love herself.

“At times this book had me in tears. The hardships and humiliation our society puts on others through deeming some not ‘normal.’ All the tragedies that could be prevented if we just accepted people as they are. All the secrets that kill our soul. For what? All to appease those who are fearful of anyone who is different? Who decides what “normal” is anyway.

This is an intense read, and I adore any author who is able to put such a poignant story together. Really, drop everything, and read this book.” — Debbie Wilson

 “Is it impossible for intersex people to be cisgender because it is impossible in society to live completely as [an] intersex person with no male or female legal checkbox?”

“Once again the story of tenacity despite overwhelming odds wins me over. I could not put book 2 down. I was rooting for the author’s indomitable spirit to win and the resiliency to remain strong. I was not disappointed. The book continued to keep a wry wit and tongue-in-cheek humor firmly in place.” — Sharon Norton

… eugenics never really went away, and it’s operating today through various reproductive technologies such as selective implantation of embryos, and, quite commonly, through prenatal screening for “disorders,” which are then “treated” via “therapeutic abortion.” Among those characteristics that can been screened for and eliminated are those forms of intersexuality with a genetic origin.

I have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and have known since I was 16/17. You probably all know that but just wanted to…

New policies for Olympic and other international athletes set an upper limit to the amount of testosterone considered “normal” for a woman, and require those women who have natural levels of T that are higher than this to have medical interventions…

A group of young intersex writers and advocates Monday issued an open letter to Fox News — and anyone else who doesn’t know about their gender identity and the challenges they face in society — in the wake of Fox commentators’ dismissive comments…

When Ambrose was twelve years old, he began to take female hormones. At eighteen, he prepared to undergo a vaginoplasty, the surgical reconstruction of the vagina. Suffering from depression, Ambrose contemplated suicide. “I knew that I wasn’t a girl,” he later told a reporter. The following year, Ambrose obtained his medical records, and discovered what had happened to him as an infant: “I was sterilized at birth—and no one ever told me…”

“A Freakish Life is a coming-of-age story in the 60’s and 70’s of New England and yet it is so much more: dealing with parents and all the angst that comes from their lack of acceptance (“As Is”: a perfect example of a pseudonym if ever there was one. Also perfect for the wit and humor throughout the book.), trying to determine who is friend, who is enemy and how to handle them, school (especially junior high with all its pitfalls), society and the twist and most importantly finding the answer to “Who am I?”, what is my place in society? My calling? The author deals with these topics honestly and sometimes painfully…” — Sharon Norton

The women argue that their very existence has been “eradicated” by British society. Generations of children have been operated upon to “normalise” their genitals or sexual anatomy, while official documentation, from birth certificates to passports, requires a male or female box to be ticked. They argue it’s one of the last “human rights taboos” in the western world…

… The Senate Committee has been highly critical of current practice, saying that while enormous medical “effort has gone into assigning and ‘normalising’ sex: none has gone into asking whether this is necessary or beneficial”. In calmly restrained parliamentary language, they described this as “extremely unfortunate”.

On Nov. 1, Germany became the first European nation to recognize a third gender for babies born with ambiguous genitalia. No longer will newborns be rigidly assigned to male or female…

People with Intersex or DSD conditions grapple with obtaining sensitive and transparent healthcare and finding places of social and psychological support in a world that continues to promote a dogmatic gender binary in addition to the layering of our many identities including race, age, class, gender identity, citizenship, sexual orientation and disability…

These are heady times for Australian intersex people. Last week, the Senate issued its second report backing an intersex-inclusive anti discrimination bill…

The suit asserts that there was no medical need for this surgery, which was meant to permanently “fix” this child and turn him into an unequivocal girl, but it did him more harm than good. M.C., now eight years old, feels more like a boy, lives as a boy, and heartbreakingly has asked his mother, “When will I grow a penis?”

Box Office Bioethics 2012-2013 winner: This film was submitted by the team One KX to Box Office Bioethics, a student film competition run by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics…

“The doctor had to put … one of those wood[en] vices and literally break my pelvis bone. It was a nightmare,” Haligowski recalled this incident which happened 20 years ago, with a shudder.

Medical nightmares like this are not uncommon in the intersex community…

It’s Not Anecdotal.

TRIGGER WARNING: This post talks explicitly about medical “treatments” experienced by some intersex people, including vaginal dilation procedures.

I have been struggling a lot lately. I don’t often talk about my own medicalization, except to say that it wasn’t consensual and it messed me up…

If you are looking around for information about intersexuality, one of the first things you’re likely to read is that “most intersex children are assigned female at birth.” This is in fact false…

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (SRT) just released a statement condemning the medical profession’s nonconsensual treatment of intersexuality…

The intersex nature of the bluebanded goby is erased or distorted in most descriptions of the fish, because our society is so invested in the idea that sexual dyadism is natural and universal that we can’t see evidence to the contrary right in front of our eyes.

Between 9-11 December 2012, the second International Intersex Forum took place in Stockholm. This event brought together 37 activists representing 33 intersex organisations and supportive institutions from all continents…

International sports governing bodies such as the International Association for Athletics Federation and the International Olympic Committee have recently revised their policies for inclusion of athletes competing in women’s international sports competitions…

Child’s-Eye-View on Intersex:
X-Men = Awesome.

Hi, everyone! I’ve been thinking about how my views about what intersex is, who I am, and what it means to be/identify as intersex have changed drastically over time…

“‘Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite’ by Lianne Simon is a warm, engaging and very poignant novel about a teenager coming to terms with the person she really is. Set against a backdrop of the Vietnam War, it accurately reflects the tone of the times. While some kids are dying for naught in a far off place, other, more privileged ones attend college on student deferments and speak little of politics and war. Jamie, the main protagonist, is portrayed as a very believable character, a person who was born with a rather rare intersex condition known as Mixed Gonadal Dysgenesis. This manifests in Jamie in a partial male chromosomal genotype, a shortness of stature, an elfin and feminine appearance and a semblance of the genitalia of both the sexes...” — Samuel Rafael

Intersex and trans adults are often despairing over not having had a say as children over what their sexes should be, and how doctors should intervene. Meanwhile…

She was initially assigned as a male with what people thought was a very small penis. She was named Bruce and taken home from the Auckland hospital she was born in… A year later, in 1954, doctors discovered she had a uterus.

Out of the Grey, Off of the Spectrum

I have been starting to read and watch more intersex books and films, in order to educate myself about what intersex resources are out there…

Intersex conditions undermine the assumptions about the clear delineation between male and female which underpin the theology of Christians that oppose women bishops.

This is the argument of a new paper, Intersex and Ontology, by Dr Susannah Cornwall…

Day in and day out, sex and gender minorities are boxed in by being confronted with sex/gender checkboxes. This starts the moment we are born…

This provocative documentary [One In 2000] demystifies the issue of sexual difference. At a time when five babies a day in the United States are having “gender reassignment” surgery, it argues that there is little evidence that such surgery is beneficial to the child…

October is a significant month for intersex. October 26 marks the beginning of the Fourteen Days of Intersex with Intersex Awareness Day (IAD)…

My daughter’s gestation was perfectly “natural,” I should point out–but I carried her, and I was never of the female sex; I am diagnosed as “true gonadal intersex.”

The world’s 1st International Intersex Organising Forum took place in Brussels between 3-5 September 2011. The historic event brought together 24 activists representing 17 intersex organisations from all continents…

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the most visible law that protects private employees from discrimination based on sex. Remedial statutes must be construed broadly, yet it is not clear how broadly “sex” is defined under the statute. Everyone agrees that Title VII at the very least protects women from discrimination because they are women and protects men from discrimination because they are men. But what of the intersex people in the United States whose genetic and biological characteristics do not place them neatly into one of the two common biological sexes?

Intersex people are all around us, according to Dr. Veronica Drantz, a professor at North Shore and DePaul universities. Drantz challenged the notions of sex and gender that we’re taught in school, where she says it’s “the male, the female—the end.” Drantz said that there are a wide variety of people that fall in between…

Melissa’s interest in contemporary intersex activism prompted an analysis of Barbin as “one of the major precursors to these movements, especially since s/he is one of the first intersex individuals to translate his/her lived experiences of sexual ambiguity into writing.” The study of Barbin’s memoirs, she argues, is relevant and important when considering modern intersex issues in France, the United States, and the rest of the world…

There is a lot of variation in how the genitalia develop from person to person in all of us. Nature provides us with a wide spectrum of forms, onto which our society imposes two absolute categories of male and female…

To amplify the voices of people with intersex conditions and to shed light on the medicalization of intersex identities, The Women’s Center handed the microphone at an event Friday to documentary filmmaker Robin Honan and intersex historian Elizabeth Reis to vocalize the crossroads of medical and social thought on intersex bodies…

… he knew something was wrong and, battling depression, sought his medical records when he was 19.

“I knew that I wasn’t a girl,” he said.

What Bruce discovered was horrifying. “I was sterilized at birth — and no one ever told me,” he said.

I have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and this is my story about my experiences and what has happened so far…

An international team of researchers has identified a gene that appears to be an important switch in determining whether the biological program for the development of gender will go according to plan, or if, when mutated, will cause a glitch in the program…

In this program, Alice Dreger addresses the human experience of being born with a body that does not fit the usual definitions of male or female. Now called “persons with intersex,” these people were once referred to as hermaphrodites. Dreger’s lecture touches on what, historically, happened to people with intersex and incorporates insights that can be gleaned from the narratives of those living with sex anomalies.

We have very different bodies, different “conditions,” but we share key experiences that bind us closely. And one of those shared experiences is a constant feeling of unease with regulations and categorizations–marriage laws…

In the homophobic and transphobic cauldron of many American schools, large numbers of LGBTI teens are driven to despair, and some to its ultimate expression in suicide…

I want to explain a division in our community, between intersex advocates and partisans of the terminology of “DSDs”…

Physicians have had a long, painful relationship with those born with intersex conditions, or atypical sex development. Two recent controversies have highlighted this uncomfortable history…

I’ve had conversations with intersex acquaintances about painful situations in which (nonintersex) people have accused my friends of not “really” being intersex. These are some central myths that come up over and over again…

In a statement posted late last month, Caster Semenya, the South African runner and world champion announced her plans to return to competition, despite the IAAF’s refusal to release the results of her “gender tests”, citing a violation of her rights through their quest to police and “determine her sex”…

… The Miami proposals make no sense from a sports perspective. Plenty of anomalous conditions give athletes advantages – some men naturally have very high levels of testosterone, or especially efficient oxygen processing. Simpson himself admitted in his interview with The New York Times that some people just have a natural biochemical advantage of one sort or another. But we don’t require “treatment” before those nonintersex athletes are allowed to compete. And we sure as heck don’t decide who will be rigorously tested against biochemical fairness standards by sending around nude photographs of them to special doctors.

Great athletes are both born and made. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that organized sports have historically aspired to regulate both the nature and nurture of its participants. The underlying principle of athletic competition is fair play—consistent with the sporting world’s widespread condemnation of performance-enhancing drugs. But fair play is not synonymous with egalitarianism; nor could it be, given that inborn physical advantages are simply not doled out impartially…

Here’s a snapshot of our website from December of 2009 as kindly hosted by the Indiana University in Bloomington!

See what’s changed and see what’s the same…

Caster Semenya, the current world champion in the eight hundred metres, was a member of the Moletjie Athletics Club until a year ago. She was born in Ga-Masehlong, a village about fifteen miles from the track, and she was, Coach Sako said, “a natural.”

Intersex has become the focus of public interest because of the media storm around the questioning of Caster Semenya’s sex. Our exemplary post-apartheid Constitution of 1996, with its Bill of Rights and Equality Clause, seemed at first glance to afford intersexed South Africans unassailable legal protection. But…

In this special issue of GLQ, experts from a variety of disciplines discuss the future of treatment for people with intersex conditions—those born with ambiguous genitalia—and consider what intersexuality means for theories of gender…

The world is often divided into the two sexes, but where do those born with an uncertain gender stand…?

Controversy and a lot of prurient interest exploded into the news this week when South African Caster Semenya outran her competition in the 800m world championships by a more than two second lead, only to be accused of cheating by being intersex.

Stevens had been told for most of her life that she was a boy, but in her 20s had discovered the truth about her sex — that she had been born a hermaphrodite, and that doctors had conducted surgeries on her genitalia as an infant. After learning the news, she consulted her priest, who said that while God usually condemns suicides, for her he might make an exception…

What’s Up With This Blog?

Hi, everyone! Whether you sought out this site or unintentionally linked to it (and found yourself saying “Huh? Intersex what?!”), WELCOME!

When is the last time somebody told you that there is not such thing. . . as you?

(A blog about various intersex issues)

It can be disconcerting and creepy to realize that someone you don’t know is thinking about your genitalia, requesting a photograph…

I woke up this morning to a set of transphobic comments on my last blog post. Rather than mope, I thought I’d use this as a teaching moment…

Intersex and trans people share some deep common experiences. Yet we often find ourselves prickling at comments made by people in the “other camp.”

I’m Cary, and my sex is neither male nor female; I’m intersexed. I was born that way…

(A blog about various intersex issues)

We look into how people who are have ambiguous genitalia or a combination of male and female body parts cope in a gender-based society.

Harris noted the discovery [she was intersex] confirmed her lifelong awareness that she did not fit the mold defined by most of society…

She has since derived an unprecedented sense of freedom and a release from the frustration she carried for years. She sees this experience as a healing process.

“For those following the Intersex community and their often heartbreaking stories, the book can be painful to read. But Ms. Karkazis tries to present the material not as an advocate, but as a medical ethicist and she succeeds brilliantly in shining much light on a lot of dark histories [that] are still threatening to all involved. It’s in dealing with these bioethical questions the book finds its greatest success. She balances the choices parents and doctors made for infants with the anger and helplessness of those children who had to actually live with those decisions. She also points out how adherence to ‘normality’ and the gender binary had everything to do with many of these (often for the worse) life-altering decisions…” — Gina R. Morvay

Have a look at our public newsletter with topics such as: A Summary Of The 2008 Annual Conference, ”Catching up with the Prez” letter, A Parent’s Letter of Thanksgiving, and Empowerment Through Advocacy!

For the purposes of this Article, the term “transgender” is meant to be broadly interpreted to include transsexuals, crossdressers, gender-queer, and androgynous persons, rather than as the more restrictive use often found in the legal system where transgender tends to be used interchangeably with transsexual…

(The article also includes legal issues affecting intersex individuals)

In a rushed end-of-year trip, New Zealand intersex activist Mani Mitchell travels via Hawaii to USA linking up with Max Beck, Milton Diamond, Cheryl Chase and the Intersex community…

The 39-year-old [Hida] Viloria appeared on the talk show as part of a special program discussing intersex people who are born with male as well as female sexual traits, although those dual traits don’t always appear outwardly. For most of America, it was probably the first time they’d ever heard the word “intersex”…

Are you a male or a female? Simple question, right? For them, the answer is much more complicated…

Alex Kraken is a 15-year-old intersex person, born with both male and female genitals, who has been living and presenting herself as female and using medicines to suppress masculine features, such as a beard, and to attempt to have more feminine features. At the time of the movie, Alex has recently stopped taking her medication without telling her parents, which will cause her masculine features to begin to develop more..

A Poem By Christy Galbraith

I don’t choose blue and I don’t choose pink, A boy or a girl I must be or so you think…

Alison Redick… An assistant professor of women’s studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, conducts research on the history of science and medicine; feminist theory and epistemology; the American eugenics movement; and representations of race, gender and sexuality. She is currently completing a book based on her dissertation, “American History XY: The Medical Treatment of Intersex, 1916–1955.”

StopIGM.org / Zwischengeschlecht.org, founded in 2007, is an international Human Rights NGO based in Switzerland. It is led by intersex persons, their partners, families and friends, and works to represent the interests of intersex people and their relatives, raise awareness, and fight IGM practices and other human rights violations perpetrated on intersex people…

Have a look at our public newsletter with topics such as: 2006 Meeting Summary, ”From Our Prez” letter, and A Membership Questionnaire

Have a look at our public newsletter with articles such as: Things to Help on a Path to Healing, and Ways To Let Go Of Unhealthy Feelings

The purpose of these guidelines is to assist health care professionals in the provision of diagnosis, treatment, education, and support to children born with disorders of sex development (DSDs) and totheir families…

(historic original guidelines developed by an intersex run group)

If you’ve just found out your child has some kind of disorder of sex development (called a DSD for short), you may be feeling confused and stressed. We hope that this handbook will help you begin to answer these questions…

(historic original guidelines developed by an intersex run group)

Have a look at our public newsletter with topics such as: 2005 Meeting Summary, A Letter From The President, and More!

Have a look at our public newsletter with topics such as: Keeping Secrets and Regional Meetings!