English

Noun

intersex ‎(plural intersexes)

1. Any of a variety of conditions (in a dioecious species) whereby an individual has male and female sex characteristics; the state of having the physical features of both sexes; intersexuality.
   • 1953, Time, 23 Feb 1953:

     A Canadian believes that he has solved the diagnostic problem in human intersex. All human cells, says Dr. Murray L. Barr of the University of Western Ontario, contain something called sex chromatin.

   • 2003, Andrew J Lawrence et al., Effects of Pollution on Fish, page 204:

     A much more common condition caused by early exposure of fish larvae to oestrogenic substances is intersex, which in males usually takes the form of ovotestis.

   • 2008, Emine Saner, The Guardian, 30 Jul 2008, G2, page 12:

     It is thought that around one in 1,000 babies are born with an "intersex" condition, the general term for people with chromosomal abnormalities.

2. (biology, zoology) An individual with any of these conditions.
   • 1948, Alfred Kinsey; Wardell Baxter Pomeroy, Clyde Eugene Martin, Sexual behavior in the human male, page 659:

     Goldschmidt and others who have thought of the homosexual individual as an intersex have relied upon incidence figures which were pure guesses and which, as the data in the present chapter will show, bear little relation to the fact....

   • 1955, Curt Stern, (Please provide the title of the work), page 374:

     Conversely, a fertilized egg with one X-chromosome would develop not into a male but into an intersex [...].

   • 2003, Peggy Tine Cohen-Kettenis; Friedemann Pfäfflin, Transgenderism and intersexuality in childhood and adolescence, page 155:

     Genital surgery on intersexes has been performed for about a century

   • 2009, Mary C Smith & David Sherman, Goat Medicine, page 609:

     An intersex, then, is an animal that shows both male and female characteristics.

Usage notes

• Recently, the adjective intersex and noun phrase intersex person have been preferred to hermaphroditic and hermaphrodite as being more appropriate when the referent is human. The noun intersex has also become more common than intersexuality.

Translations

Adjective

intersex ‎(not comparable)

1. (of an individual) Having characteristics of both sexes.
   • 2006, Alice Domurate Dreger, “Intersex and Human Rights: The Long View”, in Sharon E. Sytsma (editor), Ethics and Intersex, Springer, ISBN 978-1-4020-4313-0, page 81:

     If you would not obfuscate the medical history of a person who was born without intersex, then you ought not to do so when dealing with a person born intersex.

   • 2006, Dean Spade, “Compliance Is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy”, Paisley Currah et al. (editors), Transgender Rights, University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 978-0-8166-4312-7, page 225:

     His confidentiality was broken, and soon the entire staff and residential population were aware that Jim was intersex. […] we faced the fact that most programs were gender segregated and would not be a safe place for Jim to be known as intersex.

   • 2010, Sean Saifa Wall, “I am the ‘I’”, in Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman (editors), Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Seal Press, ISBN 978-1-58005-308-2, page 109:

     When I had learned that I was intersex, I brought this issue to my mother.

   • 2010, The Age, 3 Jun 2010:

     A survey of 1100 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) people by Griffith and Bond University researchers found that the overwhelming majority had been victims of targeted harassment as well as physical and sexual abuse.

Synonyms

• intersexed
• intersexual
• (sometimes offensive): hermaphroditic, hermaphrodite
• (clinical, sometimes offensive): pseudohermaphroditic, pseudohermaphrodite
• (on forms and documents): indeterminate, X

Derived terms

• intersexed
• intersexuality

Translations

See also

• gender ambiguity
• hermaphroditism; pseudohermaphroditism
• androgynous
• bigender; ambigender