This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Should this trope perhaps be renamed? The word 'hermaphrodite' is pretty offensive.
Fighteer: No, not really. Possibly in some deranged hyperoffendable person's imagination. Open a friggin' biology textbook sometime. Or a dictionary.
Um, well, every intersex person I have ever met would disagree with you there, as would any biologist up to date in any way.
Intersex? I've never actually heard that term. And how come you've met so many? I was under the impression that was a rare occurrence? Also, all biologists that I've met (And that's not many) would rather not discuss that sort of subject.
It's fairly new as a term, on account of the fact that people were becoming increasingly offended by the inaccurate term hermaphrodite, which refers to a totally different phenomena in animals. I've spoken to several because as someone in the queer/LGBT- emphasis on 'T' here- community, it gets more likely as you spend time in it. Oh, and as someone who is studying biology, the ways in which sex is defined in humans is very much an open topic discussed commonly, I think you'll find. Did you somehow miss the huge controversy over the South African runner who was intersex, and the biologists coming forward to explain modern and current research into the topic?
The usages in modern biology: 'Hermaphrodite' refers to a sexually reproducing species in which each individual possesses both 'male' and 'female' sexual organs, such that is there only one sex. Many invertebrates and most plants are hermaphrodites. In sexually reproducing species that usually have distinct biological sexes ('male' and 'female'), the term 'intersex' refers to an individual who has either a combination of, lack of, or non-standard set of reproductive organs; and is sometimes also extended to include people with conforming reproductive organs but other deviations from the perceived normal gender divide, such as people with Klinefelter's syndrome. Applying the term 'hermaphrodite' to a member of a species that usually possesses 'one or other' set of reproductive organs is a misapplication of the term, because of its very definition. Even an intersex person with fully functional 'male' and 'female' reproductive organs is not a 'hermaphrodite' as that term refers to the characteristics of a species. Due to this common confusion, but more importantly due to historical usage of the term, calling an intersex person (or anyone, really) a hermaphrodite is EXTREMELY offensive, like the N word is to black people, and various other slurs to various other groups. I can say this confidently as an intersex person myself, and also knowing many other intersex people. As for the question of how many intersex people one can know if it's such a rare occourance; well we tend to clump together in queer communities with other gender-nonconforming people, considering how the rest of society treats us. I would strongly encourage the renaming of this article - even if gender-conforming Tropers want to argue over the biological merits of it, that doens't change the fact that it is horribly offensive.
