#dsds

Hey nonny!

Mh, I'm not sure whether I like the way this question is being asked: I have no "opinion" on intersex conditions, it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is years of medical reasearch. Which is what my knowledge of intersex conditions is based on?

Still, I'll pretend your question was asked in good faith so I'll give you an introduction.

Disclaimer: I am no doctor, if anything I'm about to say is incorrect, please DO correct me. The last thing I'd want is to spread misinformation.

Intersex conditions are known in the medical field as DSDs: Disorders of Sexual Developments.

The name says it all, actually: these "are conditions with an atypical chromosomal, gonadal or phenotypic sex, which leads to differences in the development of the urogenital tract and different clinical phenotypes." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6976999/#:~:text=Disorders%20of%20sexual%20development%20(DSD,tract%20and%20different%20clinical%20phenotypes.). This, in everyday language, means that the fetus might present ambiguous external and internal gonad configuration, and/or an atypical karyotype (ie, genes).

Debunking myths about intersex conditions: ambiguous genitalia are actually pretty rare!

Studies shows that instances of ambiguous genitalia happen in about 1 every 5,000 live births, putting them at a solid 0.02%. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7845444/)

Don't get me wrong, though.

They DO happen, and doctors absolutely DO perform unnecessary cosmetic surgeries on newborns with ambiguous genitalia. This is horrific, to say the least: unless there was a medical need for the surgery to take place (eg, tissue partly covering the urethral opening), there is NO reason for a newborn's genitalia to be altered. Intersex activists have been campaigning for years to raise awareness about the topic.

Moving on.

DSDs, contrary to popular belief, are 99% of the time sex-specific: this means that they can only occur in one of the two sexes, and only some of them can occur in both.

For example, Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY) targets genetical male babies (who present a Y chromosome), while Turner Syndrome (X0) targets genetical female babies (who do not present a Y chromosome).

People believe that intersex conditions undermine the notion of a binary sex system, but they actually reinforce it: even if some people are born with just four fingers on their right hand, it doesn't negate the fact that the standard number of fingers for humans to have on their hands is five.

The medical impact DSDs have on a person varies greatly from person to person.

Men with Klinefelter Syndrome may have no issues related to it whatsoever, or may develop gynaecomastia, hypogonadism, and infertility issues.

This is why a considerable number of intersex people find out they are intersex well into their adult age: not having ambiguous genitalia, or any major medical issue, it just goes unnoticed.

Debunking myths about intersex conditions: that infamous paper and the 1.7% statistic.

Dr. Sterling's paper has been long debunked. 1.7% of the general population is not, in fact, intersex. Dr. Sterling ended up with that number by including conditions which are still debated on whether they fit the "intersex" label or not. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/). Some doctors put the estimate at 0.018% of the population.