Intersex: the third sex?

The argument sounds convincing: intersex people exist, therefore sex is a spectrum. It is not correct. DSD is a medical condition, not an additional category.

The figures

The actual share of people with a DSD variant — Disorders of Sex Development, also known as Differences in Sex Development — is small. The original article states: "In fewer than 1 percent of people there is a genetic anomaly in which the biological sex is not entirely clear." Under stricter clinical definitions, the percentage is well below 0.02 percent. The figure that "around 1.7 percent is intersex" — a widely cited activist number — relies on a broad definition that also counts late menarche and hypospadias.

Thirty variations, two sexes

Under the DSD heading fall dozens of different conditions, each with its own cause. "This is DSD (disorder/differences in sex development) or intersex, of which there are no fewer than thirty variations." Examples:

• Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) — XY individual, body does not respond to testosterone, develops female phenotype.
• Klinefelter syndrome — XXY, male phenotype with reduced fertility.
• Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) — XX girl with excess androgens.
• Turner syndrome — XO, female phenotype without full puberty.

None of these conditions makes someone "between male and female". They are deviations within the two known sex-development trajectories, not a third trajectory.

Why the spectrum claim doesn't hold

A spectrum implies a continuously sliding scale with countless intermediate values. The biology of human reproduction has only two gametes: large, immotile egg cells and small, motile sperm cells. There is nothing in between. Whoever produces this large gamete (or has that trajectory) is female; whoever produces the small gamete (or has that trajectory) is male. "Intersex is clearly not a third sex and cannot therefore be used as an argument to show that biological sex is a spectrum."

A rare anomaly is not a new rule

The reasoning "there are exceptions, therefore the rule does not hold" is accepted nowhere else. People are born with six fingers, with dextrocardia (heart on the right side) or with one kidney. From that it does not follow that the normal body plan is in question. The original article: "Some have fewer or more, but this does not lead to a different model."

Intersex people themselves do not want a third box

Advocacy organisations of people with DSD, such as the Dutch Intersex Network and internationally InterACT, have repeatedly distanced themselves from the political use of their condition as evidence for gender ideology. Most intersex people simply identify as male or female, and primarily want better medical care and an end to unnecessary surgeries on babies. Their experience is being hijacked by a movement they are not part of.

Gender identity and intersex are two things

Concealing the difference is a rhetorical trick. Transgender identity is about a psychological feeling with a healthy body of unambiguous sex. DSD is about a physical, often chromosomal condition of the body itself. Whoever throws both into one pot uses the suffering of a small medical group to legitimise a cultural claim.

Summary

The original article closes with the core sentence: "Indeed, some people are born with a mix of sex characteristics, but this does not mean that human sex is non-binary." Two sexes, rare medical exceptions, no spectrum. That is where biology stands.

Source

This article is an adaptation of "Intersekse, het derde geslacht?", published on genderpunt.nl on 10 February 2021.