Talk:Intersex

Requested move 19 February 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus, thus not moved. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 12:15, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

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• Intersex → Intersex people
• Intersex (biology) → Intersex

– I was surprised to find that Intersex was the article about humans, and it seems a very easy issue to fix. Moving here provides easy opportunity for avoiding parenthetical disambiguation with a less surprising title (WP:PLA). I note that Intersex already begins with Intersex people are individuals…, so it is likely to be the most natural way to title the article about humans. — HTGS (talk) 00:22, 19 February 2023 (UTC) — Relisted. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 00:54, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. — Treetoes023 (talk) 01:40, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom. — Estar8806 (talk) 15:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Good uses of WP:NATURALDISAMBIGUATION. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:58, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support clarifies scope of the people-based article and establishes the broader biological article as a parent to that. SFB 19:48, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC: "A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term." The overwhelming majority of uses of the term "intersex" in academic literature (and elsewhere) are referring to humans. An excellent parallel is that homosexuality is about humans, with a hatnote for homosexual behavior in animals. Accordingly, renaming in this way will break a great many links that formerly went here, but then would go to a short article listing a few non-human species that happen to have these conditions. "Intersex (biology)" could be renamed to "Intersex in non-human animals" or suchlike, but that is not what is being proposed here. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:20, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  @ Crossroads and Paintspot:

  1. I don’t see the move as primarily about which article is the primary topic, but about making the scope and language of this page clearer for readers. This is supported by the wording of the lead sentence, which is about Intersex people, and not intersex as a condition. (See also: List of intersex people, Intersex people in history, Intersex people and religion, etc.) In fact, the wording we use—intersex, and not intersexual, intersexuality or intersexism—means that in most (not all) usage around people, we are using the word as an adjective. Further, this article already emphasizes the social aspects more than the biological, which is why I didn’t propose Intersex in humans to try to make this a sub-set / secondary topic to the biology article.

     To this end, the move of Intersex (biology) is only of secondary concern to me; I would have proposed the move of this article even if that article were already perfectly placed.

  2. To me, the better analogy is Gay men, which I would leave in place even if Gay didn’t exist. Homosexuality is primarily a psycho-social topic, not a biological one, and so the study of “homosexuality” in animals is entirely defined by analogue to how we think about homosexuality in humans (consider “homosexual behavior” in animals when it occurs as an expression of dominance, and how distinct that is from how we think of—most—homosexuality in humans, and you’ll see how secondary the physical behavior is to the concept).
     By contrast, intersex is biological at root, and could easily have the biological concept as primary topic (in the same way that Apple is the core concept for that word, despite media coverage and popular interest to the contrary).
  3. Renaming in this way will break a great many links that formerly went here. Please see Cleaning up after a change in topic structure. It is a job, but not a terribly complicated one, to shift link targets. I personally will do that work myself if necessary.

  — HTGS (talk) 23:16, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose (strongly) per reasons listed by User:Crossroads above. The human topic is the primary topic here — and as mentioned above, "an excellent parallel is that homosexuality is about humans, with a hatnote for homosexual behavior in animals." Paintspot Infez (talk) 21:22, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Crossroads and also per WP:CONCISE. Support moving Intersex (biology) to Intersex in animals or some such. - UtherSRG (talk) 23:35, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
• Comment It seems to me that if we are seeking consistency then the apposite comparison is with the articles Male and Female, rather than Homosexuality. That comparison would appear to support to the proposed move. CIreland (talk) 23:44, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

  ↑Pinging relevant users so they can see the above comment.↑ (Crossroads—Paintspot—UtherSRG)

• Oppose. The simplest and most general title should belong to the broad concept, which includes history, culture, biology, medicine, and other subtopics. "Broad" means reflecting the breadth and balance of coverage in sources (as opposed to, say, hierarchical categorization). Appropriately broad coverage will often have the effect of giving more attention in total to subtopics specific to humans, or to a human-oriented perspective even for subtopics not unique to humans in a technical sense. This is ordinary. See examples such as Lung or Pain. A subtopic may or may not have a separate article, as necessary, following Wikipedia:Summary style. For the article focusing on various animals and titled Intersex (biology), I support moving from "(biology)" to "in animals", assuming the existing content of that article. (Note that "non-human animals" is not necessary in the title, for reasons argued at Talk:Sleep in animals#Requested move 3 October 2021.) Adumbrativus (talk) 08:50, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• In other animals, surely? Not to be nit-picky, but we humans are also animals - Alison ^talk 16:00, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

  We are, but that's not how we tend to name such articles. Cf. homosexual behavior in animals. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per several above (not going to repeat it all), but support moving from "(biology)" to "in animals" to be more WP:CONSISTENT with similar articles. Intersex people should probably redirect to Intersex instead of to List of intersex people. Intersex person already goes to Intersex, as does Intersex persons. All that said, there is a general consistency problem across the site when it comes to general biological topics. E.g., Albinism is the cross-species article with a side article at Albinism in humans, and one might reasonably expect that to instead be the subject of Albinism main article with a side article at Albinism in animals (I belielve that used to be the case for some years, in fact).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  @SMcCandlish and Adumbrativus: I find this take surprising. I don’t see how Intersex in animals (ditto for albinism) is helpful structurally; saying “in animals” implies that it cannot (does not) cover humans, and that seems less helpful for what I imagined would be a WP:summary style structure, where one article gives a broad overview and the other covers the more in-depth human experience of the conditions. It was my long term expectation that the article at “Intersex” (presently the underdeveloped “biology” article) would be about the condition(s) broadly, including sections about the condition as it presents in humans (to this end I have pending edits to the biology article on another computer that are still on hold based on recent opposition here).

  In both the intersex and albinism cases, I would plan that the umbrella “biology” article would cover humans as well (summary style), rather than explicitly cover (non-human) animals. I have a hard time seeing the human article(s) being expanded to cover animal models as well—as we are discussing conditions, not diseases. — HTGS (talk) 07:50, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  Well, there are many cases of "warring consistencies" in this project, a symptom of the problem that we can't make everyone happy all the time. In the end, we do best when we do what readers are most apt to expect. I would bet that about 99% of lookups of "intersex" (like "homosexual[ity]") are interested in people not in non-human animals, but the same probably cannot be said for "albinism", which is common among domesticated animals and rare in people. That's probably why Albinism changed from being the people article to the general article some years ago.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:44, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Support per nom --- Tbf69 P • T 19:13, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose The primary topic is about intersex people. Des Vallee (talk) 01:27, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per PRIMARYTOPIC and CONCISION. Adding “people” is unnecessary disambiguation since the title already implies it’s about people. The hatnote to the broader “biology” article is already there and appropriately titled. Nothing to fix or improve when it’s already perfect. —В²C ☎ 21:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Edit the phrase "Sex assignment at birth...".

Having recently read the Wiki article Intersex, I elected to edit the phrase "sex assignment" as an individual's sex is not assigned to them, i.e. no-one gives it to me, but is a product of fertilisation. The use of the term "assignment" is false and misleading as an individual cannot reject or chose an alternative sex at the point of birth. Note: I am not talking about sex reassignment surgery later in life.

The edit, which simply said that a child's sex at birth usually aligned with their anatomical sex and phenotype, i.e. if it has a penis it is male and if it has a vagina it is female, has been reverted on a couple of occasions. One by an individual stating "Misunderstanding of text" and the other as "something non-understandable".

While not having experience of intersex, or association with an individual who may suffer from malformed genitalia, the fact is that an individual's sex in the normal and natural development of the fetus is not "assigned" but a product of fertilisation. Something which has been known for eons. Would be interested in knowing what the wider Wiki community thinks about removing the phrase "sex assignment" for something that is factually correct. 86.189.234.69 (talk) 16:32, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi, you seem to have a misunderstanding on how Wikipedia works. I found the essay WP:Verifiability not truth to be very enlightening. The sentence may or may not be changed but I think it is important for you to understand that any change will not come from a community desire for "factual correctness", but rather sources which verify the text. (Roundish ⋆t) 20:10, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Edits for grammar, style and ambiguities

I made small edits to correct grammar (added the missing word "book"), correct style (made unified footnotes) and ambiguities (mentioned in the table, in a form of footnote, that the LOCAH is debated by Leonard Sax, as has been explained in detail in that section). It should not modify the meaning, but should add clarity and simplicity of understanding. Please review. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intersex&diff=1182732065&oldid=1182609954 --Maxim Masiutin (talk) 01:46, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

????

"A study published by Leonard Sax reports that this figure includes conditions such as late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia and XXY/Klinefelter syndrome which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex"

Clinicians generally do not use the term 'intersex', they use DSD. With that in mind, the focus on what "clinicians recognise as intersex" does not make sense.

Why does this article push the views of Sax so hard? 31.94.34.221 (talk) 21:40, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

You could as easily say why does it push the views of Anne Fausto-Sterling so much. I think the main issue here is whether people think a "high prevalence" (1.7%) or "low prevalence" (0.018%) is "right". And this seems driven by political agendas. 2001:8003:8024:B700:E82A:388B:A19B:E670 (talk) 09:09, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

PCOS?

Since when was PCOS considered an "intersex condition"???? The vast majority of those with PCOS do not consider themself intersex, and not even Anne Fausto-Sterling claimed that it is.

Furthermore, there are no sources that back up the "PCOS is an intersex condition" claim 2d32d23ff322 (talk) 01:57, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

You are correct (given "sources" here meaning WP:MEDRS, as is required). [1] Thank you for drawing attention to this. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:17, 19 April 2024 (UTC)