[W]hile people with intersex variations are included as the “I” in the umbrella term LGBTQI+, they are often overlooked or misunderstood. Having innate variations of sex characteristics is not a sexuality and is not about gender or identity.
Sex registration is based on physical appearance. If sex is uncertain, doctors apply a set of rules to make a decision, including expected outcomes from surgeries to make genitals more masculine. This often leads to female registration and feminising surgeries, on the basis that it is easier to “make a hole but you can’t build a pole”. Early surgery may not align with the child’s future wishes.
[I]ntersex is often conflated with being transgender. Sometimes this is a product of simplistic and unhelpful media reporting.
Sometimes this is the product of institutional policies. For example, many women and girls with a Y chromosome, registered female at birth and subjected to feminising surgeries in childhood in public hospitals without their consent, are now being told they are “biological males” and don’t belong in women’s spaces.
Sometimes this is a product of longstanding errors in Australian federal guidelines, which have wrongly defined intersex as people who “identify as neither male nor female”. This impacts passports, health records and other government documents.
In 2020, the Australian Bureau of Statistics set out better practices for government data. Its standard detaches variations of sex characteristics from classifications of sex and gender. But federal and some state governments have been slow to implement this change.
Harmful medical experiences, stigma, misinformation and lack of transparency have all made it hard to talk about being intersex, difficult to access safe, informed and accessible services, and hard to collect data on the experiences and needs of adults with innate variations. This needs to change.
“For example, many women and girls with a Y chromosome, registered female at birth and subjected to feminising surgeries in childhood in public hospitals without their consent, are now being told they are “biological males” and don’t belong in women’s spaces.”
They are biologically male though. The way they have been mistreated by the medical system is absolutely disgusting malpractice and must be punished and stopped. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are males with Disorders of Sexual Development.