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Sex is not Binary!

When discussing this topic things can get dicey, so for the record:

  • Intersex people are not inherently non-binary
  • Intersex people may or may not see themselves as a sex separate from male and female. Some see their sex as male or female while intersex, others may see their sex itself as intersex.
  • Intersex people can be male or female. This is not an argument against allowing intersex people to identify with a binary sex or gender.
  • When I use the term "sex-variant," I am talking about any situation where someone's sex characteristics are outside of the norm. This includes a lot more people than one might expect. It is not synonymous with intersex, as it can be used for people with different sex characteristics from artificial or environmental changes.
  • When I say sex variant, I am including anyone who falls outside of the typical expectations for male/female. This can be intersex people, trans people who have received gender affirming care, cis endosex people who have had injuries or medical treatment that have lead them with different sex characteristics (getting a hysterectomy for instance), and anyone who can fall inside the intersex category even if there's debate whether or not they can claim intersex (PCOS, infertility, gynecomastia, hirsutism, etc.)
  • Trans people who do not take any steps towards transition are transgender. The only reason why they will recieve a lot less focus is because I am focused on percievable sex characteristics. They are always valid, and I hope I can end up including them more as I learn more.

A lot of the time the idea is that if there is no third sex, then sex cannot be non-binary. This is a simple misunderstanding of what a binary is.

two circles side by side, one filled with blue and another filled with pink

This would be a binary. Two options with no possible overlap. Nothing can exist outside of the two options either. There is nothing of existence outside one or the other. You can compare it to black and white thinking.

Adding a third circle in a different color would make this non binary, but not a spectrum. A spectrum can have the two sides with multiple types of variation in between. When it comes to the gender spectrum, there are even options outside the provided line.

Here is a decent infographic that shows what sex as a spectrum is:

a complex graphic showing sex as a spectrum and various ways one can be intersex.
From Beyond XX and XY - Credit to Pitch Interactive and Amanda Montañez

There's no claim that there's a third gamete, only that the two sexes that we are familiar with have plenty of overlap in various different ways. Part of the point in getting sex across as a spectrum is to remove pathologization of those who don't fit into the binary sex options, so the wording in the graphic is not the best to say the least. I mainly use it to stress that there are many ways sex can develop.

“But intersex people are rare!”

Sadly I cannot make a decent enough caption for those who cannot see the infographic, but if you can, you will see that someone does not need to identify as intersex and/or have a diagnosed difference in sexual development (DSD) to fall outside of the perfectly expected two sexes. A man with higher estrogen starts sliding into the spectrum. Gynecomastia, something caused by a hormonal disruption, is a result of sex being non-binary. Hirsutism, or women with more body hair than what is considered "normal," is a result of sex being non-binary. Both of those things described as clinical issues can occur naturally without any underlying factors or harmful health issues, yet often are seen as abnormal and stigmatized.

The fact that trans people are even able to go on HRT and see changes in their sex characteristics shows that our genes do not take one or the other and stick to it no matter what. Our bodies are programmed to react and adapt to another sex-dominant hormone. How is that not cool? How is that seen as controversial and not an amazing part of human genetics?

But about intersex rarity

Intersex people are estimated to be 1.7% of the population, that's the same as people who have red hair or green eyes. We do not claim those people do not exist, that eyes cannot be green or hair cannot be red, simply because the population that has them is small percentage wise.

Where's that Tumblr post-

tumblr post by lunar-grub that reads: 
      Green eyes shouldn't actually be considered an eye color. It's just not common enough, it's a very small percentage of the population, 1-2%. Green eyes are also caused by an irregular mutation. Most people have blue or brown eyes, so those are the two eye colors.

All the green eyes positivity is actually a bad thing, by the way.
Having green eyes is linked to higher rates of retinal melanoma. You're
celebrating something dangerous that can cause suffering.

And besides, most people with green eyes lean closer to blue or
brown anyways. They should just make up their minds and be brown
eyed or blue eyed. And if it's too hard to tell, they should get corrective
surgery (because green eyes are dangerous, and associated with more
difficult medical care!) or at the least wear contacts so they don't
confuse people. But also they should be required to

I hate to sound like this, but green eyes are a far more recent
development than blue eyes in the mutagenic history of humans. So
humans weren't created to have green eyes.

And hazel eyes? Those are just a variant of brown eyes-come on,
they're far closer to brown than green. They just have a couple
greenish traits. And there's no way there's that many green eyed
people, or a wide variety of eye colors ... It's just not natural.

I don't have a problem with green eyed people, they didn't ask to be
born that way-but there's just too few of them for it to be an actual
eye color. We don't need all this green eye positivity or putting green
eyes in media. The internet is making people delude themselves into
thinking it's more common than it really is.
Originally posted by lunar-grub on Tumblr. - Iris color and uveal cancer for those who would check.

Yes, upon looking up the prevalence of intersex people, there will be various different articles pushing back against that statistic for intersex prevalence, claiming that it is much rarer. The article that's most commonly used to refute this percentage is How common is intersex? a response to Anne Fausto-Sterling by Leonard Sax. It argues that the statistic goes beyond what's typically considered intersex by clinicians. Remember that I am using intersex as the way it's defined by many intersex activists, such as InterACT, who made an entire glossary on different diagnoses that can fall under the intersex umbrella. If I was going by clinicians, then using intersex at all would be outdated by decades now, as it's no longer used as a medical term and usually DSD (Disorders/Differences in Sex Development) is used instead. Intersex as a label goes beyond what is considered a DSD or not, and the 1.7% statistic is so old with little updates that it would likely be larger when accounting for the increased scope. Doctors and clinicians do not use intersex, they haven't for decades, it is not up to them to define it.

Intersex people are not one in a million, they're at least 1 in 100. There is no reason to say that they are "too rare" to count when we think of human diversity.


raspberry divider

Extra Sources

Biology Lessons on Sex


Intersex Abuses & Rights

Narrative Symposium: Intersex - Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2015

Journal cover page

Jounral Webpage