The relationship between intersex people and medicine is a very complex one. At the forefront of the discussion lies the question of how to call people with diverse sex characteristics.

We assume that the question of how to name people with diverse sex characteristics and the question of how to treat them are connected, since changes in their treatment previously coincided with changes in terminology, as proven by the 2005 consensus statement on disorders of sexual development (DSDs).
We will thus explore which terms medical professionals use in scientific publications to describe (1) persons with variations of sex characteristics and (2) medical procedures.

Our claim is that different names for intersex people and related procedures in medicine not only affect the outcome of research and the lives of intersex people, but raise the question of what kind of discipline medicine is in the sense of how its nomenclature affects the object of research.