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Welcome to NRWs Intersex Coordination Office
What Does Intersex Mean?
Here you can get information and support for intersex people and their families.
We build a community and communicate upcoming meetings.
What Does Intersex Mean?
Intersex people are born with physical sex characteristics that do not fit into the typical female or male categories.
Intersex Diagnosis
Intersex people often undergo medical interventions and treatments in order to make them fit into the typical female or male categories.
Our Vision
We understand intersex variations as an expression of natural diversity. As such, we explicitly distance ourselves from pathologizing views and disorder-related terms.
What Does Intersex Mean?
Intersex people are born with physical sex characteristics that do not fit into the typical female or male categories. This can involve, for example, sex organs, chromosomes, and / or hormone production. An alternative term to describe this natural deviation from the norm is “variations in sex characteristics.” According to the biologist Fausto-Sterling, approximately 1.7% of the population is intersex. There are many different variations of sex characteristics. Some are visible at birth, others later in life. In German-speaking contexts, the usual terms are “intergeschlechtlich” or “inter*”. The asteriskin “inter*” is meant to include other forms of self-designation and to provide an alternative to pathologizing language.
Intersex Diagnosis
In medicine, many diagnoses describe variations in sex characteristics. Intersex people often undergo medical interventions and treatments in order to make them fit into the typical female or male categories. From a medical perspective, these major procedures are only necessary in a few cases, and they are often carried out without the informed consent of the affected person – usually a baby, a child, or a teenager. Since 2021, children have been legally protected from sex-changings urgical procedures in Germany. However, we have reasons to believe that the physical and psychological integrity of intersex people is still being violated today.
Our Vision
We understand intersex variations as an expression of natural diversity. As such, we explicitly distance ourselves from pathologizing views and disorder-related terms.
NRW’s Intersex Coordination Office (in German, Landeskoordination Inter*) was established in April 2021 as part of Queeres Netzwerk to create networks and empower intersex people and their relatives in North Rhine-Westphalia. Ourwork is based on human rights, and we try to represent the diverse interests of intersex people, as well as their parents and relatives, in NRW.
