The campaign for intersex people’s human rights has come a long way in the past two decades, from a cluster of small organisations scattered across the world to a movement which, in a recent survey, was able to draw on the experiences of 38,811 people. That should be good news. Unfortunately, as this research shows, it is still dangerous to be born this way. As those who are living openly celebrate Intersex Awareness Day, we reflect on the thousands who still feel forced to keep the natural form of their bodies a secret.
Contested bodies
The term ‘intersex’ refers to people who are born with, or spontaneously develop, sex characteristics that don’t line up with one another in the way typically expected of either men or women. Estimates of the frequency of this vary widely, partly because of secrecy and partly because of arguments over which variations should be included in the term, but it’s likely that there are at least 30,000 intersex people in Scotland.
Some people in this situation prefer to use the term VSC, or ‘variation of sex characteristics’, because they see it as a purely medical issue and not an aspect of identity. That’s less practical, however, for people whose variations affect their overall appearance to the extent that others often notice they’re different. ‘Intersex’ also matters as a term identifying shared experiences which have a big impact on personal development.
Chief among these is the use of surgical and hormonal techniques to try to ‘correct’ intersex bodies and make them more like other people’s. According to the new research, at least 45% of respondents born in the UK experienced a harmful intervention of this sort as a child, without their consent. Despite new rules which make it unlawful to offer such treatments to trans children, or even to delay their physical development so that they can decide as adults what’s best for them, it’s still fairly common for these techniques to be used on intersex children. Because this tends to be done as early as possible – often in infancy – it can cause lifelong complications such as pain, incontinence, or lack of sexual sensation.
Intersex casualties of political ideology
Intersex advocates had been making slow progress in persuading doctors to wait until children were at least old enough to participate in discussion, but now report that this progress has stalled. In some places it has even gone backwards, due to the increasing power of political movements which emphasise differences between men and women and don’t want complicated bodies getting in the way of their ideology.
Strikingly, the survey, which spanned 122 countries, found that only 42% of intersex people now feel accepted – 10% less than two years ago. Respondents also reported feeling more vulnerable to discrimination and violence, including police violence, and less able to securely gather together – which is essential, especially in places with poor internet access, for organising to push for change. General feelings of personal safety had dropped by 9%.
Although the UK is not as dangerous as parts of Western China or East Africa, where intersex infants still risk being killed at birth, it does not appear to be exempt from this trend. Only 15% of UK intersex people feel able to be open with everyone about this aspect of who they are, while another 15% don’t tell anyone at all.
In the UK, the recent Supreme Court ruling and Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) guidance, intended to prevent trans people from redefining their gender under the terms of the Equality Act, has also had a negative impact on intersex people. By defining ‘biological sex’ as the sex written on an individual’s birth certificate, it threatens to erase intersex people in the eyes of the law.
Just like trans people, visibly intersex people have reported an increase in experiences of harassment by strangers, especially when seeking to access sex-segregated spaces. Because many medical personnel are themselves unfamiliar with the existence of intersex people (which the NHS has only fully acknowledged for 13 years), it is not uncommon for them to assume that the intersex people they meet are trans, leading to difficulties for those who, often due to non-consensual childhood surgeries, need regular hospital treatment.
In the US, where Donald Trump’s clumsy attempt to oblige the law to recognise only two sexes inadvertently made everybody legally female, intersex people face similar problems. The more that societies try to enforce a binary model onto a more complex reality, the more difficult it is for intersex people to exist in the world. Living in secrecy is an option for some, but others find that this cuts them off from access to medical treatment, which cannot be delivered appropriately if only two body types are acknowledged.
A better future?
Despite all this, some intersex activists are holding onto hope. The most important thing, they say, is that intersex people are now coming together in much bigger numbers and are rejecting the long-established culture of shame. Speaking at a recent event organised by the LGBTQI+ campaigning organisation OutRight, Taiwanese intersex advocate Hiker Chiu said that if one sets aside the negative aspects of being intersex, most of which are rooted in other people’s attitudes, to focus instead on the positive, all sorts of things become possible.
Chiu sees intersex confidence and positivity as the route to a better future, because denying reality can’t work forever, and the current swing towards right-wing politics won’t last forever. As intersex people feel less isolated, they start to believe in themselves, so awareness is the key to building a world that has room for everyone.
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