Gender identity and sexuality in an online sample of intersex-identified individuals: a descriptive study

ABSTRACT

Common scientific scholarship typically assumes direct relations between the development of sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. Recent studies, however, reported a range of gender identities and sexualities in individuals with typical sex development. Here we investigated aspects of gender identity, sexuality and the relations between them in an online sample of intersex-identified individuals (N = 107) using the Multi-Gender Identity Questionnaire (Multi-GIQ) and a measure of sexuality. Conducting the study outside of clinical surroundings provided an opportunity to reach intersex-identified individuals who may not be willing to collaborate with studies organised by the medical establishment. Results show a range of gender and sexuality experiences, and no correlation between sexuality and gender identity. Aspects of both showed small to large correlations with dissatisfaction with gender-atypical body characteristics. The implications to our understanding of the relations between the development of sex, gender identity and sexuality are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersex
• DSD
• gender identity
• sexuality
• gender-diverse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. The International Consensus Conference (2006) has coined the term DSD meaning Disorders of Sex Development. Here we adopt the term – Differences of Sex Development – used by Wiesemann et al. (2010) to avoid the use of the word ‘Disorders’.

2. We use ‘atypical’ in a statistical sense, to convey its low frequency in the population.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roi Jacobson

Roi Jacobson received his PhD in psychology in Tel Aviv University. He is a clinical psychologist working in both the public sector and private practice. His clinical and research interests focus on varibility in gender identity and sexuality and on differences of sex development.

Daphna Joel

Daphna Joel is a professor of psychology and neuroscience in Tel Aviv University. She is currently the head of the graduate program at the School of Psychological Sciences and a member of the Sagol School of Neuroscience. In the past decade she has been combining her expertise as a neuroscientist with her interest in gender studies to study the relations between sex, brain and gender. Joel uses various analytical methods to analyze diverse datasets, from large collections of brain scans to information obtained with self-report questionnaires. She is the author of Gender Mosaic: Beyond the Myth of the Male and Female Brain (Little, Brown).