Binary gender (sex) often seems to be common sense and taken for granted. In Christian theology of marriage, family, parenthood and sexuality, it is common to point to the Genesis creation story, especially Genesis 1:27. Christians often argue that Genesis 1:27 means that God intended every human being to be clearly and unambiguously male or female. Some even say that the existence of humans who are not clearly male or female is evidence of the Fall (see e.g. Hollinger 2009: 84; Burk 2013: 180f.; Peterson 2021: 83).
Existence of intersex conditions
However, the existence of intersex physical realities such as genetic mosaicism, where people have a mixture of XX and XY chromosomes in their bodies, is a reminder that gender (sex) is often simply assumed. The existence of 'invisible' intersex conditions and the fact that it is not always clear how to categorise a particular body may show that all physical genders are already less certain than we think. Theologies that address intersexuality need to consider the importance of intersexuality and theology for each other.
St Augustine of Hippo, who knew of the existence of intersex people as early as the fifth century, believed that "foreign" matter could be removed without changing their "true" nature and gender. Today, we know that certain intersex traits are potentially highly problematic for Augustine's account of 'enhancement'. If someone is a genetic mosaic with a mixture of XX and XY chromosomes, is it really the case that they can be 'regressed' to masculinity or femininity, or is it more the case that their mosaic nature is their true self? St Augustine says: "[I] do not think that anything that is present in a body and belongs to the essential nature of that body perishes; but ... everything that is disfigured in that nature is restored in such a way that the disfigurement is removed, while the substance remains intact" (Augustine 1984: 1060).
Identification as creatures of God
Many intersex people firmly believe that their identity as children and creatures of God is inextricably linked to the particularity of their bodily existence, in its difference and its totality, and that their intersexness is not a deformity but a non-pathological variation. Christian theological anthropologies contain important resources for presenting human identity as grounded in God in ways that promote rather than undermine the specificity and distinctiveness of embodied personhood, including that of people whose embodiment is threatened or under pressure.
We could, for example, turn to the modern Orthodox theologian Ioannis Zizioulas. Zizioulas argues that man's relationship with God means that his biology is relativised. Man's existence is not based on his biology, but on the relationship between God and man (Zizioulas 1985: 53-54). Consequently, identity in God means that man stands in "a kind of relationship to the world that is not determined by the laws of biology" (Zizioulas 1985: 56). Zizioulas emphasises above all the non-absoluteness of human death in the light of Christ's resurrection, which has nothing to do with gender as such, but there is also an indication in his work that biology is relativised in another way.
Biological "laws" (such as those of unambiguous and binary masculinity and femininity) could therefore also be understood as relativised alongside identity in God. Man, he affirms, can now love "unconstrained by ... natural laws" (Zizioulas 1985: 57).
Ultimately and finally, human personality is not about masculinity or femininity, but about identity in God. I do not want to overemphasise this point. After all, relativising biology and claiming that man's true home and destiny is "not in this world" (Zizioulas 1985: 62) all too often means that marginal bodies and what happens in and with them are made dispensable.
The claim that true identity lies outside of ourselves seems to verge on saying that it doesn't really matter what happens to bodies here and now, or that parts of our bodily identities that seem problematic or troubling "disappear" because they aren't really part of God's purpose for humans (as happened when intersex people were told that their bodies were specially marked by the Fall and were not as God intended them to be). This seems to denigrate some bodily identities - especially those already threatened and marginalised - more than others.
But I argue that it also means that we are not condemned to mean only one way. The meanings of our embodiment go beyond the social norms and hegemonies to which we are subjected. The situation of human identity beyond and within human society and its labels offers the potential for more fluid and creative representations of human existence, as it recognises that the 'common' human models of sex, gender and embodiment are also provisional and in need of correction. Humans exist only as a continuing gift from God. If we move away from the idea that intersex bodies are peculiarly or particularly marked by sin, perhaps we can also listen more willingly to intersex people's own views of their bodies and identities (as some of us did in this afternoon's workshops) and take seriously the fact that the hurts they have experienced deeply undermine their subjecthood.
Legislation and politics
Reports focussing on the autonomy of intersex people are increasingly influencing legislation and policy at the international level. Intersex rights activists in Europe have decided to oppose non-consensual cosmetic surgery, involuntary sterilisation and intersex foetal selection procedures because they are ethically problematic (OII Europe 2017; Monro, Crocetti and Yeadon-Lee 2019). They have identified the violation of specific rights (such as the protection of intersex people's interests and concern for their welfare and protection from cruel and degrading treatment) by early 'corrective' surgery (Bauer and Truffer 2014; Monro, Crocetti and Yeadon-Lee 2019). They have also published a guide to promoting the rights of intersex people for legislators and policy makers (Ghattas 2019). Important milestones include the declaration of the European Intersex Meeting in Riga (OII Europe 2014), which calls on the EU, the Council of Europe and national governments to protect the rights of intersex people, including through the adoption of specific anti-discrimination legislation.
There is ample evidence in the literature of the harm caused by early 'corrective' operations (e.g. Holmes 2008; Viloria 2017), and in 2013 Juan Méndez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, called on all states to "repeal any law that permits intrusive and irreversible treatments, including forced genital normalisation surgery, involuntary sterilisation, unethical experimentation [or] medical exhibition, ... when they are forced or performed without the free and informed consent of the person concerned."
This also includes "children ... born with atypical sex characteristics" (Méndez 2013). In 2013, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution on the right to physical integrity of intersex children. This was followed in 2015 by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights' declaration on intersex characteristics, which recommended that Member States avoid non-consensual treatment (FRA (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) 2015). In 2014, the World Health Organisation and its partner organisations opposed non-medically necessary operations on intersex children on the grounds that this often means forced sterilisation (WHO 2014).
This was followed by a call from the OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) and UN partner organisations to end violence against LGBTI people, particularly non-consensual interventions on intersex children (OHCHR 2015). At the beginning of 2022, Greece became the fifth European country (after Malta, Portugal, Iceland and, of course, Germany) to ban cosmetic surgery on the genitals of intersex babies and children
(Intersex Greece 2022).
However, there is still a gap between international recommendations and implementation at national level (Garland, Lalor and Travis 2022). As the ongoing abuses make clear, legal recognition does not by itself lead to improved protection or care. Fae Garland, Kay Lalor and Mitchell Travis note that even here in Germany, where the 2021 law is supposed to protect intersex children from non-medically indicated genital surgeries, "there are no penalties for violating this law" (Garland, Lalor and Travis 2022).
Nikoletta Pikramenou notes that despite appearing to be the most progressive country in Africa in terms of intersex children's rights, South Africa still performs many non-consensual surgeries on children and infanticide of intersex children continues (Pikramenou 2019: 87). In the most comprehensive treatise on the human rights of intersex people to date, published in 2019, Pikramenou argues convincingly in favour of equality beyond sex and gender, which she believes will overcome the persistent difficulties in accommodating intersex characteristics within existing rights.
She argues that invasive, non-consensual genital surgery should always be considered a violation of rights, regardless of whose body it is performed on. I wonder, however, to what extent such appeals to a "genderless/genderless equality" (2019: 218) make sense and are accepted where representations of personhood shaped by Abrahamic religions are prevalent and ritual and theological significance is attached to a distinct, male and female embodied existence. It is promising that Malta, the country with the most comprehensive rights for intersex people in the world, has taken these measures despite having Roman Catholic Christianity as its established state religion (while, in contrast, Malta's abortion law is extremely strict), although religious affiliation in Malta, as in many other European countries, is rapidly declining.
It is clear that new theologies of personhood that reconceptualise the meaning of sex and gender are likely to be necessary in order to place the goods of intersex people at the centre. The key will be to privilege the subjectivity and agency of intersex people, to talk and listen to them to learn how they themselves feel their intersex identity affects their experiences of God and others (as shown, for example, in the work of Stephanie Budwey, based on interviews with German intersex Christians). The theological celebration of the diversity of gender, physical sex, sexual experience and life history as an expression of difference and diversity in God is a reminder that aspects of creation remain mysterious to us, but not to God.
Testimonies of intersex people
The testimonies of intersex people make it clear that intersex experience and embodiment is not always characterised by sadness and trauma.
are characterised:
If you work with intersex people or provide them with counselling, don't assume that you know the answers. You ask them. They have a voice. Let them use that voice. Listen to their opinion... Because they are not all negative. And don't think of intersex as a tragedy any more than disability is a tragedy ... The tragedy is when we are misunderstood and people take over our lives for us ... But being born with an intersex condition is not a tragedy. (David, an Anglican Christian of the Church of England, quoted in Cornwall 2013: 147)
Being intersex has not had a negative impact on my life at all. Essentially, I've had really difficult periods in my life caused by people lying to me and not wanting to be open and tell me the truth. But on the whole, I've had a really happy, really good life. And I think it's important to realise that when you stand there and you see people with this little baby who suddenly think, 'Oh my God, what a horrible future lies ahead', you should know that it doesn't have to be horrible at all. (Poppy, a Roman Catholic, quoted in Cornwall 2013: 147)
The experiences of intersex Christians could also be made fruitful for policy and teaching about human sex, gender and sexuality at all levels. Transformation in churches, families and societies will require building communities that hope for a God who upholds and celebrates the distinctiveness of intersex bodies.
Norms relating to what constitutes a good, capable or legitimate body also need to be reconsidered in light of the notion of our common human grounding outside of ourselves in God. Far from denigrating human embodiment or particularity, this allows for a broader recognition of a diversity of bodies as witness to God's creative preservation of human existence. Any demarcations that claim to exhaustively represent the boundaries of human embodied life - such as the assertion that all good bodies are male or female - must be challenged. Bodies have multiple meanings, and the meanings ascribed to them in human discourse are secondary to their existence in God. 
