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Intersex doesn't really have one solid definition. The medical community is nice enough to leave it out of the books and is opting for something called Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD). While this has it's issues, I'll leave it for now.

The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA - www.isna.org) provides a pretty good definition, which I'll borrow:
"Intersex" is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female types-for example, a [person with XX genotype] may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a [person with XY genotype] may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of [hir] cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY."

The ISNA also provides brief descriptions of some of the different things that could cause an infant to be labeled as intersex. It's important to remember that intersex is an umbrella term that can cover a multitude of different body types and experiences.

Often times, intersex conditions are defined as people having ambiguous genitalia. This is simply untrue, many people with intersex conditions have primary sex characteristics just like any person without an intersex condition. Genitals are, however, often the first focus of parents and doctors.

The medical community and intersex:
There is no (to my knowledge) established guideline for doctors to follow if they are faced with an infant whose genitals don't fit into their decided definitions of male or female. In the past, the unofficial policy has been to perform surgery to give the infant better recognizably male or female genitals. Often times these surgeries are performed very early in the infants life. Genital surgeries may also be performed on children once they start reaching puberty, since not all intersex conditions are noticeable at birth.

With infants, the doctor's past practice has been to inform the parents that their son or daughter is perfectly fine, they just need to perform a small surgery to fix their penis or clitoris or vagina so that it is "normal". Doctors

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