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Anne Fausto-Sterling's suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-- Sterling's estimate of 1.7%.
Sometimes a child is born with genitalia which cannot be classified as female or male. A genetically female child (i.e., with XX chromosomes) may be born with external genitalia which appear to be those of a normal male. Or, a genetically male child (XY chromosomes) may be born with female-- appearing external genitalia. In very rare cases, a child may be born with both female and male genitalia. Because these conditions are in some sense "in-between" the two sexes, they are collectively referred to as intersex.
How common is intersex? In her 1993 essay, biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling acknowledged that "it is extremely difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality" (Fausto-Sterling, 1993, p. 21). In this paper we will focus on establishing how often intersexual conditions occur, and what conditions should be considered intersexual.
In her most recent book, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (Fausto-Sterling, 2000), Fausto-Sterling maintains that human sexuality is best understood not as a dichotomy but as a continuum. She bases this assertion on her beliefs regarding intersex conditions. A chapter subtitled "The Sexual Continuum" begins with the case of Levi Suydam, an intersexual living in the 1840s who menstruated regularly but who also had a penis and testicles. Fausto-Sterling writes:
While male and female stand on the extreme ends of a biological continuum, there are many bodies, bodies such as Suydam's, that evidently mix together anatomical components conventionally attributed to both males and females. The implications of my argument for a sexual continuum are profound. If...