Intersexuality (hermaphrodite) Read count: 15371 Last update: 2004-08-24
In brief:
Basic information about intersexuality.
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Intersexuality (intersexualism) – an intersexual or intersex person (or organism of any unisexual species) is one who is born with genitalia and/or secondary sex characteristics determined as neither exclusively male nor female, or which combine features of the male and female sexes. The terms hermaphrodite and pseudohermaphrodite, introduced in the 19th century, are now considered misleading and stigmatizing, and patient advocates call for these terms to be abandoned. The phrase “ambiguous genitalia” refers specifically to genital appearance, but not all intersex conditions result in atypical genital appearance.
There is currently a move by some activists to eliminate the term “intersex” in medical usage, replacing it with “Disorders of Sex Development” (DSD) in order to avoid conflating anatomy with identity. However, this has been met with criticism from other activists who question a disease/disability model and advocate no legal definition of sexes, no gender assignments, no legal sex on birth certificates, and no official sexual orientation categories.
Perhaps 1 percent of live births exhibit some degree of sexual ambiguity and that between 0.1% and 0.2% of live births are ambiguous enough to become the subject of specialist medical attention, including surgery to disguise their sexual ambiguity.
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