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17
September
2025

Being Intersex in the EU

This report highlights the discrimination, harassment, violence, and non-consensual medical interventions faced by intersex people across 30 European countries, based on responses from nearly 2,000 participants in FRA's 2023 EU LGBTIQ Survey III. It reveals that many intersex individuals also identify as trans, non-binary, gender-diverse and have varied sexual orientations, which further compounds their experiences of discrimination. The report aims to support the development of laws and policies that promote the inclusion and dignity of intersex people.

Sex characteristics’ refers to each person’s physical and biological features relating to sex, including internal and external genitalia, sexual and reproductive anatomy, gonads, chromosomes, hormones and distribution of body hair, fat and muscle mass.

Intersex’ refers to persons who have innate variations of sex characteristic(s), including chromosomal, gonadal, anatomical, or hormonal, that vary from the societal and/or medical understanding(s) of typical female and male bodies (*).

(*) IOM (International Organization for Migration) (2021), ‘SOGIESC full glossary of terms’, p. 7.

Gender identity’ refers to ‘each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender’. This ‘may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms’ (*).

(*) ILGA-Europe (2022), ‘Glossary’.

Gender expression is the presentation of a person’s gender through physical appearance – including dress, hairstyle, accessories, cosmetics – and mannerisms, speech, behavioural patterns, names and personal references. Gender expression may or may not align with a person’s gender identity (*).

(*) Yogyakarta Principles: principles on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, March 2007, p. 6.

Trans is an umbrella term that includes people who have a gender identity that is different from their gender assigned at birth. It may include but is not limited to people who identify as transsexual, transgender, cross-dressing, androgyne, polygender, genderqueer, gender-variant and gender non-conforming people, or people with any other gender identity and/or expression that does not meet the societal and cultural expectations placed on gender identity (*).

(*) ILGA-Europe (2022), ‘Glossary’.

Non-binary refers to gender identities other than male or female (*).

(*) ILGA-Europe (2022), ‘Glossary’.

FRA in its report of the EU LGBTIQ survey III, LGBTIQ Equality at a Crossroads – Progress and challenges, placed under the category ‘non-binary and gender-diverse’ the respondents that selected one of the following as best fitting their current gender identity: non-binary, genderqueer, gender fluid, agender, poly-gender, cross-dressing woman or man. FRA did so after consultation with the LGBTIQ experts, networks, and civil society,

Cisgender’ (or ‘Cis’) refers to a person who does not identify as trans (*) or non-binary and whose current gender identity corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth (**).

(*) ILGA-Europe (2022), ‘Glossary’.

(**) National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2022), Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation, p. 4, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, https://doi.org/10.17226/26424.

Intersectionality’ is defined by EIGE as ‘ways in which sex and gender intersect with other personal characteristics/identities, and how these intersections contribute to unique experiences of discrimination’ (*).

This report adopts an intersectional approach, disaggregating respondents by sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics (SO-GIE-SC) as well as by age, gender, disability, socioeconomic and employment status, educational attainment and belonging to a minority group. By doing so, it shows how experiences of discrimination or victimisation might result from multiple and intersecting layers of identities as perceived by the respondents and others. An intersectional approach helps analyse situations in which several grounds for discrimination operate concurrently, producing a multiplier or compounding effect (**).

(*) EIGE, ‘Glossary & thesaurus’.

(**) See also the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10 (2017), Additional principles and state obligations on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics to complement the Yogyakarta Principles, as adopted on 10 November, Geneva.

The Parliament, in its 2022 resolution ‘Intersectional discrimination in the EU: socio-economic situation of women of African, Middle-Eastern, Latin American and Asian descent’, stresses that ‘intersectional discrimination refers to a situation in which several grounds of discrimination operate and interact with each other, for example gender with other grounds of discrimination, such as race, colour, ethnic or socioeconomic status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, sex characteristics, genetic features, religion or belief, nationality, residence status, migrant background, or disability, among others, in a way that is inseparable and produces specific types of discrimination;

  • (…) intersectional discrimination differs from multiple discrimination, which occurs when each type of discrimination can be proved and treated independently; whereas in the case of intersectional discrimination, the grounds of discrimination are intertwined, which creates a unique type of discrimination; whereas intersectionality allows a perspective that accounts for intersecting grounds without prioritising one over the other;
  • (…) intersectional approach caters to the multidimensionality of people’s experiences and identities and entails a bottom-up approach; whereas using an intersectionality approach in analysis and policies requires thinking differently about identity, equality and power imbalances;
  • (…) an intersectional analysis allows us to address and understand social inequalities, exclusion and discrimination from a comprehensive, systemic and structural perspective’.

Intersex genital mutilation’ (IGM) is an intervention on a healthy intersex body. It is performed when, according to societal and medical notions, a person’s external genitals do not look ‘normal’ enough to pass as ‘male’ or ‘female’ genitals. The term IGM encompasses all harmful medical practices, including surgical, hormonal and other medical treatments, to irreversibly modify sex characteristics of intersex persons for non-vital, cosmetic reasons (*).

(*) OII Europe (Organisation Intersex International Europe)

Conversion’ practices or ‘conversion therapies’ are any treatment or intervention aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. They can vary between less and more harmful interventions. The EU LGBTIQ Survey asked respondents about their experiences of such ‘conversion’ practices, varying from intervention by family members, prayer, religious ritual or religious counselling, to psychological or psychiatric treatment, medication, physical pr sexual violence, verbal abuse or humiliation.