October 26, 2018 is Intersex Awareness Day.

Intersex Awareness Day is here to celebrate Intersex people, as well as an opportunity to bring public attention to what being Intersex is all about.  Put simply, “Intersex,” is an umbrella term that encompasses those who are born with sex characteristics or genetic differences that don’t conform to the standard definition of male and female.

Some Intersex people don’t consider themselves to be either gender, while others will speak of themselves as one or another.

For generations parents who have had Intersex children have been told that their baby needs to have corrective surgery so that they may better conform to a single gender.  These surgeries are completely unnecessary, and can be mentally destructive for the person later in life.

Many, if not all, Intersex organizations at this time try to educate the medical community that such surgeries do not have to be performed, and some in the medical community are listening!

Intersex and transgender are not the same thing, but share similar ideas.  At the center of this separation are the ideas of Sex and Gender Identity.  The former refers to anatomy, or what a person was biologically born with, while the latter refers to how a person identifies or feels that they truly are inside.

Transgender individuals feel there is a mismatch between their biological Sex, and their Gender Identity.

While Intersex individuals have an ambiguity in their biological Sex–either due to having both or partial reproductive organs, or a mosaic of sex chromosomes which would land them as not male or female. One can be both Intersex and Transgender, but there are differences in the terminology.

The Intersex and Transgender communities are here, they demand rights.  They are not monsters or unnatural–this happens from birth.  They are human beings that deserve respect.