Intersex Awareness Day Date in the current year: October 26, 2024

Intersex is a term applied to people whose biological sex can't be easily determined as female or male due to presence of biological attributes of both sexes or lack of some attributes necessary for identification of one or another sex. It's a congenital condition caused by hormonal, genetic of chromosomal variations. And sometimes it's even a combination of all three variants.

It is hard to estimate how many babies might be born intersex because some forms of sex anatomy variations may not become apparent until later in life, but intersex people are believed to represent a significant amount of global population (according to different estimations, from 1.7% to 4%).

The idea of inaugurating Intersex Awareness Day arose during the 1990s. On October 26, 1996, intersex activists from the Intersex Society of North America and their allies from The Transexual Menace organized a demonstration in Boston outside the venue where the American Academy of Pediatrics was holding its annual conference. The anniversary of this demonstration became an international awareness day for intersex people.

The main objective of Intersex Awareness Day is to end shame, secrecy and unwanted genital cosmetic surgeries on intersex children.