Who are intersex people ?

Intersex people are human beings born with sex characteristics (such as chromosomes, genitals, or even hormonal structure) that do not entirely correspond to the categories "male" or "female" or belong to both at the same time. Doctors frequently advise parents to authorize medical, surgical or other interventions on these newborns and children so that their bodies conform (or appear to conform) to male or female characteristics.

In the vast majority of cases, such interventions are not medically necessary and can have terribly harmful repercussions on these people throughout their lives. The term "intersex" represents the range of variations in sexual characteristics, natural variations within the human species.

Recognizing the physiological evidence of the great diversity of sexual characteristics means recognizing the concrete existence of people with attributes other than strictly male or female.

Historically, this term has been used to justify "remedial" medical interventions and has been used as if it were a disorder, a disease requiring "medical attention".

For the past two decades, it has been redefined and endorsed as an "umbrella word" by intersex human rights advocates and their organizations.

Our sex characteristics are defined at birth, whether we are intersex or not. However, having an intersex body can be revealed at different stages of life: either at birth, during childhood, during puberty, or even in adulthood. Whether a person discovers that they are intersex, early in life or much later, depends on each person's specific life circumstances and the degree of taboo in their environment. Some people never know this since, we remind you, intersex is not always visible at birth.

In male humans, sexual differentiation is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, and in particular by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome. However, variations in embryo development can lead to mismatched phenotypes. It is thus possible that an individual with XX chromosomes develops a phenotype anatomically, but also in terms of physiology and psychology, which corresponds to masculine norms.

Conversely an individual can present the combination XY and present sexual characteristics which correspond to the norms of the feminine.

For some, intersex brings into play the very definition of sex, and, indirectly, that of gender. In most societies, individuals are divided into two categories, male and female, particularly according to the observation of the external genitalia at birth.

Newborns, whose genitals are "ambiguous", are then generally treated as medical emergencies and operated on according to different criteria to remove the sexual ambiguity (future fertility, endocrine function and pubertal development). Medicine then considers intersex as an anomaly that needs to be corrected.

EAs an LGBTQIA+ association, we denounce the operations of reassignment of these children as unacceptable violence and we demand an IMMEDIATE end to it, in favor of an approach centered on human rights, in particular the right to physical integrity and sexual. We advocate for the cessation of all sex characteristic modifications that are neither medically necessary nor desired by the individuals themselves.

We believe that it is up to the child to assert himself in the gender he feels as soon as he wishes to do so. It is not for society or its administration to deprive these people of their most basic right of self-determination.

We would like this right to be enshrined in a law that will punish the perpetrators of these mutilations on the grounds of intentional blows and injuries resulting in permanent disability with the aggravating circumstance that the victim was physically and mentally incapable of opposing it. Parents who let it go would also be prosecuted for complicity in the same offense.