A new study shows how intersex people still face an alarming level of discrimination, including forced conversion therapies and surgeries, and calls for the European Union to address these issues and help them to be protected from discrimination and hate.
The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) conducted the study in the EU plus Albania, Serbia and North Macedonia. The report, called Being Intersex in the EU, is the second study of its kind after one done in 2015 and is based on the FRA’s recent LGBTIQ Survey. It showed an increasing level of discrimination from 2019 onward, far more than other LGBTIQ categories.
Particularly staggering is the increase in violence and harassment in the past few years, at three times the rate faced by other LGBTIQ people. Intersex people are also the only group that didn’t face lower discrimination in the period considered. Compared to other LGBTIQ groups, intersex people have higher rates of people forced to go through conversion practices, 2 in 5 (39%), compared to the general 1 in 4 (25%) for other groups. Even more daunting, over 1 in 2 (57%) of intersex people reported having undergone surgery to modify their sex characteristics without their consent.
Commenting on the report, FRA Director Sirpa Rautio said that “Intersex people in the EU experience alarming levels of exclusion, discrimination and violence. Their struggle requires an urgent response.” She urged authorities at the European level to act so that “they can enjoy their fundamental rights and live in dignity.”
FRA said in the report that the EU should add protection against discrimination based on sexual characteristics in its laws and consider them part of its anti-hate speech legislation, using the already existing framework of the Digital Services Act to tackle such cases online. Ultimately, authorities should strive to ban conversion practices entirely. They should push to halt medical interventions to modify sex characteristics without prior and fully informed consent, with more robust training for medical professionals in order to have them better prepared for the special needs of intersex people.
