Can being intersex be life threatening?

Intersex traits in and of themselves are not life-threatening, although they are sometimes associated with other serious medical symptoms, such as with salt-wasting congenital adrenal hyperplasia (SW CAH) and turner syndrome.

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Do intersex people have health problems?

Most people with intersex bodies are completely healthy. However, they can experience social stigma and medical interventions because their bodies are perceived as different. All these things can impact their mental health. Intersex people talk about their variations in all sorts of ways.

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What happens if you are born intersex?

Intersex is an umbrella term for differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy. Intersex people are born with these differences or develop them in childhood. There are many possible differences in genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy, or chromosomes, compared to the usual two ways that human bodies develop.

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Can intersex people be treated?

Intersex individuals don't require special treatments or care. However, some intersex individuals may choose to have gender affirmation surgery, particularly if their gender doesn't match the one they were assigned at birth. Gender affirmation surgery is a personal choice and is not something that needs to be done.

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Is intersex legal in Australia?

Intersex rights in Australia are protections and rights afforded to intersex people through statutes, regulations, and international human rights treaties, including through the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) which makes it unlawful to discriminate against a person based upon that person's intersex status in ...

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What It's Like To Be Intersex

34 related questions found

Is intersex a birth defect?

Intersex variations are not abnormal and should not be seen as 'birth defects'; they are natural biological variations and occur in up to 1.7 per cent of all births. Most people with intersex variations are not born with atypical genitalia, however this is common for certain intersex variations.

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How rare is intersex?

Being intersex is also more common than most people realize. It's hard to know exactly how many people are intersex, but estimates suggest that about 1-2 in 100 people born in the U.S. are intersex.

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Can you be legally intersex?

Intersex is a term that is increasingly recognised in legal jurisdictions throughout the world. Despite the growth in recognition, the ways in which states have recognised intersex people have been diverse. Some, such as, Germany have made intersex a mandatory third gender.

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Do intersex people have periods?

Some people are actually born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit traditional sex binaries of male and female. This is generally called 'intersex', and intersex people too may have periods.

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Can intersex people Pregnate themselves?

Some intersex people have both testes and ovaries. You may be able to get pregnant on your own, if you also have a uterus. However, if you have testes, they may be releasing more testosterone than would be optimal for conception and pregnancy.

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How can you tell if you're intersex?

Symptoms
  • Ambiguous genitalia at birth.
  • Micropenis.
  • Clitoromegaly (an enlarged clitoris)
  • Partial labial fusion.
  • Apparently undescended testes (which may turn out to be ovaries) in boys.
  • Labial or inguinal (groin) masses (which may turn out to be testes) in girls.

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Do intersex people need surgery?

The Intersex Society of North America—a well regarded and effective patient support group—recommends that no surgery should be performed unless absolutely necessary for the physical health and comfort of an intersexual child.

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Do intersex people have different brains?

Earlier, we defined intersex individuals as those whose genetic, gonadal, hormonal, and genital sex characteristics do not perfectly match. Because there is so much individual variability among brains and brain regions, essentially the brain is more “intersex” than distinctly male or female [6].

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What happens when an intersex person goes through puberty?

Some intersex people experience typical puberties while others can have different experiences during puberty. For example, those with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) and Turner Syndrome, go through puberty later than usual or don't experience all the usual parts of puberty, like hair growth.

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Who was the first intersex person?

The first recorded case of this sort has been attributed to the seventh-century Rashidun caliph named 'Ali, who attempted to settle an inheritance case between five brothers in which one brother had both a male and female urinary opening.

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Does intersex count as LGBT?

Although many intersex people are heterosexual and cisgender, this overlap and "shared experiences of harm arising from dominant societal sex and gender norms" has led to intersex people often being included under the LGBT umbrella, with the acronym sometimes expanded to LGBTI.

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How many people are actually born intersex?

It is estimated that up to 1.7 percent of the population has an intersex trait and that approximately 0.5 percent of people have clinically identifiable sexual or reproductive variations.

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How many intersex people have given birth?

Here's what we do know: If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births.

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What causes a person to be intersex?

They may be due to variations in sex chromosomes or genetic changes that affect the body's production of or response to hormones. Sometimes, intersex traits are identified at birth, while others are not identified until later in life (or not at all).

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How many genders are legal in Australia?

Explained: The 33 Gender Identities Recognised By The Australian Sex Survey.

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Can an intersex person marry?

The intersex rights includes rights of inheritance, rights to marriage, and rights to live like any other male or female.

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Do most intersex people know they're intersex?

Unfortunately, a lot of intersex people don't always have that experience, and may not even know that they're intersex. Sometimes that's because doctors will hide it from us or treat it as something shameful, or because it's hard to access accurate information about intersex traits.

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Is intersex considered a gender?

Myth 4: Intersex people are transgender.

The word “intersex” relates to physical sexual characteristics, and not to an internal sense of identity. An intersex person may also identify as trans, but they are separate things, because gender and sex are separate.

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Who is a famous hermaphrodite?

Caster Semenya, 800 m Olympic gold medalist. Edinanci Silva, Brazilian judoka and gold medalist in the woman's half-heavyweight division at the Pan-American games. Dawn Langley Simmons (1937 or 1922 to 2000), English author and biographer.

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