To be born intersex is to have thousands of people eye your body, aching to touch and change it. Your voice has no sound, with only submission expected as other people decide who you are.
You do not get a say in whether doctors cut your genitals to make them “fit,” nor do you get a say in your clothes. You are banned from determining your own identity.
In every state except New York, doctors have the right to “correct” babies born as intersex via nonconsensual surgery.
The reality for those who are intersex is one that does not allow for personal autonomy.
Politicians, especially conservatives, often condone nonconsensual surgery in the US. This allows, encourages and enables the mutilation of intersex children, while blocking them from receiving gender-affirming care, all in the effort to preserve a biologically inaccurate picture of “woman” and “man.”
For decades, it was common for parents of intersex children to not be informed that their children were intersex. Surgeries would often be performed, and in some cases, forced gender reassignment without parental consent.
In a 2013 Human Rights Council report, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment stated,
“Children who are born with atypical sex characteristics are often subject to irreversible sex assignment, involuntary sterilization and involuntary genital normalizing surgery, performed without their informed consent or that of their parents, ‘in an attempt to fix their sex,’ leaving them with permanent, irreversible infertility and causing severe mental suffering.”
Advocates for awareness surrounding these realities faced by intersex children also stand against parents choosing unnecessary surgeries for their children. Often, the parents’ idea of their child’s gender may conflict with the child’s internal gender identity.
Many intersex individuals grow up to be transgender, thus differing from their sex assigned at birth—which often confuses peers who understand transitioning as the shift from one typical variation to another.
Most anti-gender-affirming care bills include the intersex exception. H.R. 3492, a bill introduced to congress in June 2025 which seeks to ban gender-affirming care, yet has explicit exception and endorsement for this mutilation.
The Protect Children’s Innocence Act of 2025, H.R. 3492, presents gender-affirming care alongside female genital mutilation, an introduced category of “genital or bodily mutilation.”
This bill then states, “it is not a violation” if “genital or bodily mutilation” is performed nonconsensually on a minor with an intersex variation. To be intersex is to have hands on you that you did not permit to crawl under your skin, pluck, pull and tell you who or what you should be.
Most Intersex persons are only identified due to medical issues, or erratic or nonexistent puberty. You could be intersex, assuming that you do not know already.
As seen through common arguments calling intersex people “disordered” and “unfit,” a culture that identifies gender with chromosomes and typical external sex characteristics is lured by the appeal of destroying the intersex body. Some intersex conditions cause infertility, which stands against the cultural expectations of womanhood involving having children.
Others inhibit testosterone, the hormone associated with typical behavioral characteristics of men. Especially in cases of nonstandard hormone expression, our culture does not allow for exceptions or grey areas, even if they don’t align with genetics.
Every human body is hard coded to adapt to several different sex hormones. No matter the person’s gender, if introduced to a sex hormone they typically do not express, they will grow and shape the body that matches the hormones’ signals.
Fundamentally, the body is easy to transition—a sudden hyperactive thyroid will cause a heavy shift in bodily expressions, such as breasts in typical XY males. Ideas of intelligent design for humans, which tends to ignore the intersex reality, does not acknowledge the fundamental ease with which humans are able to transition.
Our culture hinges on its ability to destroy the intersex body to reproduce ideas of bioessentialism. As an intersex individual, you are often left as an unanswered cultural question, rather than a properly understood and respected person.
Then, everyone except you has a choice in what your body expresses to the world.
