intersex

Etymology

From German Intersexe; corresponding to inter- + sex.

adj

1. (of an individual) Having any of a variety of inherent conditions (in a species with distinct sexes) in which one's sex characteristics differ from those of a typical male and female; for example, having sex characteristics relating to both male and female sexes.
   His confidentiality was broken, and soon the entire staff and residential population were aware that Jim was intersex. […] we faced the fact that most programs were gender segregated and would not be a safe place for Jim to be known as intersex. 2006, Dean Spade, “Compliance Is Gendered: Struggling for Gender Self-Determination in a Hostile Economy”, in Paisley Currah et al., editors, Transgender Rights, University of Minnesota Press, page 225
   When I had learned that I was intersex, I brought this issue to my mother. 2010, Sean Saifa Wall, “I am the ‘I’”, in Kate Bornstein, S. Bear Bergman, editors, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Seal Press, page 109
   A survey of 1100 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) people by Griffith and Bond University researchers found that the overwhelming majority had been victims of targeted harassment as well as physical and sexual abuse. 3 Jun 2010, The Age
2. (fantasy) A person who can get pregnant and also impregnate someone else.

noun

1. The condition of being intersex; intersexuality.
   A Canadian believes that he has solved the diagnostic problem in human intersex. All human cells, says Dr. Murray L. Barr of the University of Western Ontario, contain something called sex chromatin. 23 Feb 1953, Time
   A much more common condition caused by early exposure of fish larvae to oestrogenic substances is intersex, which in males usually takes the form of ovotestis. 2003, Andrew J Lawrence et al., Effects of Pollution on Fish, page 204
2. (biology, zoology) An individual with any of these conditions.
   Goldschmidt and others who have thought of the homosexual individual as an intersex have relied upon incidence figures which were pure guesses and which, as the data in the present chapter will show, bear little relation to the fact.... 1948, Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Baxter Pomeroy, Clyde Eugene Martin, Sexual behavior in the human male, page 659
   Conversely, a fertilized egg with one X-chromosome would develop not into a male but into an intersex […] 1955, Curt Stern, Principles of Human Genetics, page 374
   Pseudo-hermaphrodites or other intersexes are not to be confused with transsexualists; transvestites may be transsexualists, but not necessarily. 1970, Sexology, volume 37, page 26
   Genital surgery on intersexes has been performed for about a century 2003, Peggy Tine Cohen-Kettenis, Friedemann Pfäfflin, Transgenderism and intersexuality in childhood and adolescence, page 155
   An intersex, then, is an animal that shows both male and female characteristics. 2009, Mary C Smith, David Sherman, Goat Medicine, page 609

verb

1. (nonstandard) To make intersex.
   The point is significant in light of current political issues surrounding real intersexed individuals. … It is clearly the case that physical intersexing and psychological androgyny do not conform to sex and gender norms in society. … 2013, Patrick Colm Hogan, Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition, page 176