The I Is Not an Afterthought: Why Queer Solidarity Must Include Intersex People

Teaser Image (Created With ChatGPT): Created as a modern editorial illustration in the colors of the intersex flag. The purple circle represents wholeness and self-determination, while the different, flowing forms represent the diversity of intersex people.

LGBTQIA*. An acronym that has grown longer over the years. Each letter is intended to make visible people whose bodies, identities, or desires do not conform to social expectations. But visibility does not arise automatically simply because another letter is added.

This is especially true of the I, which stands for intersex people. It now appears in the names used by many queer organizations. Nevertheless, the specific experiences and political demands of intersex people often remain invisible. Sometimes the I seems less like a genuine commitment to solidarity and more like an addition intended to signal completeness.

It is worth taking a closer look. The relationship between the intersex movement and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer movements has long been anything but self-evident. It remains complex to this day. That is precisely why it can teach us a great deal about what solidarity within a diverse community should mean.

Being Intersex Is Not a Sexual Orientation

Intersex people are born with physical sex characteristics that do not clearly conform to medical or social ideas of male or female bodies. These variations may involve chromosomes, hormones, gonads, internal reproductive organs, or external genitalia. Some variations are recognized at birth, while others are not discovered until puberty or adulthood. Some remain undetected throughout a person’s life.¹

Being intersex does not in itself indicate whether someone is a woman, a man, or nonbinary. Nor does it indicate whether someone is heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, or queer. OII Europe explicitly notes that there is no necessary connection between a person’s sex characteristics, gender identity, and sexual orientation.²

An intersex person may be cisgender and heterosexual and therefore not consider themselves queer at all. Another person may be intersex and also trans, nonbinary, lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Some people view being intersex as part of their identity. Others prefer to speak of a specific physical variation or medical diagnosis and reject the term intersex for themselves.

For this reason alone, it would be wrong to speak of one unified intersex community that has collectively decided either for or against belonging to the queer community. There have always been very different positions. Historically, however, it is possible to explain why many intersex people and their advocacy organizations initially followed different political paths.

A Movement With a Different Starting Point

Lesbian and gay movements organized primarily against the criminalization and social condemnation of same-sex relationships. Trans movements fought against the pathologization of their identities, against state control, and for legal recognition of their genders.

The modern intersex movement, by contrast, emerged largely from resistance to medical violence, secrecy, and control over children’s bodies.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, medicine increasingly claimed the authority to classify intersex bodies. During the twentieth century, the idea became established that children had to be clearly assigned to one of two sexes as early as possible. Particularly influential from the 1950s onward was the so-called optimal gender of rearing model associated with sexologist John Money. Surgery, hormonal treatment, psychological control, and strictly gendered upbringing were intended to adapt bodies and behavior to the assigned gender.³

Many procedures were not necessary to treat an acute illness or save a child’s life. Their primary purpose was to create a body that conformed to social expectations of what a girl’s or boy’s body should look like. The children affected were often kept in the dark about the treatments they had received. Some did not learn until decades later which procedures had been performed on them. Others never gained complete access to their medical records.

This policy of secrecy also made it more difficult to form a community. Anyone who believes they are completely alone with their body will find it difficult to locate other people with similar experiences. It was not until the 1990s that intersex people increasingly began speaking publicly about these experiences and forming their own organizations internationally. To do so, they had to challenge not only medical institutions, but also shame, isolation, and their own pathologization.⁴

The central political question was therefore initially not: Who is allowed to love whom? It was: Who is allowed to decide what happens to my body?

Why the Distance From Queer Movements Was Understandable

These different starting points also produced different priorities. Intersex people fought primarily for bodily integrity, comprehensive information, access to their own medical records, non-pathologizing healthcare, and an end to medically unnecessary procedures performed without the individual’s consent.

Not everyone felt represented by lesbian, gay, or trans political demands. Some specifically did not want their physical circumstances to be understood as a matter of queer identity. Someone who lives as a cisgender and heterosexual person may not recognize themselves in a movement whose public focus is primarily sexual orientation and gender identity.

There was also another troubling experience. Within queer theory and gender studies, intersex bodies were often used as evidence that the binary division between male and female is not as clear as society assumes. Some intersex activists criticized this use of their bodies as a theoretical argument. They regarded it as appropriation when the symbolic meaning of being intersex was discussed while the actual medical violence experienced by intersex people received little attention.⁵

That criticism is justified. Intersex people do not exist to serve as illustrative material in debates about gender. Their bodies are not metaphors. Their experiences must not be instrumentalized by either academia or queer movements.

Simply adding the I to an acronym can also become a form of appropriation when intersex people are given no voice, resources, or decision-making power within the organizations concerned. A letter alone does not end surgeries. It does not create independent counseling for parents. It does not ensure that medical professionals receive proper training. It does not protect anyone from discrimination.

Shared Structures, Different Experiences

Nevertheless, there are good reasons for a coalition based on solidarity. The discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and intersex people often stems from the same underlying social beliefs.

One of these is the expectation that there are only two clearly separate physical sexes. That a specific body must automatically produce a fixed and involuntary identity, a particular form of behavior, and a particular form of desire. That deviations may be corrected, hidden, or fought against.

These beliefs have different effects. For intersex children, they can lead to medically unnecessary procedures. For trans people, they are used to question their identities and deny them self-determined medical care. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people experience them as the demand that relationships must follow an exclusively heterosexual model.

The experiences are not the same. But the norm that produces them is closely related.

That is precisely where solidarity can emerge. It does not require everyone to share the same identity or feel at home under the same term. It requires us to recognize when the freedom of one group is attacked because its existence challenges social ideas about bodies, gender, or desire.

Solidarity Does Not Mean Annexation

Intersex people do not have to be queer for queer people to defend their rights. Solidarity must not be conditional on someone identifying as part of our community.

The I in LGBTQIA* should therefore not be a claim about the identity of every intersex person. It should be a promise. A promise not to abandon intersex people when their bodily autonomy is violated. A promise to recognize their independent movement and not allow their political demands to disappear behind general statements about diversity.

This means not inviting intersex organizations only when an event is intended to appear especially diverse. Their expertise must be included from the beginning in planning, political positioning, and the distribution of funding. Projects created by and for intersex people require reliable financial support. Intersex issues should not be discussed without including intersex voices.

Precise language is equally important. Discrimination based on sex characteristics is not automatically covered by regulations prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. OII Europe therefore recommends explicitly naming sex characteristics as a separate protected ground. SOGI, meaning sexual orientation and gender identity, thus becomes SOGIESC: sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics.²

This precision is not an unnecessary extension of an already long acronym. It determines whether the specific discrimination experienced by intersex people is recognized and covered by law at all. So far, only a few European countries, including Malta, Portugal, and Greece, have explicitly established sex characteristics as an independent ground for protection from discrimination.⁶

Progress That Is Not Enough

On March 25, 2021, the German Bundestag passed the Act for the Protection of Children With Variations in Sex Development. This introduced the new Section 1631e into the German Civil Code. It generally prohibits legal guardians from consenting to treatment of a child who is unable to provide consent when the sole intention of that treatment is to align the child’s physical appearance with the male or female sex. For other surgical procedures involving sex characteristics, a family court must additionally determine whether the procedure serves the child’s welfare. The law entered into force on May 25, 2021.⁷

This was an important step. Intergeschlechtliche Menschen e.V., however, continues to criticize gaps in protection. Because the law closely follows medical terminology and the treatment guidelines currently in effect, children may fall outside its protections as soon as diagnostic categories change. The organization therefore calls for a comprehensive evaluation and a clarification of Section 1631e of the German Civil Code that also closes potential loopholes.⁸

There has also been movement at the European level since the original version of this article. In September 2025, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights published the report Being Intersex in the EU, based on information from 1,920 intersex people in 30 European countries. The results are alarming. Fifteen percent of respondents reported having been physically or sexually attacked in the year before the survey. Thirty-four percent had experienced physical or sexual violence during the previous five years, an increase of twelve percentage points compared with the previous 2019 survey. Thirty-nine percent reported forced treatment in the form of so-called conversion practices, significantly more than the average among other LGBTQIA* groups surveyed. And more than half of respondents, fifty-seven percent, said they had undergone surgery involving their sex characteristics without their consent.⁹

In October 2025, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted Recommendation CM/Rec(2025)7 on equal rights for intersex people. It is the first comprehensive international legal instrument devoted exclusively to the human rights of intersex people. Among other things, the recommendation calls on the Council of Europe’s 46 member states to postpone medically unnecessary procedures on intersex children until the children are able to make their own decisions. It also calls for equal access to healthcare and for measures addressing violence, discrimination, and exclusion affecting intersex people in every area of life. The recommendation was officially presented in Strasbourg on October 27, 2025, Intersex Awareness Day.¹⁰

The figures and the new European recommendation demonstrate two things at the same time. Political progress is possible when intersex organizations fight for it over many years. And a letter alone accomplishes nothing. Visibility must be reflected in political action, legal protection, and genuine support. Even where laws already exist, their consistent implementation remains an unresolved task.

What This Means for Us as a Queer Community

As a trans woman, I know how painful it is when other people turn your existence into a theoretical debate. I know what it means when bodies, medical care, and self-determination are discussed as though the people affected were merely a footnote.

That must not prevent us from clearly naming the differences between trans and intersex experiences. Quite the opposite. Genuine solidarity begins when we stop trying to force other people’s experiences into our own categories.

We must listen to intersex people even when they do not consider themselves queer. We must support their demands without using them for our own political arguments. And we must accept that some intersex people experience the I in LGBTQIA* as a home, while others see it primarily as a strategic alliance or feel no personal connection to it at all.

None of these positions removes our responsibility to defend their human rights.

A Letter as a Commitment

The strength of queer movements has never come from all their members having the same experiences. It has come from people learning to fight together against norms that deny them the ability to live self-determined lives.

Solidarity means more than mutual visibility. It is especially meaningful when a demand does not affect us directly. When cisgender queer people defend trans rights. When people without disabilities fight for accessibility. When endosex people, meaning people who are not intersex, defend intersex children’s right to bodily integrity.

The I in LGBTQIA* must therefore not be a decorative letter. It must remind us that intersex people have been subjected for far too long to medical control, secrecy, and social invisibility.

Whether an individual intersex person considers themselves part of the queer community is for that person alone to decide. Whether we as a queer movement defend the rights of intersex people, however, should not be open to debate.

Because solidarity does not begin with sameness. It begins with the decision not to leave one another alone.

Yours, Lizbeth

Sources

1. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: Intersex people

2. OII Europe und ILGA-Europe: Standing up for the human rights of intersex people: How can you help?, 2015.

3. Intersex Society of North America: What's the history behind the intersex rights movement?. Historisches Archiv, seit 2008 nicht mehr aktualisiert.

4. OII Europe und ILGA-Europe: Standing up for the human rights of intersex people: How can you help?, insbesondere Vorwort und Kapitel zur Situation intergeschlechtlicher Menschen in Europa.

5. Landesstelle für Gleichbehandlung gegen Diskriminierung Berlin: Dazwischen? Historische Forschung zu Intergeschlechtlichkeit und ihre Perspektiven, 2024.

6. ILGA-Europe: Protecting Intersex People in Europe, Toolkit für Gesetzgeberinnen und politische Entscheidungsträgerinnen.

7. Deutscher Bundestag: Schutz von Kindern mit Varianten der Geschlechtsentwicklung beschlossen, 25. März 2021. Gesetzestext: Gesetz zum Schutz von Kindern mit Varianten der Geschlechtsentwicklung, § 1631e BGB.

8. Intergeschlechtliche Menschen e. V.: Stellungnahme zum Gesetz zum Schutz von Kindern mit Varianten der Geschlechtsentwicklung, 2022. Regelungsvorhaben im Lobbyregister des Deutschen Bundestags: Verbesserung des Gesetzes zum Schutz von Kindern mit Varianten der Geschlechtsentwicklung.

9. Agentur der Europäischen Union für Grundrechte: Being intersex in the EU, 17. September 2025.

10. Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers: Recommendation CM/Rec(2025)7 on Equal Rights for Intersex Persons, verabschiedet am 7. Oktober 2025, vorgestellt am 27. Oktober 2025 in Straßburg.