Intersex people in France face significant gaps in protection from non-consensual medical interventions and protection from discrimination. The birth of Abel Barbin, a nineteenth-century intersex woman, is marked in Intersex Day of Remembrance. Barbin may have been the first intersex person to write a memoir, later published by Michel Foucault.

Herculine Adélaïde Barbin, later known as Abel Barbin, was a French intersex person who was assigned female at birth and raised in a convent, but was later reclassified as male by a court of law, after an affair and physical examination. She is known for her memoir, Herculine Barbin, which was studied by Michel Foucault. Her birthday is marked as Intersex Day of Remembrance.