What is an intersexual?

We explain what intersex is and what types of intersexuality exist. In addition, other concepts such as pansexuality and transgender.

1. What is an intersexual?

An intersex or hermaphrodite person (term in disuse) is one whose sexual organs do not correspond to the gender that it possesses , or that possesses characteristics of both sexes at the same time. It should not be thought that people afflicted with this congenital condition are men and women “at the same time”, which is biologically impossible for our species.

Usually, those with intersexuality are born with a sexual organ not fully developed or not completely differentiated , being able to present, for example, a fused vaginal opening or an intermediate erectile organ between penis and clitoris, despite having ovaries or testicles more or less developed and usually internal.

This condition can occur to varying degrees and can become more or less functional. There are, thus, four different forms of intersexuality.

2. Types of intersexuality

• Male pseudohermaphroditism . Known as Morris syndrome or testicular feminization, it occurs in individuals with male genotype (XY), normal secondary female sexual organs (although the vagina is blind, without a uterus), and testicles formed inside the abdomen.
• Female pseudohermaphroditism . Known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia or adrenogenital syndrome, it occurs in individuals who present with a female genotype (XX), a masculinized body, female sexual organs with a clitoral hypertrophy, or even much more masculinized.
• True hermaphroditism . This medical term is used to refer to individuals born with both testicles and ovaries, both with various levels of total development. It is an extremely rare condition, which causes varying degrees of indeterminate and dysfunctional sexual organs.
• Gonadal dysgenesis . Known as Turner Syndrome, Ullrich-Turner Syndrome or Monosomy X, it is a congenital condition that affects women in which only one complete X chromosome manifests , instead of two (XX). This produces sterile, childish-looking, non-sexually developed individuals. Its male version is Klinefelter Syndrome (SK), in which the individual has an additional X chromosome (XXY), which causes late and incomplete sexual development, infertility and even learning problems .

There are cases, thus, of intersex people in whose bodies a female or male sexual apparatus is fully developed, but whose genetics instead corresponds to the other gender. The intersexual and non-hermaphrodite term is preferred for these cases, since the latter, from Greek mythology , consists of an individual who manifests both sexualities at the same time.

3. What is a pansexual?

Pansexuality has nothing to do with congenital issues, but with sexual orientation. Pansexuals are individuals who can be eroticized, that is, who can feel sexual desire, both for women and for men , without making any distinction from it.

This can occur in both women and men and should not be confused with bisexuality , in which the individual has a favorite but not exclusive erotic gender, and is eventually able to be with people of the same sex.

4. What is a transgender?

A transgender person is someone whose biological sex, that is, the body with which he was born, does not correspond to the sexual identity he possesses at the psychological level . This means that they are people born regularly as a man or as a woman, but who feel they belong to the opposite sex, or to none.

The term is also used to name a human community that does not feel represented in the male-female duality , and advocates the acceptance of a “third gender” that would become a mixture of both or, in any case, the absence of genre. In that sense, this concept goes hand in hand with other conceptions such as transsexuality, fluid gender or queer gender.