Talk:intersex

adjective usage

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adjectival usage

• The reason I reverted you (and will shortly do so again) is because what you added is just too full of mistakes. I have no quarrel with intersex being used as an adjective, but first of all you need to define it. The definition you put of (deprecated template usage) intersex was ‘pertaining to intersex’. Can you see the problem there? Secondly, you need to find some better citations which clearly show adjectival use; at the moment the Guardian quote reads much more like an attributive use of the noun. Can an organism be, for instance, ‘more intersex’ than another? I don't know, but that's the kind of citation you need. And finally, you changed the noun definition in a way which is unsupported by the citations. It read ‘an individual...’ and you made this ‘a condition...’. But the citation describes an egg ‘developing not into a male but into an intersex’, which now makes no sense at all; the egg has developed into a type of individual organism and not into a ‘condition’. If you think the noun can be used to describe the condition as well, then you need to add a SECOND sense to that effect and support it with relevant citations. Until then the old version is better. Ƿidsiþ 09:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
  • I fixed it up with the clarifications and provided examples as well. Nicoleta 09:35, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
• Yes, but you just made up your own examples, which with the best will in the world proves nothing. You need to add referenced citations. I've done it myself now, have a look....although it's still not very clear that it's a true adjective. Ƿidsiþ 10:07, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
  • You wouldn't introduce your friend Jill as being "an intersex." That's not very polite, the preferred terminology is to say "Jill is intersex" or "Jill is an intersex(ed) person." "Intersex" in the nominal usage is rare (or at least dehumanizing) for describing people. I'm not a biologist, so it may be different for describing other organisms. We do need the adjectival sense though. Nicoleta 10:14, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
• OK, I tagged it biology, zoology to show it's not usually used in normal speech. Ƿidsiþ 10:16, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
  • The second sense is the most common one, I'm going to flip them and move this conversation to Talk:intersex. Nicoleta 10:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

RFV

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At first look I see no evidence that this is used as a true adjective rather than attributive use of the noun. I searched for "too|very intersex" and "more intersex than" at Google Books, News, Scholar, Groups. See Wiktionary:English adjectives. DCDuring TALK 13:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I've split this into two senses, one describing people and one of the "of or pertaining to" sort. I think the former is an adjective, and I've cited the former by adding three predicative cites from Google Books that I think demonstrate as much. The latter is ambiguous, since it's a non-predicating modifier (like presidential in "presidential candidate"; "presidential candidate" does not mean "candidate who is presidential", or at least, not usually). Nouns and adjectives can both be used as non-predicating modifiers; it's certainly more characteristic of nouns than of adjectives, but if we've already got the adjective section, I don't see a problem with keeping that use there. —Ruakh_TALK 15:32, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I should have mentioned that my reading of the usage suggested that this term has "wanted" to be an adjective lately (~10 years) and was likely to become one. One can find "too|very intersex" and "more intersex than" on the Web, but not from our preferred sources. The cites look sufficient to me. DCDuring TALK 16:26, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

It seems misleading to me to characterize the other sense as a true adjective without evidence. It would be somewhat surprising that a noun sense that is mostly technical in its usage would be used as a true adjective. DCDuring TALK 16:35, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: "It would be somewhat surprising that a noun sense that is mostly technical in its usage would be used as a true adjective": Right, but it's perfectly normal that an adjective that is not mostly technical would be used in extended senses. Transgender people form transgender groups, intersex people form intersex groups. (Actually, maybe the problem here is that even the split off sense "of or relating to intersex" needs to be split into two: "of or relating to intersex people" seems to be a non-predicating use of the adjective, whereas "of or relating to the condition of intersex" seems to be attributive use of the noun. The two blur into each other, of course, but the latter is technical/medical/clinical whereas the latter is not. And perhaps the (of an individual) sense needs to be (of a person) instead, since use to describe non-human animals is a technical use, and not likely to have become an adjective.) —Ruakh_TALK 16:50, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

We will get this right with a little more tweaking along the lines you mention or, perhaps, a generalized first sense, perhaps confined to persons. (Though I understand that anecdotes about non-human individual are used not-so-technically in polemics.) DCDuring TALK 18:02, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I have added two quotations to Citations:intersex; I am not certain which adjective sense they use. - -sche (discuss) 08:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the sense "of or relating to intersex"; all of the other senses pass. - -sche (discuss) 23:23, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Definition

Recent edit-warring over the "short description" of this on WP prompted me to look at how we define it here: "Any of a variety of conditions (in a dioecious species) whereby an individual has male and female sex characteristics; the state of having the physical features of both sexes; intersexuality." This has room for improvement. For example, gonadal agenesis is the (set of) intersex condition(s) marked not by an individual having "[both] male and female sex characteristics", but by the individual lacking certain sex characteristics, likewise with e.g. X0 / Turner syndrome, the condition of having only one sex chromosome, an X, for a total of 45 chromosomes instead of the usual 46, an intersex condition which does not involve having "both" male and female traits. Some other dictionary sites have definitions with the same shortcoming as ours ("both male and female"), but one defines it as the condition of having sex characteristics that are "not distinct to" the male or female sex, and another defines it as the condition of "either having both" characteristics or having a (set of) characteristic(s) that is "ambiguous". Perhaps "...whereby an individual has innate sex characteristics which differ from those of a typical male or female, for example the state of having physical features of both male and female sexes..."? The addition of "congenital" or some other word indicating "innate" was also suggested on Wikipedia to differentiate people who change their sex characteristics, such as transgender people. - -sche (discuss) 22:39, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I do wonder if we should reorder the noun and adjective sections and swap which one is doing the legwork of defining the term, since it feels like intersex is more often an adjective ("such-and-such is an intersex condition") than a true noun ("types of human intersex"). - -sche (discuss) 09:58, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Look the definition is too vague

The whole "Any of a variety of inherent conditions (in a dioecious species) whereby an individual has sex characteristics which differ from those of a typical male and female; for example, the state of having physical features relating to both male and female sexes; intersexuality."

This is too vague. like not having characteristics that differ from typical male or female. Seriously so basically flat chest girls are intersex as well.

Also, this definition is obviously a political one just look at how these groups define it.

"Intersex is an umbrella term for differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy."

https://interactadvocates.org/faq/

"Intersex is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male"

https://isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex/

"Intersex is an umbrella term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male/female binary. There are lots of ways someone can be intersex."

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identity/whats-intersex

However, these sources define intersex as.

"having both male and female sex organs, or relating to this state:"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/intersex

"having both male and female gonadal tissue in one individual or of having the gonads of one sex and external genitalia that is of the other sex or is ambiguous"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intersexuality

1. (Genetics) the condition of having characteristics intermediate between those of a male and a female 2. (Physiology) the condition of having characteristics intermediate between those of a male and a female

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/intersex

"which there is a discrepancy between the appearance of the external genitalia and the type of internal (testes and ovaries) genitalia."

https://www.medicinenet.com/intersex/definition.htm

"Relating to or denoting a person or animal that has both male and female sex organs or other sexual characteristics."

https://www.lexico.com/definition/intersex

I don't care how political groups define themselves but, definitions from a biological or a medical perspective are more reliable than political definitions and should be at the top.--CycoMa (talk) 15:41, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

The flat-chested girl example (ambiguous secondary sexual characters) works in zoology. Many species of fly can be sexed based on the size of their eyes. Usually, males have larger eyes. Faced with a fly with intermediate size eyes an entomolgist declared it to be intersex. Applied to people, androgynous has preoccupied the space that intersex could fit into. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:56, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I think you are missing my point. Notice how sources that are more political make the definition of intersex broad.--CycoMa (talk) 16:10, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Wiktionary is a descriptivist dictionary and defines words based on how they are actually used, rather than how other dictionaries define them. At least some medical literature (often a small-c conservative field) discusses conditions like gonadal agenesis or the condition of having only one sex chromosome as intersex conditions, which makes clear that the proposed "both male and female" definition is overly narrow and does not reflect the full scope the term has even in biological and medical contexts.
Because there is not one single typical breast size for girls, but rather a range which includes very small breasts (AA cup, etc), it seems somewhat mistaken to think that a flat chest alone would constitute a "sex characteristics which differ[s] from those of a typical [...] female" enough to make the girl count as intersex under the present definition; it is possible there are issues with the current definition which we could try to think of ways of wording better (for example, perhaps changing "sex characteristics" to "primary sex characteristics"), but to define "intersex" as requiring the presence of both male and female sex characteristics would be inaccurately narrow.
Some entries employ subsenses, and if contrastive usage exists, i.e. some medical (or other) literature distinguishes gonadal agenesis or 45,X (etc) from intersex conditions, and says that the former are not intersex conditions because "intersex" does require the presence of both male and female characteristics (or for another reason), then a subsense, competing sense, or bifurcated definition might be warranted, or at least a usage note. - -sche (discuss) 01:18, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I see that e.g. the controversial Leonard Sax argues against considering vaginal agenesis intersex (comparing it to cleft palate), but this is itself a political definition, and DeFranza argues he's mistaken (and Diamond & Sigmundson argue the comparison is inapt). It seems like we should be able to find enough sources to write a good usage note about the disagreement (since it seems to be broader than just those individuals, and than just tat one condition). - -sche (discuss) 07:55, 24 December 2020 (UTC)