Intersex is Everyone’s Issue, So Why?

You know, during the teenage years, we all think that we are “unique” and that what happens to us happens only to us. Especially if you are an adolescent with an identity like intersex, which is highly invisible and has no representation in the media, it is inevitable that you feel like a mythological being or a superhero, and I don’t mean that in a positive way. I am talking about a hero who feels that he or at least his body is something wrong, something that should not be.

Fortunately, our teenage years are behind us, but intersex visibility is not making great strides. Intersex is still seen as a rare, weird, overly detailed topic that doesn’t need much attention. In most parts of the world, intersex is still seen as a childhood issue, and it is assumed that intersex people who have undergone “normalization” surgeries in childhood are now adults who live in a binary gender system and have no special needs for their intersex condition. This makes it difficult for adult and aging intersex people to access care for many health conditions. Furthermore, this perspective reduces intersex to a “sexuality and reproductive issue” and completely ignores the health issues and specific needs of intersex people. Did you think of anything else when you said that it reduces intersex to a matter of sexuality and reproduction? You may have seen a parallel with the way society views women.

It is estimated that 2% of the world’s population is intersex, which means that once we have real intersex visibility, we will realize that many people around us are intersex. The intersex population is not insignificant. On the other hand, non-consensual bodily interventions and marginalization of intersex people is not a social problem unique to them. You may not be intersex, but if you stop and think about it, you may realize that you share many common experiences with intersex people in terms of violations of bodily autonomy.

First of all, it is not even clear where intersex and endosex (i.e. non-intersex people) are separated. We call intersex those bodies that do not conform to medical male or female norms in terms of external and internal genitalia, hormones or chromosomes. But are these gender characteristics exactly the same for every woman and every man? For example, is the size of the clitoris the same for every female-assigned individual in the world, and is the size of the penis the same for every male? If you turned two random men on the street and measured their testosterone levels, would they be the same? Doctors use a spectrum to standardize these, for example, anything over 9 cm is a penis, anything less is a clitoris, or testosterone between this ratio and that ratio is “normal” in men of this age. If you broaden this spectrum a bit more, you could very well include intersex people. We can argue that intersex is a fabricated identity that comes from the human tendency to categorize and fear the minority, just like men and women. Nature actually endows each body with different characteristics in its own diversity. We give them names according to our minds.

Having different gender characteristics is not unique to intersex people, and attacks on bodily autonomy are not something only intersex people experience. If you are a woman, you may have fought for your right to have an abortion, or you may have been forced to have an abortion under certain circumstances. Almost every woman has experienced some form of interference with the way she dresses: your skirt is either too long or too short, “according to them” you have to cover or uncover your head. You have received many comments about your weight, your leg hair, your hair color. When you get pregnant, “they” want to decide before you whether you will have a caesarean section or a natural birth. Will you breastfeed your child or feed it baby food? Everyone, whether they know your circumstances and experience or not, will surely answer this question with pleasure. Is your vagina too large or not white enough? Let’s fix that with an operation. Depending on the geography you were born into, “they” can even decide on your right to sexual pleasure by completely or partially removing your clitoris.

If you are a man, you have many privileges, but your bodily autonomy is still very controversial. If Islam is dominant in the geography where you live, circumcision of your penis at a young age will almost certainly happen to you as an unquestionable taboo. Sometimes aesthetic norms imposed by society, sometimes unrelated to religion, may also force you to do this. If you live in a country where military service is compulsory, you may be expected to sacrifice your body for your state, and you may not have the right to refuse. If you live in a country where there is not enough freedom of belief, you may not be able to decide where and how your body will be buried when you die. “They” determine how your relatives mourn and what happens to your dead body. If we don’t want to give such a depressing example, we can also mention the norms imposed on young men such as being muscular, being tall, and comments about penis size.

Social interventions regarding your sexual orientation are already commonplace. In some cultures, even if you are heterosexual, who you marry can be a matter of great debate, you may not be able to choose your partner yourself, or you may be criticized on many issues such as your partner’s social class, body and family.

Non-consensual interventions against intersex people and many incidents that occur during these interventions are also medicalized rape and child abuse. Can we say that intersex people are the only ones who experience this? Unfortunately, this reality exists in almost all segments of society.

We could go on and on, but there is no need. If you have read this far, you have already found something of yourself and realized what kind of traces these interventions have left on you. There, now you know intersex people!

Intersex people are not rare creatures, they are ordinary people. Like you, they suffer from the struggle for ownership over their bodies by the authorities created by politics, economics, religion and other forces, and they are a bit more disadvantaged than you are. We all have the hand of authority on our bodies and brains, and many of us are trying to cope with the interventions and the trauma of these interventions that prevent us from reaching our potential, from being ourselves. We recognize each other when we look at each other’s wounds. This is why we say that the liberation of intersex bodies will liberate all bodies. Before it is too late, you can stop seeing intersex as a niche issue and support the struggle of intersex people. Sexual violence, women’s rights, children’s rights, bodily autonomy, medical ethics and many other issues intersect with intersex. There are many reasons to radically change the narratives that portray intersex as rare and weird and to liberate ourselves together.