HAMBURG, Germany — When it comes to the rights of intersexual persons, enlightenment has been a long time coming. Even Germany, a country that sees itself as a front-runner in building awareness for minorities, is only now coming around. A few weeks ago the Federal Constitutional Court, based in Karlsruhe, ruled that in addition to “male” and “female,” the government must recognize a third gender category, which could be identified as “intersexual” or “diverse.”

The landmark ruling injects clarity and sobriety into an often ill-informed and ideologically poisoned debate about gender in Germany. Whether it can stand outside that debate, or gets sucked into it, is a different question.

The ruling came about because an intersexual person in the state of Lower Saxony, who was raised as a girl, argued that the plaintiff’s rights were infringed when that person was confronted with the choice of having to legally register as either “male” or “female.” Born with only one X chromosome and lacking a second, sex-defining chromosome, what doctors call Turner syndrome, the person went to court. (Turner syndrome is one of many conditions that might define a person as intersex.)

Physicians estimate that up to 0.2 percent of people are intersexual, putting the number in Germany at about 160,000. And yet many people will say that they’ve never met an intersexual person. That’s in part because not all intersexuals have a nonbinary identity; some may not even know they are intersex. But a big part of it is the lack of legal and social recognition: According to the German Society for Transidentity and Intersexuality, people who see their identity negated in daily life tend to either involuntarily adapt or retreat from society. The psychological pain can be intense, and suicide rates are high.