Many countries recognize people as either male or female. However, human beings can be more complex in a biological way, which can be seen in the cases of intersex people whose chromosomal, gonadic or anatomic sexual development is atypical.

Intersex people’s bodily characteristics do not match strict medical definitions of male or female. In Italy, intersex people are included under the protected characteristics to prevent discrimination, although such discrimination prevention is still largely unseen in practice.

Medical treatment

The majority of intersex conditions are not always visible at birth. For those whose bodily characteristics are evident, the usual practice in Italy is an early surgical intervention and hormonal therapy from childhood.

These medical treatments, which are mostly cosmetic rather than medically essential, are carried out to impose a sex on intersex people and normalize their sexuality to be socially and culturally acceptable, despite the fact that they may result in irreversible sex assignment and even sterilization.

Intersexuality is not a medical condition, but many people still view it as a medical issue or a rare disease in need of treatment. It seems that as we learn more and more about the complexities of human biology, greater efforts are made from a medical standpoint to eliminate such diversity and to conform it to gender binarism.

Respect their rights

Although intersex people in Italy are protected by the law, they are often unable to enforce their rights. They face many forms of discrimination that they deal with every day, even in the areas of private and family life.

The discrimination they face can be considered a human rights abuse that should be managed in compliance with the protection systems at the international and European levels.

The Council of Europe, the leading human rights organization in Europe, became the first international institution to state that intersex people have the right not to undergo sex affirmation interventions. Correspondingly, this right should be respected in Italy as well — as stated many times by the associations Certi Diritti and Intersexioni.