What is the argument against using the term “DSD”?
Since its beginning in the early 1990s, the intersex movement has challenged the idea that intersex bodies are abnormal or diseased. While there are some intersex conditions that may signal an underlying medical problem, they would argue, intersex status itself is not a pathology. It is no surprise, then, that some people consider the presence of the pathologizing word, “disorder” in “DSD,” to be a betrayal of what the intersex movement had always stood for. Further, the term was introduced with little input from intersex patients and activists outside of the leadership of the Intersex Society of North America, which disappointed many of its supporters and fueled the suspicion that its leaders were selling their constituents short. Some have alleged that ISNA and others associated with it now endorse “normalizing” surgeries on intersex children, which is not the case, and yet many believe that calling it a “disorder” would lead to more surgeries, regardless of the intent behind the cha
