Pride flags flutter in the Place De Brouckèr in Brussels
Research on anti-gender mobilization often focusses on active actors. However, equal power might lie in the act of ignorance. “Ignorance” can refer to both a lack of knowledge and the act of turning a blind eye to something. The case of intersex people in Belgium illustrates how ignorance, in both of its meanings, can be willfully maintained to erase them from society.
Norms carefully crafted throughout history prescribe what citizens should look and act like. An example is the sex binary, the expectation that people have a body that is either “female” or “male”. People not embodying this expectation are confronted with reactions reinforcing these norms. Think, for example, about the way soon-to-be parents are asked whether they are expecting a boy or a girl. When they respond that they do not think the fetus’ sex is relevant, they are often met with surprise and confusion. Although the person asking may simply be trying to make conversation, the interaction nevertheless reinforces the idea that it is important and possible to classify every child according to the sex binary.
These norms are often presented as (natural) facts: it is “simply biology” or “the way things have always been”. Constructivists approach these norms as situated social constructs. When it comes to intersex issues, biological and medical studies have also pointed out that sex is too complicated to be split up into a binary, as it is made up of multiple sex characteristics like chromosomes, hormones, fat distribution, hair growth, voice, internal reproductive organs, and genitals. Every day [1], in Belgium, about five babies get born with sex characteristics that do not fall within the prevailing sex binary. Nonetheless, these studies have not (yet) been able to change the norm that sex should be classified and classifiable in a binary way. Furthermore, anti-gender actors try to reinforce these sex norms by insisting that the sex binary is a natural fact that “woke” gender “ideologists” ignore.
The binary norms surrounding sex serve to erase the existence of intersex people [2]. But these norms are also embedded in, reflected by and reinforced through the Belgian legal system. This becomes clear from the outset when the parents of intersex newborns try to register their child, and have to choose a female or male sex marker on their child’s official documents. This decision has lifelong consequences. In Belgium, a person’s registered sex appears on their ID card immediately after their name, making the binary classification a constant part of everyday life. Later in life, people can choose to change their registered sex from male to female and vice versa, but intersex activists and organizations call to include intersex people by either removing sex from the ID or by adding an X option.
A second way in which intersex people get erased, is by literally erasing the parts of their bodies that do not conform to the prevailing sex binary. Among specialized medical professionals, practices have started shifting away from unnecessary and non-consensual medical interventions, like operations and hormone therapy, on intersex children. However, Belgium is still lacking a legal framework actively protecting children from medically unnecessary intervention, notwithstanding the Constitutional Court’s ruling from 2019. The current federal government also ignores warnings from multiple UN Committees that urge it to create such a legally binding framework to protect intersex children from these harmful practices, and instead vaguely addresses the issues raised by the UN and activists. For example, the coalition agreement states that the government “protects the physical and psychological integrity and bodily autonomy of persons with variations in sexual (sic!) [3] characteristics”. In 2025 the Minister of Equal Opportunities issued a statement that they would “investigate possible measures” protecting intersex people from physical harm. In sum, the issue only gets addressed in non-binding documents with no meaningful impact on intersex people’s lives.
Intersex people in Belgium are thus not harmed the most by anti-gender actors trying to take away their rights, but by willful ignorance. This shows in both the persisting binary sex norm and the lawmakers lack of political will to formally recognize intersex people. By brushing aside protests and ignoring warnings from the UN Human Rights Committee, Constitutional Court, and interest organizations, the government upholds the myth of the binary sex while denying scientific truths. In doing so, it not only feeds into the lack of public awareness, but physically and mentally harms its intersex citizens.
Author: Kaat Emmery, University of Antwerp. 16th September 2026
Note on authorship: Kaat Emmery is a Research Assistant with the Belgian CCINDLE team (University of Antwerp). For this blog, Alexander Dhoest, Petra Meier, and Rylan Verlooy provided input.
[1] According to NNID, the Dutch expertise centre on sex diversity, about one in ninety people is born with a body that does not fully correspond to the prevailing image of a male or female body.
[2] NNID defines term intersex as “the experiences of people who were born with a body that does not conform to society’s image of man or woman.” The term DSD is also used in medical aproaches. It stood for “Disorders in Sex Development,” but is now more often used as “Differences in Sex Development.”
[3] In the statement the Dutch word “seksuele” was used. This is not the preferred terminology, as it seems to imply something sexual. A better word would be “sekse” or “sex” in English.