Intersex
An intersex person has sex characteristics such as sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, and/or chromosome patterns that do not fit the typical definition of male or female. This may be apparent at birth or become so later in life e.g. puberty. Intersex people, just like dyadic (non-intersex) people, may identify with any sexual orientation or gender identity. According to the ISNA it is estimated that 1.7% of people are born with intersex traits, however this may be incorrect, as many people are unknowingly intersex due to the fact that external genitalia is the only sex characteristic noticed at birth (in most cases) and many intersex people are forced to undergo genital modification at birth to appear dyadic.
Being intersex is often treated as a medical disorder which is corrected (often forcibly right after the person is born) with treatments such as hormone therapy or surgery to modify the individual's sex characteristics to appear dyadic. If an intersex condition is discovered at birth or during childhood, then medical procedures may be performed, often without the child's or parent's given consent. Many intersex people are not notified of their condition even as adults, or are told they have a DSD, which stands for Disorder of Sex Development, and told that their condition must be fixed with hormones or surgery even when that is not the case. Intersex activists fight against coercive and forced surgeries and hormone therapy, and fight against the term DSD.
The intersex community often denotes assigned sex using the terms CAFAB and CAMAB, standing for Coercively Assigned Female/Male At Birth, meaning they were forced to have surgery to fit into a binary sex (male or female). The terms AFAB and AMAB were originally created by the intersex community. To avoid confusion with intersex people who were assigned the wrong sex and transgender people who want to clarify their sex at birth, intersex people created new terms.
Even though intersex is widely accepted as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, some intersex people don't consider themselves part of the community. However, intersex people are often queer in other ways as well, such as being trans or non-straight.
Flag and symbols
The most commonly used intersex flag was created by Morgan Carpenter in 2013. Yellow and purple were chosen for the design as alternatives to the strongly-gendered colors of blue and pink. The purple circle in the middle symbolizes "wholeness and completeness" as well as "the right to be who and how we want to be."
An earlier flag design was made by Natalie Phox in 2009, though this flag is less commonly used today. It was originally introduced as a bigender flag, but Phox later added the correction that it was an intersex flag, which caused confusion around the intention of the flag. It is likely that this flag was introduced as a bigender flag due to the distinction between gender and sex not being as common knowledge during the time of its creation, rather than initially being made to represent the identity known as "bigender" today, as its description when first posted referred to biological sex, but called it "gender" instead. Because it was posted under the name bigender, some people mistakenly claim it as a bigender flag, but Phox's design has always been intended to represent intersex people.
The Mercury symbol (☿) is a common intersex symbol, used as a compliment to the male and female symbols. It depicts the staff of the Roman messenger god, based on the caduceus. The symbol is also sometimes used for non-binary people, androgyne people, genderfluid people, or gender non-conforming people, however it was originally an intersex symbol.
Another intersex symbol is the astronomical symbol for Earth (ⴲ), once again chosen as a compliment to the male and female symbols, as Earth is in between Venus (female) and Mars (male). This symbol is sometimes preferable because it is only used to represent intersex people, and is not used for any other identities.
Intersex is sometimes also represented with a combination of the male and female symbols (⚥ or ⚨), though these symbols are also commonly used to represent bigender and androgyne respectively.
Another intersex symbol is the orchid, as the word "orchid" comes from the ancient Greek word for "testis" or "testicles", and the removal of testicles/testis is very commonly forced upon intersex infants.