Intersexuality - Dealing with Intersexuality

Socio-cultural Attitudes - Legal Traditions

Sexual Rights

The Intersex Rights Movement

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As already mentioned, in the last decades of the 20th century, various sexual minorities began to to organize and to demand their long-denied civil rights. Moreover, with the arrival of the internet, they found a new, very effective tool for conveying their message. At the same time, scientists and their research instruments became more sophisticated. With regard to intersexuality, for example, new studies were able to demonstrate that it was more common and more varied than previously suspected. In fact, it consisted of a wide spectrum of atypical physical conditions that required individual approaches.
As a result of these converging trends - minority self-organization, the “electronic revolution”, and scientific progress - the first specific advocacy and support group was founded in the early 1990s: The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). This and similar groups in other countries began to confront a complacent medical and legal establishment. They challenged traditional medical assumptions and succeeded in raising the consciousness not only of many doctors, but also of the general public. Building on already available, more general sexual rights declarations, the intersex rights movement is pursuing a simple ultimate goal: Self-determination, an end to discrimination, and full civil rights for all people without regard to the shape of their external or internal sex organs.