A new report illustrates in stark clarity the disproportionate prevalence of non-consensual surgeries, rejection from family/friends and overall mental health challenges intersex youth face.
The report comes from The Trevor Project as part of its 2024 US National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People. Of the over 18,000 LGBTQ+ youth ages 13 to 24, 256 self-identified as intersex, which equates to 1.4%. A further 8% reported that they were unsure and 0.6% said they did not understand the question.
The report paints a startling picture of how common non-consensual surgeries are still performed on intersex youth. 17% of respondents said they had undergone surgery in order to conform to the gender binary, and 58% of those surgeries occurred under the age of one year old. More than two-thirds of respondents said they had not consented to those surgeries.
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“We really wanted to highlight the fact that most of those folks did not consent and were not able to consent to those procedures,” the study’s lead author, Jonah DeChants, told The Advocate. “The nonconsensual administration of that health care very early in life is showing a detrimental impact on folks later in life.”
In addition to non-consensual surgeries, intersex youth face social pressure and stigma. 77% of respondents said that someone in their life tried to change their identity. 13% reported that they had been subjected to conversion therapy, compared to 5% of endosex LGBTQ+ youth.
“Historically, intersex identities have been unfortunately very much stigmatized,” DeChants said. “Some of that stigmatization came from poorly informed but well-intentioned families and medical providers who felt like in order for their child to have a ‘normal life,’ it was better for them to not know or to not talk about their intersex identity with other people, just like other LGBTQ identities.”
That stigma can have major consequences. The report found that 55% of intersex youth reported seriously considered suicide over the past year, as opposed to 39% of endosex LGBTQ+ youth.
Of those who underwent conversion therapy, 43% reported attempting suicide, compared with 22% who hadn’t undergone conversion therapy. At the same time, DeChants cautioned against leaping to conclusions.
“We can’t establish a causal relationship in the survey,” DeChants said. “It’s really a snapshot. We can’t tell which came first, the chicken or the egg, but the fact that there are more chickens and more eggs is still an important relationship to document. The fact that those rates are double really shows that there’s a harmful association between experiencing these things specifically among intersex young people.”
All in all, DeChants concludes that “it would be better to leave that person’s body alone until they have the ability to determine what their gender identity is or decide what medical interventions feel good for them.”
“You do not have to have a body that fits into the gender binary in order to have a ‘normal life’ or to be a happy and healthy adult,” DeChants added.
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