While you may be reading this thinking, ‘I don’t know anyone who is Intersex,’ or ‘I’ve never treated a patient who is Intersex’ you might be surprised to find that 1.7% to 4% of people are Intersex, according to Zeeman and Aranda (2020) in their 2020 article A Systematic Review of the Health and Healthcare Inequalities for People with Intersex Variance.

According to Haghighat, et. al (2023) in their article Intersex people's perspectives on affirming healthcare practices: A qualitative study, “Intersex people have variations in their sex characteristics that do not exclusively fall within binary definitions of male and female.” These variations can be chromosomal, hormonal, gonadal, or anatomical (Cochetti, Monro, Vecchietti, & Yeadon-Lee [2020] and Haghighat, et. al [2023]).

Intersex folx are often seen by multiple healthcare providers throughout their lifetime, including pelvic rehab practitioners. However, one thing that most don’t know, is that historically; Intersex folx have been very mistreated and pathologized by healthcare workers. Many Intersex folx have been given non-medically necessary and non-consensual surgical procedures and hormone treatments over the years; and unfortunately, some of these practices are still occurring around the world even today. Intersex folx have also been treated by providers with inaccurate education and inadequate training needed to provide care to Intersex populations, leaving many patients who are Intersex being the ones who educate their own medical providers about their variations and healthcare needs. Tiffany Jones (2018) also mentions in her article Intersex Studies: A Systematic Review of International Health Literature that even language in the medical literature is inaccurate and inadequate when describing Intersex populations (Jones, 2018).