What is intersexuality and what’s the difference between transgender and cisgender?

You may have wondered what the ‘I’ in the LGBTIQ+ acronym stands for. The answer, ‘Intersex’, has become one of the words of the Olympic Games after the fight between boxer Imane Khelif and boxer Angela Carini.

The Algerian Khelif punched her opponent twice in the nose, forcing her to withdraw before the first minute of the round had passed.

Social media has been filled with hate messages, branding the athlete as a “transsexual.” Khelif had failed a so-called ‘gender eligibilty’ test in 2023, which the International Olympic Commitee (IOC) described as an “arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure — especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years.”

However, she does not identify herself as transgender but as cisgender. What this means is that she was assigned the female sex at birth and identifies as such today.

Amnesty International defines intersex people as “a broad group whose sexual characteristics fall outside the typical binary ‘norms’ of male or female. These characteristics may include primary sexual characteristics, such as internal and external genitalia, reproductive systems, reproductive organs, hormone levels and sex chromosomes, or secondary sexual characteristics that become apparent at puberty.”

The IOC said in a statement at the start of the tournament: “All athletes participating in the boxing tournament of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 comply with the competition’s eligibility and entry regulations, as well as all applicable medical regulations in accordance with rules 1.4 and 3.1 of the Paris 2024 Boxing Unit.”

It has nothing to do with the gender perception that each person has of themselves, nor with their sexual orientation. It is simply a biological condition, like being born with reproductive organs that are different from the norm. The Committee against Torture and the Committee on the Rights of the Child have asked countries not to perform surgery on intersex children.

The XY chromosome

According to the National Human Genome Institute of the United States, a person's sex is defined by the combination of the X and Y chromosomes. Men have one of each, while women have two X chromosomes. It is on this basis that organisms evolve in one way or another.

However, in the case of intersex people, chromosomes can mix in different ways, although their effects may not become noticeable until puberty. Therefore, explaining the concept is very difficult due to the different types of intersexuality that exist.