Intersexuality
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An intersexual or intersex organism is an organism (a living thing) that is either born with genitalia and/or secondary sex characteristics that are not male or female. It may also be born with some genitalia and/or secondary sex characteristics that are male and some that are female. Doctors sometimes cannot tell if an intersexual baby is a boy or a girl. These babies are called intersexed.
Many intersexed people do not like to be called hermaphrodites. The word "hermaphrodite" is a biological term which is used for animals such as snails. The word is thought to be old-fashioned when used to refer to people. It is not politically correct or kind, and people want the word to stop being used in this way.
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[edit] Causes of intersexuality
There are many conditions that can cause people to be born intersexed. Most of these are genetic conditions. People with these conditions have a gene that works differently. This gene is usually an enzyme or a receptor.
The most common condition that causes intersex is Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. This is a condition that causes female fetuses to look some male. The cause is an enzyme that makes hormones in the adrenal gland. This makes the adrenal gland make very much more androgen hormones (hormones that act like testosterone.) So the female fetuses have genitals that look male. They may have a penis instead of a clitoris. They may have a scrotum instead of labia. Doctors and parents may not even see that the baby is intersexed. They may just think the baby is a boy. But the baby has female chromosomes.
[edit] How many intersexed people are there?
About 1% (1 in 100) of babies are born with some intersex condition. Many of these are not bad. They may not even be found until the child is in puberty or is an adult. About 0.1 – 0.2% (1-2 in 1000) of babies are born with an important intersex condition.
[edit] Medical treatment of intersexed people
Doctors believed before that intersexed babies must have surgery to 'fix' their genitals. This was done by surgery to make babies' genitals look only male or female. They believed that babies would have many bad problems if they did not have genitals that looked only male or female. Most babies had surgery to make them look female. This was because surgery to make them look female is an easier thing to do.
But when these people became adults some of them were very unhappy that doctors did surgery on them. Some of them do not like the sex that they were made. People who had surgery to make them look female may have a male gender identity. Some intersexed people are also unhappy because their genitals may not function right. They may have very much pain when they have sex. Some of these intersexed people want to get doctors to stop doing surgery on intersexed babies.
But there are other intersexed people who are very happy with the surgery they had. They are happy that it was done when they were babies. They think that if they had to be children with genitals that did not look like a boy or a girl it would have been bad.
The trouble doctors have is they cannot tell when a baby is born if it will have a male or female gender identity. If they knew this it would be very easy. They would do the surgery that would make the genitals the same as the baby's gender identity. So doctors and scientists are studying which gender identity intersex babies will have. There are some intersex diseases where the gender identity is usually one way. But some intersex diseases it is not easy to tell.
If a baby has an intersex disease that may have a male or female gender identity, some doctors now say we should not do surgery early. They say we should wait until the baby is older. Then the child can show us what his or her gender identity is
[edit] Intersex and transgender and LGBT
Some intersexed people say they are transgender or part of the LGBT community (group.) Some people even say LGBTI to include intersex people.
Some intersex people say they are not transgender or in the LGBT community. These groups have some things in common, but not all things. But some people in all of these groups are not happy when they are grouped together.
Some people who are transgender also believe that transgender is a kind of intersex. They believe that transgender people have brains that are physically like the other sex. (Since the brain is an organ that is different in men and women.) But some intersexed people are not happy with this. They want to be separate from transgender people.
