According to the United Nations for LGBT Equality, "intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.'" In addition, intersex people are often clinically described as having "disorders of sex development" (UNFE, 2017).
There is a large international activist movement against the use of these clinical terms and against invasive and unnecessary surgeries that attempt to force intersex people to conform to binary gender norms and sexual characteristic traits assigned to female and male bodies at birth.
The first Intersex Awareness Day takes place on October 26, 2003 to commemorate the first public demonstration by intersex people in North America against the American Academy of Pediatrics conference in Boston on the same date in 1996.