What is intersex?
Intersex people are born with both male and female sex characteristics. Someone perhaps has an underdeveloped penis and a vaginal opening or uterus. Or someone has a vulva and a large clitoris which looks like a penis. Other intersex people have the fully-developed sex characteristics of 1 sex but a mix of female and male hormones, chromosomes or genes.
Having an intersex body does not cause pain. It’s not unhealthy, or something that needs to be fixed.
Boy, girl, gay, straight?
You can’t always tell whether an intersex baby is a boy or a girl. As they grow, most intersex people feel either male or female. A small number of them feel they are somewhere between male and female. Or neither of those.
Just as with other people, intersex people are gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, pansexual or asexual. So intersex is not a separate sexual preference.
The difference between intersex and transgender
Intersex is not the same as trans, transgender or transsexual.
Transgender people are born as boys but feel female, or born as girls but feel male. Other trans people don’t feel like either, or perhaps feel like both.
Intersex people have a combination of male and female genitals, hormones, chromosomes or genes. Nevertheless, most intersex people feel either male or female.
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