This community-based project investigates the lived experiences of hate speech among people with Variations of Sex Characteristics (VSC) in Italy. While public debates on gender and sexuality have intensified across Europe, intersex individuals remain largely invisible within legal, political, and scholarly discussions on hate speech and discrimination. Italy currently lacks specific discrimination, hate crime and hate speech legislation explicitly protecting people with VSC, creating a regulatory vacuum that compounds social stigma and institutional neglect.

Building on a research model developed by Intersex Greece, which conceptualised hate speech not only as explicit verbal hostility but also as forms of stigmatization and invisibilization, this study expands the inquiry to the Italian national context. The Greek model highlighted how teaching models that omit intersex bodies, as well as medicalised frameworks that frame variations of sex characteristics as conditions to be corrected or erased, operate as structural forms of symbolic violence. Adapting this broader understanding, the Italian project examines hate speech as encompassing discursive, institutional, and cultural practices that delegitimise intersex existence in a context marked by legal ambiguity and limited public recognition.

The research adopts a mixed qualitative design comprising: (1) an anonymous online questionnaire to map the prevalence and contexts of hate speech for people with lived experience and families; (2) in-depth semi-structured interviews to explore embodied, relational, and institutional experiences; and (3) participatory workshops for collective analysis and knowledge co-production.

Outputs will include peer-reviewed academic publications, a public report, and accessible graphic scribing visualisations designed for community dissemination and advocacy. By centring intersex voices and integrating psychological, sociological and anthropological approaches, the project contributes original empirical knowledge to European debates on hate speech, minority protection, and epistemic justice.