On Terminology

OII Australia is now a member of many LGBTI groups and a participant in government and non-government reference and expert advisory groups.

In the past GLBTI has been referred to as the ‘Sexuality and Gender Diverse community’. This was OK until OII came along.

Intersex includes people who are sexually diverse in the sense that most are in apparently standard heterosexual relationships as well as GLB relationships, some are in no relationship and some are in relationships that do not fit any current codification.

Intersex includes gender diverse in so far as many intersex are men or women, some are transsexual or transgender, others are Hijra, twin-spirited, no-gendered, pan-gendered, multigendered and gendered in ways that do not fit current codification possibilities.

All intersex however are physically diverse. Intersex are people who have congenital hormonal physical or genetic differences that can be seen as being neither male or female, both male and female at once, somewhere between male and female or something else that escapes current paradigms for describing humanity.

‘Sexuality and gender diversity’ cannot include all intersex even if those terms are also intended to include heterosexual men and women or males and females as well as GLBT; there are intersex people who are none of those things.

The only possible terminology that allows for everyone is Sex, Sexuality and Gender Diversity.

The only term that should be used when referring to intersex is intersex.