Intersex Pride

Hijras commemorate the life of Jeannie Kay Hinkle

2009-10-05T19:58:00.001-04:00

OII-India held a special ceremony 28 September 2009 in commemoration of Jeannie Kay Hinkle, beloved partner of Curtis E. Hinkle, founder of the Organisation Intersex International.The ceremony included prayers for and in the name of Jeannie Kay Hinkle as it was a Dussera festival day there.

Food was fed to 100 Hijras and poor after the prayers.

"Of all duties, benevolence is unequaled in this world, And even in celestial realms. He who understands his duty to society truly lives. All others shall be counted among the dead." - Tirukkural 22: 213-214

For more information about EKTA, the foundation sponsoring the ceremony: Click here

A Tribute to my Loving Companion, Jeannie Kay

2009-02-26T09:52:00.005-05:00

I have been overwhelmed by all the loving support and condolences that I have received since my partner Jeannie Kay passed on last Friday, February 20, 2009.

I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for surrounding me with love and affection during this difficult time.

The word “love” exists for a reason and it cannot be defined rationally because there are more important regions of our consciousness to be explored. The regions of the heart cannot be expressed in mere words. There is a reality beyond words and all human knowledge which depends on language to express it can only hint at the great mystery of life. There is a place for silence and reverence. There is a place for awe. - Dedicated to my partner Jeannie Kay- Curtis E. Hinkle

To live in a heart one leaves behind is not to die. Je t'aime ma chère Jeannie Kay. Tu vivras toujours au fond de mon coeur. Merci. - Curtis

In Memoriam
Jeannie Kay Mebus Hinkle

Online at: http://www.intersexualite.org/Jeannie-Kay-Hinkle.html

Intersex – A History of Erasure

2009-02-13T21:31:00.010-05:00

by Curtis E. Hinkle
2004

There are no pre-existing male/female categories. Our conceptualizing people as either one or the other is a cultural artifact and the construction of sex/gender/desire within a binary only reinforces the underlying assumptions and hierarchy of power inherent within such a socially constructed system. In the late 19th century, European cultures felt threatened by more and more women speaking out and wanting recognition and also by homosexuals who were becoming more visible. It was a coincidence that medicine had advanced to such a degree that hermaphroditism was beginning to be understood and it was also dawning on physicians that it was not as rare as they had thought. Their reaction to our presence – those of us born with bodies that do not fit into what society views as normal female or male within this arbitrary division of the sexes – was very revealing concerning the desperate attempt of our societies to perpetuate a myth concerning only two sexes. Physicians were being visited by people who had all types of different anatomies – men who menstruated, women who had no wombs, women with beards and penises, men with breasts and wombs, etc.

What was the main preoccupation of these men of science in trying to categorize hermaphrodites within the binary? To them sex/gender/desire were all one and the same thing basically. These categories were not considered three different categories at all as many people do now. To the scientists of that period whom you had sex with was just as much a determinant of your sex as your body. Men were to have sex with women, etc. Hermaphrodites were challenging the heterosexual assumptions that enforced the structure of power and relationships between men and women. The “scientists” were confronted with such disturbing questions as: How do we know if this person is or is not a pervert (besides being a freak)? Hermaphrodites could “trick” innocent people into perverted (same sex) relationships without the person even being aware of it. How do we maintain order, stability and “family” in a society where we admit people who are not male or female? (Doesn’t this sound familiar – “family values”?) WE MAKE THEM DISAPPEAR. And this is what categorizing people as male or female only by their gonads did. No more hermaphrodites, or at lease so few that we could forget about them, and then we are back to our neat little world where there are only two sexes and we can regulate their behavior and their relationships so as to maintain the system with all its inequalities.

The answer that the scientists came up with shows to what degree heteronormative hegemony (compulsory heterosexuality) is fundamental to our culture’s conception of sex, gender and desire. After looking at all different combinations of intersex bodies and debating over which particular aspect of those bodies would determine one’s “true” sex, they finally agreed on just one aspect of the body – gonads (ovaries or testicles). In so doing, the vast majority of people who would have been designated hermaphrodites previously were suddenly not hermaphrodites at all. They had become pseudo-hermaphrodites. This was important because there are supposedly very few people that meet the definition of being a “true” hermaphrodite. Having both an ovary and a testicle is very rare and so is having an ovotestis. This meant that for all intents and purposes, hermaphrodites had been erased as a real sex category and the neat little construct of just two sexes was kept intact. You were a woman if you had ovaries, regardless that you might not have a vagina and no breasts and a beard. You were a man if you had testicles even if you had a vagina, breasts and could not grow a beard.

Today we go even further. We do not just come up with new definitions to eliminate intersex people, we alter their bodies – making them physically invisible. This is one of the most tragic symbols of human oppression and the medico-legal collusion with political agendas to make sure we have no voice – no face – no existence. Only by challenging the foundations of the binary categories can intersex people have a voice, be part of humanity. In so doing, our mission is not to form another identity movement but to work for the improvement of humankind in general. The current system is mutilating us all.

No group or authority or individual should have the right to define, limit or determine who is and who is not intersex. That is up to the individual. We don’t need more police to enforce rigid categories which already divide us. We in the intersex movement are working to be part of humankind, to be persons with full human rights. We are working to end the oppression of gender apartheid and gender mutilation of all humankind and make a place for all of us who identify outside the binary.

OII's Statement of Dissent

2008-11-16T08:49:00.001-05:00

OII is working to end NON-CONSENSUAL normalisation treatments of intersex children and adults without consultation with the individual intersexed person.

We oppose all consensus statements, especially those without representation of intersex people as equal stakeholders in the consensus.

We have no desire for any consensus statement because intersex people do not agree on:

the exact definition of intersex
what treatments are appropriate for all intersex people
what gender assignment, if any, is appropriate for all the different intersex variations
pathological definitions of our bodies and identities

OII is working in favour of human rights for individuals affected by intersex variations and therefore is opposed to all attempts to impose definitions, treatments and terminology on all people with bodies which do not meet the current standards for male or female.

Consensus statements imply that there is consent. We dissent!

This is on OII's website:

Click here

A Queer feminist perspective

2008-10-19T22:03:00.003-04:00

A queer feminist perspective on intersex activism based on my experience of sexist and racist separatist movements

By Curtis E. Hinkle

Founder, Organisation Intersex International

Online at: http://www.intersexualite.org/queer-feminism.html

One thing I think is essential is that everyone be able to express their own opinions openly and honestly and that each intersexed person be free to work for human rights from the perspective that best fits with their own personal experience and understanding of who they are. I want to share my own perspective and it is only my perspective.

I do not find identity politics and defining people by particular reductionist and essentialist definitions as the best way politically to work toward human rights and this is the reason that I have been a queer feminist and resisted both sexism and racism. I find that the way identity movements are constructed that they are essentially sexist and encourage separatism.

I have issues with separatist movements. This essay is not a critique of the LGBT movement per se but of the white separatist movement that I experienced in the region of the United States where I spent a lot of my childhood, Louisiana. This state has a long history of white separatism and in order to entrench this separatism into Louisiana's state laws, there had to be a definition of what a white person was and what a black person was. The solution was to define anyone who was not able to prove they were totally white as:

quadroons, octoroons and even quintroons. This was true until the 80's and all legal documentation had to reflect this. All quadroons, octoroons and quintroons had to have Black on their legal documentation

It can prove quite difficult to take a large population, regardless of the characteristic chosen to separate them, and come up with workable definitions that do not stigmatize people or which can actually divide all people into the categories proposed, especially if there are only two categories.

To me as an intersex person, I understand the sexual apartheid system with male/female legal categories as an equivalent to the racial apartheid system and the underlying political reasons for such a legal separation as somewhat analogous.

I think most people would agree that the system I just described in Louisiana is racist.

My questions are:

Are the separatist divisions posited as good within the LGBT identity movement not sexist?

Are there ethical reasons for perpetuating sexism?

As an example, what does it really mean when a parent of an intersex child is told to raise the child as a girl? To me that is sexist because the notion of "girl" carries stereotypical connotations not essentially derived just from her body which in this case was not a typically female body to begin with.

My family is biracial. If a doctor told us to raise a child as black or white, I would personally interpret that as racist.

Are racism and sexism ethically justified in some cases and if so, when and for what reasons?

I have yet to find ethical justifications for perpetuating racism and sexism as particularly helpful for human rights for all people. Someone will always be excluded and categorized as the "other" as a result of such imposed boundaries.

Now, concerning the separatism within the LGBT movement, I feel that that all separatist movements are another way that oppressed groups perpetuate oppression and divert energy, which is through the policing function necessary to make sure that the borders of "us" and "them" remain clearly bounded. It is the people who fall into the borders/liminal spaces who become the new oppressed minority within such separatist groups. And, as seems endemic, as the definitions of the identity change in response to political changes within the group, and as individuals change and grow in the fluidity of an examined life, membership in the group requires a scramble to prove one still qualifies. Policing and proving membership come to replace activism as the focus of the group. This is what I feel has happened within the intersex community. Policing and defining became the actual focus and we ended up with a intersex being redefined as a genetic defect – DSD or Disorder of Sex Development.

The enforcement of static identity is why I believe that separatisms seem to do more harm than good, particularly around an inherently fluid aspect of life such as sexuality, but even "race" is fluid and culture-dependent for its definition, and policing of racial borders has certainly been an aspect of racial separatist groups with whose histories I am acquainted. Through this insistence on a static allegiance to a particular identity, human growth is curtailed.

Intersex Solidarity Day - November 8

2008-10-17T14:10:00.004-04:00

Intersex Solidarity Day - November 8

Herculine Barbin’s Birthday

The Organisation Intersex International would like to invite others to join us each year by commemorating November 8 as Intersex Solidarity Day. All human rights organizations, feminist allies, academics and gender specialists, as well as other groups and individuals interested in intersex human rights, are invited to show their solidarity by organizing workshops, lectures, discussions and other activities which deal with any or all of the following topics:

the life of Herculine Barbin
intersex normalisation treatments without consent
the violence of the binary sex and gender system
the sexism implicit within the binary construct of sex and gender

Please show your solidarity with the intersex community. Intersex rights are humans rights. Also, please sign our petition:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/solidarity-with-the-intersex-community.html

If you would like to announce your activity on our website, please contact us.

You can contact us at: oii@intersexualite.org

Web site: http://www.intersexualite.org

Eugenics

2008-09-28T12:55:00.003-04:00

We in OII firmly reject the idea that our sex is a disorder and we therefore reject the pathological definition of our sex as a “disorder of sex development” or DSD. The real danger and disorders are the racism and sexism which are developing eugenic ideologies and technologies to deal with what are social problems. Instead of empowering and valuing people born with sex variations, the solution is to eliminate us.

Open discussions about the abuse of power by those who control the definitions is one important way to confront the real problem - eugenics, Euro-centric racism and male patriarchal models of power which are at risk of collapse if the current binary male/female dichotomies are not firmly held as sacrosanct.

We in OII do not accept the current male/female binary categories imposed on all people in most countries as sacrosanct and hope that others will help us confront the political agenda of those who would eliminate us.

For more information: Click here

Ambiguous Medicine and Sexist Genetics

2008-08-18T07:56:00.001-04:00

Ambiguous Medicine and Sexist Genetics: A Critique of the DSD Nomenclature

By M. Italiano, M.B.B.S. (A.M.) and Curtis E. Hinkle

Online at: http://www.intersexualite.org/sexist_genetics.html

Many intersex persons around the world and their allies are concerned about the new nomenclature, DSD or “Disorders of Sex Development”, which has been endorsed by the Chicago Consensus (1) to replace the term “intersex”. We believe that the categories proposed are not only demeaning, but also scientifically flawed.

The age of chromosomes

The DSD nomenclature uses chromosomes, instead of gonads, as the most important classifier of an individual's sex, such as “46,XY DSD” and “46,XX DSD”. This is no more helpful than using male pseudohermaphroditism or female pseudohermaphroditism which was based on gonads. (2) Instead of male pseudohermaphroditism and female pseudohermaphroditism, the new DSD nomenclature proposes “46, XY DSD” and “46, XX DSD” as replacements for the former taxonomy.

Furthermore, what was called true hermaphroditism is now dichotomized to fit more neatly within the binary. True hermaphroditism used to be called “true” because it meant that an individual had both ovarian and testicular tissue and gonads (ovaries and testicles) were considered to be the “true” determiner of one’s sex. Of course the word "true" was problematic because it suggested that all other forms of “hermaphroditism" were not legitimate, only “pseudo conditions”. Also, using the term “hermaphrodite” as a word to describe a person with an intersex variation has often been criticized as insulting and inaccurate. However, by replacing true hermaphroditism with "ovotesticular DSD", we still have another problem. The DSD nomenclature now wishes to divide "ovotesticular DSD" (formerly true hermaphroditism) into “46, XY ovotesticular DSD”, “46, XX ovotesticular DSD”, or “chromosomal DSD” (of “46,XX/46,XY” chimerism or “45, X/46,XY” mosaic types). In effect, it gives an individual in the latter case two types of DSD, an “ovotesticular DSD”, and a “chromosomal DSD”. Also, we see the division based on chromosomes, which again exposes the preeminence of chromosomes as the “true” markers of an individual’s sex. Further, by combining “ovostesticular DSD” with a chimeric or mosaic karyotype, as it does, it also fails to provide a clear classification of so-called “ovotesticular DSD” which has 3 or more cell line types, isochromosomes, inversions, or ring chromosomes in the karyotype.

For individuals who have both 46,XX in some cells and 46,XY in other cells, and who are referred to as having a "chromosomal DSD" of "46,XX/46,XY(chimerism)" type, it is not uncommon for them to have male anatomy only (3) or female anatomy only (4) and they may also be fertile. In this new nomenclature they would be “diagnosed” as having a "chromosomal DSD" despite any practical relevance for them. Furthermore, although the DSD nomenclature is intended to be representative of congenital conditions, there are individuals who have become 46,XX/46,XY because their twin’s cells make up part of their own karyotype (5), or because an individual who is 46,XX received a bone marrow donation from someone who is 46,XY, as well as by many other means (6). In fact, a pregnancy may also lead to "false positives" for a DSD since fetal cells end up in a woman’s bloodstream. (5)

Likewise, individuals with a 45,X/46,XY karyotype are listed as having a “chromosomal DSD”, but with a parenthetical “mixed gonadal dysgenesis” or “ovotesticular” DSD. This is also confusing since many 45,X/46,XY individuals do NOT have mixed gonadal dysgenesis or ovotesticular tissue. Again, some have only typical male or female anatomy (some being fertile as such), and the XO cells are known to disappear during various stages of development. (7) Thus, predicting this type of “chromosomal DSD” in prenatal screening has been demonstrated to be hampered by a high rate of erroneous results, has provided unnecessary cause for alarm (by projecting birth defects which do not exist), has led to unwanted elective abortion, and is considered a serious problem in clinical genetics. (8)

Another problem is that the DSD proponents have misunderstood basic genetics (or intentionally distorted the information) and have assumed that XY chromosomes indicate that testicular tissue is expected. This assumption leads to another error in the new taxonomy because when gonadal dysgenesis is classified as a “46,XY DSD”, (see Table 2 in reference 1) DSD proponents refer to it (parenthetically) as "testicular dysgenesis". This is misleading and ambiguous because many individuals with 46,XY gonadal dysgenesis actually have OVARIAN dysgenesis. (9) It has been known for over 30 years now that in the presence of an unaltered Y chromosome, but in the absence of substances which would cause testicular differentiation and development, that ovaries start to form, not testicles. (reviewed in ref. 9). It is therefore deceptive to classify 46,XY gonadal dysgenesis as 46,XY testicular dysgenesis because testicular dysgenesis is the result on some occasions but at other times the result is ovarian dysgenesis. The type of treatment indications for dysgenetic testicular tissue may differ from that of dysgenetic ovarian tissue, and thus may unnecessarily confuse clinicians. Furthermore, the preeminence of chromosomes in this taxonomy is apparent and the idea that XY chromosomes somehow are the real “male” sex marker is the result of sexist genetics which produces more ambiguous medicine.

A basic problem with the DSD nomenclature is that it divides all the “disorders” into groups based on what are erroneously known as “sex chromosomes”. (10) This sexist interpretation of genetics, typical throughout this new nomenclature, leads to ambiguous medicine because there are individuals who have male anatomy only but have what appears to be XX chromosomes and are diagnosed as having a "46,XX DSD". Likewise, there are individuals who have female anatomy with what appears to be XY chromosomes and are diagnosed as having a "46,XY DSD". If these apparent XY individuals have a piece of the Y chromosome missing, (such as would include the SRY testis determining gene) they are still referred to as having a “46,XY DSD”, which is factually impossible since they are not XY, but X plus only part of the Y. Likewise, someone who is called XY (but in reality has an extra copy of an X chromosomal gene called DAX1) is also put in the category of having a "46,XY DSD", even though this is impossible, since they are not XY, but are instead X (PLUS another piece of an X)+Y. Likewise, individuals who appear to be XX, but are actually XX (PLUS the Y chromosome-specific SRY gene) are listed as having a "46,XX DSD" and a disorder of gonadal (ovarian) development, both of which are technically inaccurate. The fact that the DSD proponents (1) have put a note next to some conditions which indicates whether a deletion or addition of some X or Y chromosomal material exists, further demonstrates the inconsistency of their listing these conditions in the binary categories of “46,XY DSD” or “46, XX DSD” and not that of “chromosomal DSD.” In these regards, the DSD terminology is in violation of the principles and accepted diagnostic nomenclature used by clinical and molecular cytogeneticists. (11) Why didn't the DSD proponents put these in the "chromosomal DSD category"? One apparently needs an entire extra "sex chromosome" or to be lacking one, in order NOT to be put in the binary "EITHER XX or XY" category.

The DSD nomenclature is ambiguous and sexist in its understanding of genetics and it appears that this is necessary in order to preserve an "artificial binary". People who have portions of the X or Y chromosome missing or added are neither XX nor XY. The DSD system again here is flawed. Technically, CAIS individuals do not have a so-called "46,XY DSD" (even though the proponents state that they do) because the androgen receptor gene on the X chromosome is altered so that, in fact, they are only "X"Y. The androgen receptor is certainly involved in sex development. Thus if it is not there or is altered, it is ambiguous and misleading to call these individuals XY. It is equally ambiguous and misleading to call CAIS individuals “genetic males”. Yes, they have the SRY gene and a typical Y chromosome, but the X linked gene sequences for androgen "action" are not something that they "have". The same is true for an XY individual who has a female anatomy only, unaltered X and Y chromosomes, but an alteration on one of the many genes on one of the so-called "non sex chromosomes" (autosomes) which are certainly sex determining.

Sophia Siedlberg, Genetics Advisor to the Organisation Intersex International, came up with a polygenic model which explained the role of genes, not chromosomes, in sex determination. (12) This model has been misappropriated by others who don't know how to interpret it correctly. We can be quite sure, that barring an environmental cause (such as a teratogen), if we have an XY individual who does not appear to be a male, but instead appears female or intersex, that this person CANNOT be a “genetic male”, “chromosomally a male”, “genetically a male” and vice versa for individuals who have XX chromosomes. How do we know this? By the simple rule of basic genetics, that

GENES (+ environment) = PHENOTYPE (observable trait)

Thus, the DSD model based on "sex chromosomal" divisions has failed. By using the umbrella term “development”, it has also misapplied the knowledge base from the field of (sex) “differentiation” and conflated it with that of “development”. (13) It is ambiguous and sexist (in that it prescribes what sex one should be and not what sex one is and it perpetuates gender and sexist stereotypes based on chromosomes). It promotes confusion and oppression. It is NOT scientific. It simply uses scientific terminology in such a way that is confuses those who have little knowledge of genetics and biology. In so doing, it victimizes intersex people while offering “unlimited immunity" to medical and psychological professionals who continue FORCED sex assignments, FORCED sex reassignments, and FORCED gender expression expectations.

DSD makes the central health issue one’s sex

A second big problem with the DSD Consensus is that it largely ignores the health issues of intersexed individuals. With its emphasis on “sex” divisions based on chromosomes, they have persons with non-intersexed conditions like labial adhesions, cloacal exstrophy of the bladder and absent penis in an otherwise typical male, (or absence of a vagina in an otherwise typical female), mixed in with endocrine conditions, such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or mixed in with other organ system conditions, such as Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome, and Turner's syndrome. These are then categorized as "sex development disorders", thus taking this "distant commonality" of one symptom, i.e., sex, and placing all of these disparate conditions as a disorder of one’s sex, while the predominant health issues become categorically "secondary" and likely to be ignored by clinicians.

DSD lacks clinical relevance

Even without considering the fact that the DSD Consensus largely ignores health issues, its taxonomy is in many cases irrelevant for the purposes of clinicians, especially those with subspecialties. An XX male with testes, a penis, and no female reproductive organs, who finds out at the age of 30 that his chromosomes are atypical after an infertility check, is in the same category as an otherwise typical female with ovaries and a uterus who has vaginal atresia. Both have a “46,XX DSD”. The same holds true for a male, typical in every way but with isolated hypospadias (classified as having a “46,XY DSD”), whose clinician finds that they have given their prior patient, an XY female with streak ovaries, uterus, and vagina who has given birth after embryo donation the same diagnostic classification of “46,XY DSD”. Again, ambiguous diagnoses lead to ambiguous treatment implications and vice versa. This is ambiguous medicine.

Gender conformity based on sexist genetics

With disorders of sex development, which sounds like “sexual development” (and can be confused with psychosexual development or psychosexual disorders), we now see a pathologizing of gender, gender identity, gender role, sexual orientation, and its ties to (re)assignment. People with a so-called DSD, especially in the binary XX or XY categories, are expected to conform in the above categories according to a binary gender expression, as indicated by the expectations of the DSD category, as well as the whim of the person who enforces the assignment or re-assignment. Those who reject such enforcement can be labeled mentally disordered, and treatment can be instituted or re-instituted at the whim of professionals, and this can be enforced legally.

DSD is about ambiguous medicine, sexist genetics, body control, and mind control. It certainly is not a client centered consensus statement. The fact that almost no intersex people had input into this consensus is glaringly evident.

In effect, we have moved from the “age of gonads” to the “age of chromosomes” even though it has been established that "sex chromosomes" as portrayed do not determine one’s sex. (10) This is based on prescriptive notions about genetics, not a descriptive understanding of the role of chromosomes in sex determination. Genes, not "sex chromosomes", determine sex, and most of the genes involved are not on the X and Y chromosomes. They are on the autosomes.

It appears to the authors of this article that the DSD nomenclature misinterprets genetics based on a sexist, binary male/female model and in so doing, it has erroneously pathologized and stigmatized intersex people in order to try to preserve the heterosexist male/female hierarchies that justify the oppression of many classes of people, not just those who are intersexed.

REFERENCES

1) Hughes, I.A. et al. Consensus statement on management of intersex disorders. J. Ped. Urol., 2006, 3:148-162.

2) DamianiI, D. & Guerra-Júnior, G. As novas definições e classificações dos estados intersexuais: o que o Consenso de Chicago contribui para o estado da arte? Arq Bras Endocrinol Metabol. 2007, 51: 013-7.

3) Gencik, A. et al. Chimerism 46,XX/46,XY in a phenotypic female. Hum. Genet., 1980, 55: 407-408.

4) Sudik, R. et al. Chimerism in a fertile woman with a 46,XY karyotype and female phenotype: Case Report. Hum. Rep., 2001, 16: 56-58.

5) Schoenle, E. et al. 46,XX/46,XY Chimerism in a Phenotypically Normal Man. Hum. Genet., 1983, 64: 86-89.

6) Ford, C.E. Mosaics and Chimaeras. British Med. Bull, 1969, 25:104-109.

7) Chang, H.J. et al. The phenotype of 45,X/46,XY mosaicism: an analysis of 92 prenatally diagnosed cases. Amer. J. Hum. Genet., 1990, 46: 156-167.

8) Robinson, A. et al. Prognosis of prenatally diagnosed children with sex chromosome aneuploidy. Am J. Med. Genet., 1992, 44: 365-368.

9) Wachtel S.S. & Simpson J.L. Sex Reversal in the Human. In Wachtel S.S. (Ed.) Molecular Genetics of Sex Determination., 1994, 287-309. Academic Press, Inc.

10) Italiano, M The Scientific Abuse of Genetics and Sex Classifications. Manuscript published July 17, 2008 © Organisation Intersex International.

11) Schaffer, L.G. & Tommerup, N. ISCN 2005: An International System for Human Cytogenetic Nomenclature (2005): Recommendations of the International Standing Committee on Human Cytogenetic Nomenclature., 2005. Karger, S.C. Publ.

12) Siedlberg, S. The Gender Genital Gene Genie. Manuscript published 2001.

13) Italiano, M. Some problems with the new terminology for intersex. Manuscript published July 13, 2008 © Organisation Intersex International.

A message to the linguistically challenged

2008-05-21T11:53:00.000-04:00

I usually don't talk about my professional background. However, at times, when others who have degrees want to give advice, it is important that we who are intersex and/or trans, also speak with professional clarity and expect the same professional respect that non-trans/non-intersex professionals give to their peers. This is something that many of us have faced and those who are not intersex and/or trans often have no idea how they come across and they often have no idea how we often are devalued and deemed unworthy of any professional respect despite our own degrees and accomplishments. This is offensive and needs to stop.

I am a linguist with a degree in linguistics from the Université de Monptellier,

France

. As a linguist, I am concerned that Marshall Forstein, M.D., of Harvard Medical School pointed out in his e-mail that, contrary to claims made in petitions and frantic emails, "sexual orientation is NOT even an issue for the DSM committee to consider." What about the words "homosexuality" or "sexual orientation" does Dr. Forstein not understand? The people named to the board in question (Blanchard and Zucker) have used the word "homosexuality" repeatedly in referring to transsexuality. They are going to have input into the definitions concerning GID. Has Dr. Forstein taken the time to read what Blanchard and Zucker have written about homosexuality as part of the differential diagnosis for "GID"? If one reads their articles, it is plausible to conclude that Blanchard and Zucker would most likely try to introduce homosexuality into the DSM as part of the taxonomy for transsexuality because it is not based on GENDER at all, it is based on SEXUAL ORIENTATION.

This is what is disturbing to many people who read the rants of uninformed experts such as Dreger and it makes many of us very wary of their ability to discuss this topic with intelligence in order to make informed decisions considering the matter at hand: Zucker and Blanchard having control of the definitions of gender variance in the DSM, since they are on record as not really accepting gender as a valid construct for defining transsexuality.

Quotes from Blanchard:

"In my terminology, which follows the individual's chromosomal sex, these groups are homosexual and heterosexual transsexuals, respectively." (Blanchard, Deconstructing the Feminine Essence Narrative, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Arch Sex Behav

DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9328-y)

We have the rudimentary terms used in this proposed taxonomy in the short sentence above: "chromosomal sex", "homosexual", and "heterosexual".

"There are two distinct types of cross-gender identity. The feminine gender identity that develops in homosexual males is different from the feminine gender identity that develops in heterosexual males. In other words, homosexual and heterosexual men cannot ''catch'' the same gender identity disorder in the way that homosexual and heterosexual men can both ''catch'' the identical strain of influenza virus. Each class of men is susceptible to its own type of gender identity disorder and only its own type of gender identity disorder." (Blanchard, Deconstructing the Feminine Essence Narrative, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Arch Sex Behav DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9328-y)

"Homosexual and heterosexual men"? Very revealing use of the term "men" here. So there we see how Blanchard is referring to M to F transsexuals. In this case, he is referring to them as "men" and he uses the word "men" several times in that short paragraph.

If we read further in this same article, it is clear why Blanchard would refer to M to F transsexuals as "men":

"I have not seen any new research studies that present compelling evidence for a third, distinct type of male-to-female transsexualism. It is quite difficult, however, to achieve complete certainty in taxonomic work. I made this point in a lecture on the parallels between gender identity disorder (GID) and body integrity identity disorder (BIID), a condition characterized by the feeling that one's proper phenotype is that of an amputee, together with the desire for surgery to achieve this. Most, but not all, persons with BIID report some history of erotic arousal in association with thoughts of being an amputee (apotemnophilia). ." (Blanchard, Deconstructing the Feminine Essence Narrative, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Arch Sex Behav DOI 10.1007/s10508-008-9328-y)

What are the parallels between GID and BIID? As a linguist reading this rather short article, the semantic field that Blanchard has ascribed to the term GID is very problematic because he is using the term GID in a way which is inconsistent with the DSM itself.

The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has five criteria that must be met before a diagnosis of gender identity disorder (302.85) can be given:[2]
1. There must be evidence of a strong and persistent cross-gender identification.
2. This cross-gender identification must not merely be a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex.
3. There must also be evidence of persistent discomfort about one's assigned sex or a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex.
4. The individual must not have a concurrent physical intersex condition (e.g., androgen insensitivity syndrome or congenital adrenal hyperplasia).
5. There must be evidence of clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

There is no mention of sexual orientation as a factor for diagnosing GID.
There is no mention of body image problems and desire for castration, etc. That is covered in another part of the manual: GIDNOS.
The emphasis is on IDENTIFICATION and inappropriateness of GENDER ROLE. Blanchard is not talking about GID at all as it is currently defined in the DSM. He is talking about something unrelated to this diagnosis.

He is talking about homosexuality, sexual paraphilias, body integrity issues and that is clear if one takes the time to read his work. I would not say that his findings are all wrong. I would simply point out that he is not talking about GID and that is clear from all discursive analyses I have made of his texts.

So, I would hope that professionals in the field of psychiatry would take the time to examine how Blanchard is using language, how he is using the terms which would have a great impact on future revisions of the DSM.

Now, who is the one talking about homosexuality? Blanchard himself. And he calls the people he is talking about HOMOSEXUAL MEN.

As a linguist, I am not going to take Dr. Forstein's advice because it is based on ignorance. Dr. Forstein and Dreger would be better advised to scrutinize Blanchard's use of language and terms before giving advice to those of us in the intersex/trans community about speaking about "sexual orientation" and homosexuality.

Curtis E. Hinkle
Founder, OII
http://www.intersexualite.org/

Fact Checking Alice Dreger

2008-05-20T01:54:00.004-04:00

Please visit OII's NOT A DISORDER blog: http://notadisorder.weebly.com/

A fact check to the fact checker

Response to: http://alicedreger.com/informed_dissent.html
(Italics are quotes from Alice Dreger's blog)

Well, I see Alice Dreger is up to her usual: distorting the facts and creating a smokescreen so that those with power who are not being accountable for their unethical behavior appear to be justified in further victimizing marginalized communities. As usual, she is telling us what to do and being deceptive as she talks down to us – vintage Dreger – while deflecting the attention away from those who are harming people and making it look like those harmed are the real problem.

I’ve been watching the same sort of thing happen over the debate regarding Zucker and the DSM. Lots of errors about basic facts.

She should know about errors about basic facts. Her recent article in defense of J. Michael Bailey was full of errors. Click here

Some of these errors have been noted in an open letter from Marshall Forstein, M.D., of Harvard Medical School. Forstein pointed out that in his letter that, contrary to claims made in petitions and frantic emails, “sexual orientation is NOT even an issue for the DSM committee to consider.”

Once again. This appears accurate but it is not factually correct to accuse those of us who are discussing SEXUAL ORIENTATION as having our facts wrong. We are discussing sexual orientation, and she understands why because she wrote an article about this same topic herself defending J. Michael Bailey, because the people named to the DSM committee are discussing homosexuality. That is the issue and it is deceptive to put this on her blog and mischaracterize why we are discussing sexual orientation. The problem is not with the intersex or trans community. It is with Blanchard, Zucker, and Dreger. They have been writing papers and elaborating theories which conflate sexual orientation with transsexuality. So, let’s be accurate and check our facts, Alice Dreger. We are talking about this because they, the proposed members of the DSM committee write many articles about homosexuality and see it as one of only two causes of transsexuality.

And the DSM “is a guide to diagnosis and NOT to treatment.”

Once again, we know that. It is inaccurate to act as if we do not. The fact that one or two people might not know that is not necessarily the case for most of us. Why didn’t Dreger write to the people who don’t know this if she really wants to help out instead of making all of us look like uniformed troublemakers? Well, she has an agenda – to protect Zucker, Blanchard and Bailey. That’s why.

The tone of Forstein’s letter reminded me of my own tone as I lectured my well-meaning neighbors on my porch yesterday. Basically: “Geez, people! You don’t have the most basic facts right! How do you expect to gain and keep allies if you can’t get the facts straight?!”

Once again, she paints all of us with one stroke (pretending that she is addressing her neighbors but this is not written to her neighbors, is it?). This is outright propaganda. Many of us are quite informed, articulate people capable of exposing the facts. She would be well advised to get informed and stop generalizing about a whole community.

The errors Forstein chronicled are important, but arguably not as important as the erroneous claims that Zucker does “conversion therapy,” i.e., that he tries to change children’s sexual orientation from gay to straight, and that he thinks a patient turning out to be transsexual represents a “bad outcome.”

Fact check. I thought that Alice Dreger had read J. Michael Bailey’s book. In his “Queen” book, Bailey wrote:

“….Zucker believes that most boys who play with girls’ things often enough to earn a diagnosis of GID would become girls if they could. Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome.” (Page 31 in book)

“Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual. His experience has convinced him that if a boy with GID becomes an adolescent with GID, the chances that he will become an adult with GID and seek a sex change are much higher. And he thinks the kind of therapy he practices helps reduce this risk” (Page 30 in book)

“…Zucker’s therapy seems kinder and more consistent, and thus more likely to be effective. Zucker believes that it is, although he is the first to ackowledge that no scientific studies currently support the effectiveness of what he does.” (Page 34 in book).

Now. One final fact check. Here is why Zucker and Blanchard are talking about homosexuality. Let’s get that fact straight. And therefore we who are opposed to their being part of the DSM committee are discussing this same topic because:

The DSM controls the definitions not the treatments

The DSM is concerned with diagnoses, not treatments per se. We know that, Alice Dreger. However, that is why people that are ideologically motivated with very little, if any, empirical data to support their theories (and Bailey himself admitted that) should not be placed in charge of the definitions or diagnoses. Here is the problem. Drucker will have input into the DIAGNOSES, not the treatments but the treatments are not the issue for Zucker and many of these people that have been influenced by him. In my opinion, they want NO TREATMENTS. I am convinced that the motivation is to tie the hands of those who would desire to provide treatments and they might be able to do that by controlling the definitions, i.e. the diagnoses. In other words, if the members of this committee, some of which I know have been influenced by the views of Zucker which are that gender identity, as opposed to gender role, is extremely malleable, even more malleable than sexual orientation, then reassignment may eventually become almost impossible, if not outright impossible in the years to come.

The theory that Blanchard et al. are expounding has two key elements which will have enormous impact on redefining transsexuality in such a way that

1) it is NOT really a GENDER identity disorder at all and

2) with ONLY TWO categories possible for all people with "gender confusion" which appears to be the word that is becoming more and more common.

Now, if GID is not about gender but SEX, and there are only two diagnoses, one of which is based on HOMOSEXUALITY, what treatments can be ethically justified by therapists if homosexuality is NOT also reintroduced as a TREATABLE disorder? If you include autogynephilia, then you have to include homosexuality because the theory that Blanchard and others are propagating posits that there must also be "trans" people motivated by homosexual orientation (and ONLY those two categories). This erases intersex and trans experience and the essential definitions that we often use to give meaning to our own sense of being – our own definitions of ourselves and if we are not allowed to define ourselves within the system to the best of our ability, then I don't see anyway to improve our well-being within that system – only further marginalization and stigma.

If Zucker is treating homosexuality in childhood and he admits that these boys grow up to be homosexuals and according to Bailey he is treating them in the hopes of preventing transsexuality, then why not treat homosexuality in adulthood to prevent transsexuality? That is why we are discussing this issue.

Professionals? It is time to act – PROFESSIONALLY

Writing to a whole community instead of addressing the people whose behavior Alice Dreger and others associated with her are denouncing is not professional. When I write about Dreger, for example, I don't generalize and characterize her behavior, writings and ideology as characteristic of the whole intersex community. Why does she include me and thousands of others who have nothing to do with the non-factual allegations she is writing about?

This is political spin. This is part of the ongoing assault against the intersex and trans communities. I and hundreds of others in the IS and Trans communities have NEVER written anything similar to this deceptive blog entry by Alice Dreger.

The documentation about Alice Dreger that I have published is based on verifiable sources, not generalizations, not innuendo, not rumors, which is more characteristic of her writings lately.

I have not claimed anything to be true about these people that I cannot back up with reliable sources. It would be advisable that she and other "experts" defending Zucker and Blanchard make the same effort when speaking about us in generalized terms. Don't include me in those generalizations without informed opinions that are reality-based, not agenda-driven spin. It is very offensive to include my work in these generalizations about the trans and intersex communities.

I would never write a blog that gave the impression that all mental health professionals were acting the same way as Zucker, Dreger and Blanchard are because I know otherwise.

What advice like this does is discredit all the well researched articles that many of us in the trans and intersex communities have written about this topic.

It is time that some of the professionals act responsibly (notably those in charge of the APA and those who are enabling Zucker and Blanchard) and inform themselves and stop giving advice until they do know the facts. It is time to demand accountability of those who provide care and who speak as ethicists about our care. The professionals in this debate have much more responsibility. Part of being a professional is that one takes the time to inform oneself of the facts. Many of us have. These factual articles are published. Read them.

Index to Intersex Pride

2008-05-05T09:01:00.001-04:00

2006 - May 2008

Penetrating the stone wall of narcissism

A Day in Neverland: The Neverland Essence Narrative and latent homosexuality

A message of healing and hope: a holistic, person-centered approach to intersex health

The Chatty Cathy Approach to Intersex Activism

H omochromosexuality: A new psychiatric disorder

Sex versus Gender: Exposing medical violence and dishonesty

Disorders of sex development: Sexist, Classist Eugenics

Alice Dreger: The unethical ethicist?

DSD: North American Medical fascism and manufacturing consent

Elizabeth Reis defames and trivializes intersex people

Against sexists in “Blackface”

DSD - Is there really a consensus?

Disordering the lives of children

Pathological (hetero)sexism and the medicalisation of sex in children

Hermaphrodite Kisses (poem)

The fundamental error of conflating intersex with birth defects

About the violent construction of sex as a binary */**
This is a very good article I translated with the permission of the author.

Ten Misconceptions about Intersex

Why the Intergender Community is so Important to Intersexuals

Penetrating the stone wall of narcissism

2008-05-04T19:57:00.003-04:00

Narcissistic rage within the medical and academic communities

Available on OII's webstie at: http://www.intersexualite.org/Penetrating.html

Narcissistic personality disorder is a major social problem and medical experts and others in the academic community are more prone to this severe mental illness than the population in general. [1] NPD (Narcissistic personality disorder) is defined as a pattern of grandiosity and a need for admiration or adulation which usually begins by early adulthood. Five or more of the following criteria must be met: [2]

• Feelings of grandiosity

• Obsessed with fantasies of success, power, fame and brilliance

• Firm conviction that they are unique and should associate only with those of special status

• Requires excessive admiration

• Feelings of entitlement

• Exploitative and manipulative behavior of others

• Devoid of empathy

• Envious of others

• Arrogant behavior coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted or confronted.

"Medical narcissism is a term coined by John Banja in his book Medical Errors and Medical Narcissism. He uses the psychological concept of narcissism to explain the culture by which many medical practitioners downplay medical errors and often avoid taking personal responsibility. He claims this is part of the dehumanization of the patients from the practitioner's perspective. John Banja provided evidence that there is a higher incidence of practitioners in the medical profession with narcissistic personality disorder than the general population, and that there is a resultant general narcissistic culture in the medical profession of self-righteousness, arrogance, and denial." [3]

Medical narcissists as well as others who suffer from NPD invariably exhibit symptoms of narcissistic rage when reacting to what they perceive as the slightest injury (narcissistic injury). Narcissistic injury is any real or imagined threat to the narcissist's grandiosity and self-perception as entitled to special treatment and recognition, regardless of his actual accomplishments, if any. [4]

After years of intersex activism, some influential academics and medical researchers, Alice Dreger, Anne Lawrence and Eric Vilain et al., have all exhibited the symptoms of a violent narcissistic rage against the intersex community and have caused great damage to a vulnerable group of people who were just emerging into the collective consciousness.

Their own narcissism has been perpetuated by their own grandiosity as the gatekeepers of all sex variations with their own image as a man or woman as the standard which should be imposed on all people, especially the intersexed. Defining a person by a checklist of sex markers and arbitrarily assigning the individual as male or female without permission or any input from the child is dehumanizing and one of the most blatant forms of medical narcissism. These doctors and academics are pretending to be omniscient and in possession of some profound knowledge which is unknowable to anyone – the "true" sex of a child whose sex cannot be defined as male or female to begin with. Then, they assume that this omniscience gives them the right to surgically and/or hormonally alter the child's body long before the child has developed any awareness of their own individuality and autonomy.

The current terminology used to stigmatize and justify such medical (mal)practice, DSD or Disorders of Sex Development, originated from the narcissistic rage of the academic and medical community against the intersex community which had started to question these practices and demand accountability and respect for intersex children.

Typical of the schoolyard bully, these academics and doctors reacted with an attitude of "how dare they question our authority". The victims of their abuse, by daring to denounce it, had to be further bullied and silenced because the narcissist will not entertain the slightest criticism without flying into a rage that is totally disproportional to the points being made by the victim. The narcissist cannot admit to an error and intersex treatments are particularly prone to what would be serious medical errors if designed for treating almost any other group of people. Lack of informed consent, surgical and hormonal manipulation of an individual's body and labeling the individual as mentally ill for refusing the medical abuse which assigned the person a wrong sex: all these present serious ethical issues which the medical community should take seriously.

Instead of taking the criticisms of the intersex community seriously, their pathological narcissism has only become more impenetrable as they scramble to protect themselves against lawsuits and a loss of their self-perceived grandiosity.

The deepest wound that many intersex people live with is the lie that we are all either a male or a female. This violence against many intersexed people is so profound and brutally denied that intersex activism has almost been crushed by replacing the term “intersex” with “disorders of sex development” without any real consultation with those directly affected – intersexed people themselves.

Many of the same people are reacting the same way to the trans community. Some of them who have falsely accused some transsexuals of responding with narcissistic rage, have misinterpreted the condition, based upon narrow reading (Kohut) and thus have failed to find in themselves more severe narcissistic pathologies, including "borderline" ideology. For a more balanced approach to this, we suggest they and others read Kernberg's critiques of Kohut. Kernberg, saw a far more fragmented self, which is more descriptive of the traits exhibited by certain writers who have written recently about narcissistic rage in transsexuals than the transsexuals these writers were describing.

For such reading on the misunderstanding of narcissistic rage and its misinterpretation and displacement upon others (transsexuals), see Kernberg's criticisms of the limitations of Kohut's view of narcissism.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/112457498/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6613364?ordinalpos=46&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2436292?ordinalpos=27&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

For more on borderline disorders in physicians, see

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E2DF1039F933A05755C0A967948260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=4

For more on how such conditions can cause a physician to sexually abuse others, see

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8439943?ordinalpos=22&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Some OII members clearly see that certain "professionals" studying transsexualism and intersex do indeed have more severe narcissistic disorders which lead to borderline personality expression. (We realize that BPD is a "controversial diagnosis". However, it certainly is no more controversial than the "diagnosis" of autogynephilia, which although not listed in the DSM, is believed by a few not-overly-suspicious OII members, to be "nominated" for its inclusion in the DSM).

ON BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

Disturbances suffered by those with borderline personality disorder are wide-ranging. The general profile of the disorder typically includes a pervasive instability in mood, extreme "black and white" thinking, or "splitting", chaotic and unstable interpersonal relationships, self-image, identity, and behavior, as well as a disturbance in the individual's sense of self. In extreme cases, this disturbance in the sense of self can lead to periods of dissociation. These disturbances have a pervasive negative impact on many or all of the psychosocial facets of life. This includes the ability to maintain relationships in work, home, and social settings.

For those persons who see in black and white and who quickly change from over-valuing and then to de-valuing those with whom they disagree, and whom they criticize even more stringently without merit, and without re-examining themselves, it is suggested that they seek modern psychoanalysis.

This is the treatment which caused analysts since Freud’s time to wonder: "can the stone wall of narcissism be penetrated?" And Spotnitz has responded with a resounding yes to that question. Although we doubt that those who pathologize transsexual and intersexed persons will be amongst Spotnitz's successes (in that their own stone wall of narcissistic defense surrounding their narcissistic rage and borderline symptoms will be penetrated), we still say to these hacademics: "Please give it the old college try".

http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=mpsa.021.0191a

References

[1] http://www.bullyeq.com/

[2] http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/personality_disorders/narcissism/narcissism_defined.html

[3] http://www.bullyeq.com/

[4] http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/npd/113234

Further reading:

For a review and critique on understanding of pathological narcissism of Heinz Kohut, see the following and the writings of Otto Kernberg.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6613364?ordinalpos=44&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://www.psychodynamicworks.com/bookroom1/sources/99swartz.html

A Day in Neverland

2008-05-04T18:53:00.000-04:00

The Neverland Essence Narrative and latent homosexuality

by Curtis E. Hinkle
Available on OII's website: http://www.intersexualite.org/Neverland.html

Abstract: Blanchard, Bailey and Dreger have attempted to deconstruct what they call the “feminine essence narrative”. Their articles and analysis are replete with internal contradictions and lack of empirical data. Some of the illogical fallacies included are: 1) In comparing male to female transsexuals to natal women, lesbians are not even considered as a possible control group for male to female transsexuals who are attracted to women. Instead, Blanchard suggests that homosexual transsexuals (those who are attracted to men) are the proper control group for autogynephiles. 2) Bailey pretends that he doesn’t even know what a gender identity is. However, he has a clear gender identity because he states in the very book in which he questions the validity of a gender identity that he is a heterosexual man. 3) According to Bailey, all males are gay or straight. Bisexuals are simply gay men in denial. On the other hand, he puts bisexual males who transition to female into the autogynephilic category, instead of the homosexual transsexual category. If males who say they are bisexual are really gay men, how can they fit into any other of his two transsexual categories than homosexual transsexual? 4) Women are basically bisexual according to Bailey. If so, are most natal women in denial? Wouldn’t natal women, make a perfect control group for male-to-female transsexuals as both are said to be in denial? Wouldn’t feminine lesbians, in particular, and not so-called “homosexual transsexuals”, make a perfect control group for so called autogynephilic transsexuals, since each claim NOT to be male oriented?

Recently, I read a few articles written by Blanchard, Dreger and Bailey. Everything I read was full of contradictions, illogical assumptions and binary sex categories that left me feeling I had spent a day on Neverland, the fantasy island in Peter Pan where children never grow up. The simplistic, often contradictory binary logic with overwhelming focus on male sexuality reminded me of the locker room fantasies of adolescent boys stranded on Neverland who have absolutely no idea of female sexuality whatsoever.

One of the articles I read was entitled Deconstructing the Feminine Essence Narrative by Blanchard. In this article he is writing about his proposed theory of transsexualism based on the sexual orientation of the individual and not the person's gender identity (or feminine essence narrative). First of all, I want to be clear that I am convinced that Blanchard's observations of certain behaviors in "men" seeking sex reassignment are correct and that there are those who would fall into the category he has proposed. That is not what seems so illogical and basically "Neverland" about the theory. What is conspicuous is that female sexuality is totally banned from this Neverland adventure into male-to-female transsexualism. This is very problematic because there is no possibility of deconstructing the feminine essence narrative, the alleged purpose of the essay by Blanchard, without a thorough understanding and description of female sexuality since Blanchard's theory is based on sexual orientation, not gender identity, per se.

Blanchard wrote in his article:

The notion that typical natal females are erotically aroused by—and sometimes even masturbate to—the thought or image of themselves as women might seem feasible if one considers only conventional, generic fantasies of being a beautiful, alluring woman in the act of attracting a handsome, desirable man.

This tells me more about Blanchard than the autogynephiles (who are transwomen attracted to other women) he is writing about. How could he possibly compare autogynephiles with heterosexual natal women as the control group? Why would Blanchard assume that typical natal females would necessarily be interested in attracting a handsome, desirable man? Many are interested in attracting a beautiful, desirable woman, just like the autogynephiles he is supposedly describing. Would it have to do with the constant focus on the male phallus? It certainly appears the case and is symptomatic of what I call the Neverland Essence Narrative – (phallo-centric sexual ideation generalized as a description of the only "real" sexuality that counts). Has this man never heard of femme lesbians? Wouldn't this be a more promising control group to consider? What is striking is that lesbianism is not even part of the discourse when talking about natal women, much less femme lesbians.

In the same article, Blanchard wrote:

Proponents of the feminine essence theory could argue that it is an empirical question whether heterosexual male-to-female transsexuals manifest a higher prevalence of autogynephilia than do natal females. My view, in contrast, is that the correct control group for such (necessarily survey) research is not natal females but rather homosexual male-to-female transsexuals, and that the results of such research have already shown that autogynephilia is characteristic of heterosexual transsexuals (Blanchard, 1989a).

Once again Blanchard exhibits the same logical fallacy. Instead of considering natal females as a control group, he posits that the best control group for understanding autogynephiles is made up of male to female transsexuals who are attracted to men. How odd! If the basic categories of his theory of transsexualism are defined by sexual orientation, why use a control group with an orientation towards men? Well, it seems clear. In the previous paragraph, he did not even consider the fact that there are women who have no desire for male partners. It was almost a given in his characterization of women that desiring male sex partners was the primary definition for "woman". Although he knows that lesbians exist, his text and his discourse on female sexuality (which is almost invisible) are so phallocentric that either consciously or unconsciously, there is no real representation of the wide range of diversity characteristic of female sexuality in the text even though he is supposedly talking about natal females. Very typical of the Neverland Essence Narrative. Even when talking about natal females and female sexuality, it is all based on MALE sexual orientation. It has nothing whatsoever to do with female sexuality, femininity and eroticism in femme lesbians, the female body or sensuality.

In this article, Blanchard was defending both J. Michael Bailey and Dreger who is a great fan of Bailey's. In an article by Dreger in defense of her colleague at Northwestern University, she quotes Bailey:

"gender identity… what the hell does that mean?" p 50 of his his book, The Man who would be Queen.

Who is Bailey trying to fool? I would like for Bailey to spend just one day with many of the intersexed people in the Organisation Intersex International if he really would like to meet a group of people who in fact do wonder what the hell a gender identity is because to many of us there is no defined gender identity (or feminine essence narrative or masculine essence narrative) which can be PRESCRIBED by the gatekeepers which fit with our own sense of self which can be very fluid and undefined within a binary gender identity construct. OII has many intersexed people who have an undefined gender identity and who really do question the validity of any of the "essence narratives" as valid in prescribing a gender identity for them at birth. However, when one reads Bailey's book and his articles, his question seems artificial, almost hypocritical because elsewhere in the same book, he makes it clear he identifies as a heterosexual MAN.

Quote from the "Queen" book by Bailey:

Bailey confirms this opinion when he describes his own sexual response (only) to homosexual transsexuals: "It is difficult to avoid viewing Kim from two perspectives: as a researcher but also as a single, heterosexual man" (p. 141).

Bailey knows quite well what a gender identity is and he is very explicit in informing us that he is not only a man but a heterosexual man. This is interesting because the particular woman he is sexually aroused by is described by Bailey himself as a "male". Very interesting indeed.

In another article by Bailey, who supposedly supports Blanchard's taxonomy of all male-to-female transsexuals as either homosexual transsexuals (those who are attracted to men) and autogynephilic (including those who are asexual and those who are attracted to women or who are bisexual), I was surprised that Bailey insists that bisexuality does not exist in males. How contradictory! There was an article in the New York Times which analyzed Bailey's research which allegedly proves that all males are gay or straight or lying. In other words, males who say they are bisexual are really gay men in denial.

Let's follow the logical fallacy here which is characteristic of the fundamental empirical flaw of Blanchard and Bailey's theories – anyone who does not agree with their definition of them is in denial or a liar. However, when you compare Bailey's research on bisexuality with his research on autogynephilia, it is clear who is in denial of empirical data: Blanchard and Bailey themselves.

On the one hand, their theory and taxonomy for male to female transsexualism does include bisexuality as a real orientation for m to f transsexuals. However, they both put bisexual m to f transsexuals, who transition to female, in the autogynephilic category. But wait. Bailey has concluded that bisexuality does not exist in males. They are all gay men in denial. So how can Bailey put someone who by their definition, is a gay male, in the autogynephilic category, which EXCLUDES male to female transsexuals, who are attracted exclusively to males and whom they call “homosexual transsexuals”? Wouldn't bisexual male to female transsexuals also fit their definition of gay men in denial? Wouldn't they have to be categorized according to their taxonomy instead, as “homosexual transsexuals”? The problem with this "research" is that it is not based on empirical evidence which can be falsified. It is based on Blanchard's and Bailey's own Neverland Essence Narrative projected on to all the subjects of their research. And typical of this lack of empirical methods, Bailey concluded that all females are basically bisexual – once again, female sexuality was dismissed and phallocentric arousal remains the only important criteria for categorizing all people. Neverland at its worst.

The fundamental flaw of Blanchard's, Bailey's and Dreger's attempt to deconstruct the feminine essence narrative, is their inability to see anything beyond male/female, and to conceive of a world which is not based on what makes a male's penis erect. I prefer the real world which is full of diversity where a whole spectrum of sex variations exist with some people who have no defined gender identity and for whom NO prescribed gender within the binary will ever categorize them. I prefer to conceptualize a world, where female sexuality exists, where feminine lesbians and their sensuality exist, and where the whole world does not revolve around what makes a penis erect. Neverland is especially well-suited for those who have a monochromatic vision disorder (no real rainbows on this island) with only shades of black and white where the only attraction is the ebb and flow of the inhabitants' own phallocentric erection fantasies.

In conclusion, what did I learn from this foray into Neverland? Not much really. But I did learn something about the people who pretend to be deconstructing the feminine essence narrative and questioning the very concept of gender identity as a valid construct for describing transsexuality. Bailey, Blanchard and Dreger have done absolutely nothing to deconstruct gender identity as a binary or gender identity itself. They have simply prescribed a "masculine essence narrative" on all the subjects of their discourse (male to female transsexuals) with focus on the phallus and what makes it erect in coming up with a new taxonomy for transsexualism. This is about gender policing, not science. There is nothing in the Neverland Essence Narrative that can even fathom the undefined gender identity of many intersexed people who know that NO prescribed gender (feminine or masculine) applies to them.

Now, back to reality which is a lot more interesting, complex and diverse. I will leave Neverland to those who want to perpetuate narcissistic visions of their own budding masculine essence narrative and who never developed any concept that women and intersex people really do exist. Bye-bye Neverland.

A message of healing and hope: a holistic, person-centered approach to intersex health

2008-04-27T13:20:00.000-04:00

Curtis E. Hinkle, Founder of Organisation Intersex International

Medical treatment of intersex people has a long history of pathologizing, stigmatizing and mutilating anyone who does not have a body which is totally “female” or totally “male” according to the definitions currently in effect for those two categories. Medical approaches to intersex variations are based on a false dichotomy, the assumption that everyone “should” be either male or female even though nature has not created such a world. The treatments are based on other false assumptions:

That heterosexual intercourse and reproduction are the most important contributions of an individual, despite the fact that intelligence, compassion and ability to care for others are equally, if not more, important for the evolution of humankind

That the sex of an intersex child is a disorder itself which MUST be treated without any input from the child at all.

That concealment, shame and manipulations of body parts of an intersex person will benefit the child when in fact this approach leads to trauma, a shattered sense of self and further marginalization and stigma.

The medical approach focuses on parts of a person and defines the intersex child as a disparate combination of chromosomes, genitalia, hormones, gonads and internal reproductive anatomy. This is dehumanizing. The child is not welcomed into the world as a complete, totally intact, part of the whole tapestry of nature which is constantly evolving and moving towards diversity which promotes the continued development of human potential. Welcoming diversity and respecting the wholeness of both the individual and the natural world in which we live, breathe and have our being opens human consciousness to hope, respect and finding solutions to many problems which currently face humanity, not just intersex people, but all of us.

Instead of a dehumanizing approach which focuses on body parts, we could choose to focus on the wholeness of intersex children and see this as part of their potential for development (not a disorder of sex development) and future contributions to society. This would be a radical shift from the current medicalization of sex variations but the benefits to both the intersex child and humanity itself would be enormous. This would not only promote the health of intersex children. It would promote the healing of humankind in general.

The current medical protocols based on a false dichotomy and dehumanization of intersex children are part of a wider social problem – sexism. OII has been concerned about this issue from its beginning and several years ago OII published our declaration of fundamental principles:

Intersex is not a medical condition: intersex refers to those individuals born of “intermediate” sex between what is considered standard for male or female in our societies.

Contrary to what is often asserted, the various degrees of intersex are not innately an illness or deformity. They are simply variations of the human body similar to the length of the nose, the colour of eyes, etc.

We reject medical categories for the various degrees of intersex, which are in fact only different reference points on a natural continuum of anatomical and genetic variations.

We stress the whole person from infancy through adulthood and choose not to focus on an individual's genitalia. We are people, not genitals. As people, we have a right to our own genitalia and our own identity without interference, forced treatment or other coercion from legal and/or medical authorities.

The basic problems faced by the intersexed are socio-cultural in nature and not medical and are a result of the dogmatic fundamentalism inherent in the current binary construct of sex and gender. Some intersexed individuals are subjected to genital mutilation in childhood as a result of this totalitarian, sexist oppression. For this reason, we denounce all forms of sexism prevalent in our societies, which is principally directed against women, the intersexed, and other communities which challenge sex and gender norms.

To promote visibility and the recognition of our existence as a normal and natural part of humanity will benefit not only the intersexed but all people oppressed by the sexism which prevails in our societies.

OII chooses to focus on healing, not managing body parts and defining children as disordered or sick when they are in fact not sick. The word “healing” is derived from the Old English word “whole”. Society can choose to welcome the wholeness of each intersex child and open up a place for them by making it possible for each one to affirm their own true sex and sense of self. This is a person-centered approach to healing and wholeness, one that would be of benefit to society as a whole.

The two central concepts of OII’s person-centered approach to healing are

wholeness

affirmation

We can choose to welcome children as a gift which has been entrusted to our care, as an integral part of the potential for human development as a whole, not incomplete, undeveloped beings that we control and manipulate into images and abstractions that we feel they “should” be. We can choose to accept the wholeness and oneness of life as a constantly evolving and developmental process which is to be honored and work towards harmony and mutual cooperation, not domination and manipulation. Welcoming intersex children offers hope and healing to human understanding and development towards a model based on human rights and respect for the natural world we all share as one.

The choice is ours.

The Chatty Cathy Approach to Intersex Activism

2008-04-22T11:14:00.001-04:00

When I was a child, my sister had a doll that was rather popular for a while. It was called “Chatty Cathy.” This particular doll interested me because it could talk. However, you had to pull a string on her back to start the conversation. Pulling strings to get someone to talk who otherwise was just a dummy who really had nothing to say made a lot of sense to me. It meant that people who had almost nothing to say except a limited repertoire of stupid and often illogical ideas would speak about those ideas at the moment and in the context which was most beneficial to the person pulling the string. Their freedom of speech was not really taken from them because you could rationalize that really what you were doing was spurring debate, initiating dialog and encouraging them to express themselves.

If only the DSD activists and specialists could be more like Chatty Cathy! Well, in a sense they are. One big difference. Unethical and tyrannical methods have been used to suppress OII’s freedom of speech. Tracing it to the exact individuals involved is still a challenge. We can only trace it to the place of origin and ISP’s. It has been going on for a long time now. But the Chatty Cathy Syndrome has still been rather effective. Yes, they indeed do suffer from CCS.

Since its beginning, OII and many people with OII and its website have been systematically defamed, hacked, and blacklisted while DSD activists publish tomes and have articles published in the New York Times and other national media outlets about their freedom of speech being seriously threatened. But those of us in OII cannot even get a short letter to the editor published. So, whose freedom of speech is really in peril?

Instead of simply giving up out of frustration and giving in to their abuse of power, I felt there was one approach that should be consistently and methodically developed and used against them – “helping” them say what they really mean in front of the whole world because it was clear that what they really had to say had to be exposed so that those affected could have real discussions about their control over intersex and trans issues.

This method involved huge risks because they have the power, the degrees and academic authority. By intentionally provoking them with sarcasm, histrionic analyses and carefully chosen tropes (such as eugenics, among others), they have been making one political mistake after another and more people are starting to see what their real message is. Yes, it probably did appear (and still does appear to many people) that OII is radical, angry and irrational. That is a risk that was worth taking because the other solutions would have never been effective because it meant accepting the victimization, the suppression of our right to speak.

I started this technique many years ago in an online support group that Dreger was monitoring even though she never posted. I had noticed that once she started controlling the content on ISNA’s blog many years ago that intersex issues were slowly disappearing from the site. I wrote a post entitled, “It’s about gender, stupid”. The post was not directed to anyone in particular. It was just a general discussion about how gender, especially gender norms, often have disastrous consequences on the everyday lives of intersex people. Not long after that post, maybe a week later, this is what appeared on the home page of ISNA’s website.

“Intersex is not about gender.”

I started checking around to find out who wrote that and it appears it was Alice Dreger herself. I also found out that she was writing almost all the content on ISNA’s site for a long time. If you notice, now that she is not with ISNA, the site has published almost nothing new.

There is NOT one mention that I can find on ISNA’s website about the Christiane Völling case in Germany. That case is probably one of the most important anti-surgery cases litigated. How could ISNA not be interested in this case? With their huge medical staff, why would they not offer open and positive support? The way the case has been handled, I fear that it might not succeed in the end. But the situation could have been different had there been more open discussion about this by those who are on the medical board of ISNA. Not a word anywhere that I can find.

Instead of speaking about such an important topic, what has Alice been doing? She has been publishing one blog entry after another on her personal blog in response to OII’s criticisms. She has been writing tomes denouncing the “feminine essence narrative” and actively defending Bailey, Lawrence and Triea. These people have nothing of scientific value to defend. There simply is no science behind what they are publishing. It is political spin and gender policing.

Why the silence about Christiane Völling’s case in Germany?

Her lawsuit is an anti-surgery case that was widely publicized in Europe with articles appearing in many languages throughout the world. There was almost nothing in English except what I translated.

The reason for the silence among English-speaking experts is very simple. This is about a "feminine essence narrative." Christiane Völling was assigned MALE and her female reproductive anatomy was removed without her consent. She has proof of this and presented it in court. She won, but the surgeon is now appealing and the letters from the court still address her as "Herr Völling".

Christiane knows that she is a woman despite her assignment as male. That is the reason there is NO support from Dreger and other DSD activists of this intersex woman who has been subjected to a life of suffering.

I have so many people to thank for having helped OII, some who are not directly associated with OII but who have been open to real discussion of intersex issues. I feel very positive about the future because real science based on data from the real world, not the narcissistic rants of political correctness or bigotry (which often form marriages of convenience), will ultimately prevail.

So, if you find that some of OII’s articles are “over the top” at times, remember that we have had no other way to get our message out but by provoking the people who are suppressing our freedom of speech to show their true intentions.

Therefore, in conclusion, I would like to stress OII has been a champion of DSD activism in the sense that we have been actively involved in “Defending the Speech of Dummies”.

Homochromosexuality: A new psychiatric disorder

2008-04-18T06:02:00.001-04:00

by Curtis E. Hinkle

13 April 2008

Available on OII's website at: http://www.intersexualite.org/Homochromosexuality.html

What is homochromosexuality? Before defining this mental illness, it would be better to look at psychiatric disorders in general, specifically psychosis, and then discuss more fully how this particular psychosis affects not only those suffering from it but society in general because this particular psychosis is presented by many influential leaders in religious, medical, feminist and other ideologically based social groups. As a result of the influence and power of those suffering from this particular psychosis, their delusional thinking has made this a more generalized psychotic delusion than other psychotic states. In other words, this particular psychiatric disorder tends to be a massive psychotic state affecting whole populations which has made study of this psychosis extremely difficult and even impossible in some areas of the world.

Psychosis is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality." People suffering from it are said to be psychotic. People experiencing psychosis may report hallucinations or delusional beliefs, and may exhibit personality changes and disorganized thinking. (1)

What are the symptoms of homochromosexuality? The most salient characteristic is the rigid, irrational delusion that sex is dimorphic and that chromosomes determine the real sex of an individual. This obviously combines irreconcilable thought processes which are contradictory and causes those suffering from homochromosexuality to illogically manipulate data to fit their irrational need to refuse the fact that people are extremely diverse and that there is a spectrum of sex variations in the natural world. Despite the fact that data prove that there are not just two sexes and that the sex development process is very complex with numerous parts of the body being involved, all of which can take different pathways within the same individual, these people stubbornly cling to the idea that there is a marker somewhere for the “true” sex of an individual and that there are only two sexes. Whereas the general population often shares this delusion, it is not a psychosis in most people because they are not obsessed with the delusion to the degree that many researchers, religious leaders and certain radical feminists are, who often spend a large part of their lives in useless research and polemics to defend their delusional thinking. However, the damage of this psychosis affects the general population in very tragic and sometimes deadly ways. One of the characteristics that homochromosexuals have in common is their fetish for chromosomes as the most important marker of a person’s true sex despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Let’s consider this fetish for chromosomes which seems to be the most basic symptom of this psychiatric disorder. Essentially, fetishism is attributing some kind of inherent value or powers to an object. For example, the person who sees magical or divine significance in a material object is mistakenly ascribing inherent value to some object which does not possess that value. (2) For quite a while now it has been established as a scientific fact that a “Y” chromosome does not make one male and in fact the “Y” chromosome is not a reliable marker for determining the sex of an individual. For example, there are XY-females who have become pregnant and given birth, some more than once. (See also footnote 3) There are individuals who have no Y chromosome who have fully developed male anatomy. Despite all the facts, this fetish for chromosomes appears epidemic among certain ideologically based groups. Just recently, there was an amendment proposed in the state of California which would have defined a man as anyone having at least one Y chromosome. This was felt necessary because the proponents of this amendment were more interested in their homochromosexual idea that marriage should be only between a man and a woman and they felt they can define exactly what a man and a woman are by chromosomes – their fetish – despite the fact that we know that hormones, gonads, internal reproductive anatomy, and many regions of the brain are all involved in determining the sex of an individual. However, these little bits called chromosomes are held up as having some magically divine power to define the sex of all people despite the scientific proof to the contrary but this obsession is caused by the other comorbid symptom of this psychosis which motivates their incessant quest to find some magical fetish which would define what a man and a woman are: their irrational delusion that there are only two sexes and everyone is really a male or a female. Reality proves otherwise.

This epidemic psychosis, homochromosexuality, is ravaging whole populations and causing severe suffering because it breeds sexism and prevents individuals from developing their full human potential. It is used to keep people in their “proper” place as determined by the psychotic leaders who charismatically spread this fetishism. Women are really very different from men they claim and this little chromosome proves it. “Look at this”, they say. “It is magical. It is God’s proof that we are different.” This is psychotic. Science proves that chromosomes do not have these magical powers.

What groups of the population are most affected by homochromosexuality? One group which suffers a particularly pernicious form of this psychotic delusion is a group of researchers involved in intersex research and research on homosexuality and transsexuality. It is this group which replaced the term “intersex” with “DSD”, short for “disorders of sex development” (a diagnosis which includes a whole array of “disorders” which were previously not intersex at all) and the reason this group suffers from the most pernicious form is because they are studying the very sex variations which prove that sex is not dimorphic but they insist that it really is. Their fetishism for chromosomes is evident in their diagnostic descriptors for each DSD. Each descriptor must start with the chromosome of the individual followed by an incongruent marker which would explain why it is a “disorder” of sex development. (4) It is incredible what magical powers these people see in chromosomes despite the fact that their own research shows that chromosomes do not a man or a woman make. It makes rational discussion with such unreasonable people impossible and at this time there is no effective treatment to help these individuals.

Another group that combines mythical thinking with their fetishism for chromosomes is found among religious leaders, especially in the Catholic Church and many fundamentalist evangelical churches also. In this group, the delusion is more understandable but nonetheless just as devastating to the general population. It is understandable because they are not basing their delusional thinking on science as alleged by the DSD researchers. They are basing their delusional thinking on mythical understandings of the Bible and religious dogma which often contradict scientific data. To read the incoherent thought processes of a typical religiously-oriented homochromosexual, click here. (For more homochromosexual vignettes: Click here or here or here)

Certain radical, separatist feminists are also responsible for spreading this psychosis and one of the most well-known is Germaine Greer. She has refused to consider women with androgen insensitivity syndrome as women and refers to them as “incomplete males”. (6) They are XY she states and one cannot change one’s chromosomes. The problem with her thinking is that there are XX-men and in many cases no matter what a woman with AIS would do, they are not going to be able to be a man because their bodies will not respond to the hormone necessary to virilize their bodies. Her delusional thinking that women are some magical class of people that she can define in a manner to preserve the sacred myth that there are only two sexes and women are very different from men has led her to the altar of the same fetishistic worship – homochromosexuality.

Research is only beginning in this area. No one has been able to find a cause for homochromosexuality. However, some researchers feel that it is possibly genetic and they are working to determine the cause. Their research has an eerie resemblance to some researchers who are using intersex people to try to find the cause of homosexuality such as J Michael Bailey, Eric Vilain (7) and Sherry Berenbaum. Unfortunately these researchers have damaged their own research by proposing a method of prenatal screening for homochromosexuality if the cause is ever found to be genetic. They feel there is no other treatment that would cure this psychotic disorder and therefore feel it would be more pragmatic to eliminate this from the gene pool. They have begun to write a paper very similar to the paper that J Michael Bailey wrote. J Michael Bailey has been interested in finding the cause of homosexuality (and using intersex people to help find it) and at the same time he has written a paper in defense of prenatal screening for homosexuality (8) once the cause would be found and in defense of allowing parents to abort such fetuses. This solution is disturbing to many people and so is the research by some groups who are homochromophobes. Even though homochromosexuality is a serious illness, these people should be treated with respect and it would be more humane to look for solutions to this problem that would be less violent and also take into consideration that there may be some important reason for this genetic anomaly in the human population.

Follow-up:

More recent research on homochromosexuality proves that this psychosis has found its way into poor countries where XX fetuses are terminated, simply because it is believed they are girls, and girls are less desirable. So they say. (Also, we wonder how many XX males have been "cleansed"). Forensics is now just coming to the conclusion that homochromosexuality isn't all it is "cracked-up" (pun INTENDED) to be. Male DNA at a crime scene or female DNA at a crime scene is now coming "under investigation”.

There is a particular form of homochromosexuality which often eludes psychiatric diagnosis and as a result there is a new diagnosis for this extremely dangerous type: autohomochromophilia. Autohomochromophilia is characterized by insisting that one is not a homochromosexual but nevertheless obsessing on the idea that really the current identity politics which divide people into just two categories – those who identify as female and those who identify as male based on some physical feature – is fundamentally valid and they become enamored by viewing themselves as important and scientific as the well-established homochromosexuals who continue to spread their psychotic delusions. One classic case of autohomochromophilia is Alice Dreger who has written: "why it is silly to think of your sex as being what you think your chromosomes are." (9) However, she has spent a lot of her life defending binary homochromosexuals and preserving the male/female identity politics implicit in such homochromosexually-challenged social systems and in so doing has inflicted much damage by erasing intersex and insisting that we are all really males or females with a disorder of sex development.

Is Alice Dreger a homochromosexual in denial? A latent homochromosexual? An ego-dystonic homochromosexual? Or is she just lying which is one of the most typical symptoms of an autohomochromophile? Obviously, her faux “intersex” activism and her binary, sexist views prove the latter.

There is some research which is proving a link between homochromosexuality and folie à deux (literally, "a madness shared by two") which is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which a symptom of psychosis (particularly a paranoid or delusional belief) is transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie à famille or even folie à plusieurs (madness of many). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder (DSM-IV) (297.3) and induced delusional disorder (folie à deux) (F.24) in the ICD-10, although the research literature largely uses the original name.

References

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetishism

(3) http://www.gendercare.com/library/italiano_paper3.html

(4) Table 2: An example of a DSD classification

Sex chromosome DSD’s include:

(A) 45,X (Turner syndrome and variants)

(B) 47,XXY (Klinefelter syndrome and variants)

(D) 46,XX/46,XY (chimeric, ovotesticular DSD)

46,XY DSD’s include:

(A) Disorders of gonadal (testicular) development

1. Complete gonadal dysgenesis (Swyer syndrome)

2. Partial gonadal dysgenesis

3. Gonadal regression

4. Ovotesticular DSD

(B) Disorders in androgen synthesis or action

1. Androgen biosynthesis defect (eg, 17-

hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase deficiency, 5a

reductase deficiency, StAR mutations

2. Defect in androgen action (eg, CAIS, PAIS)

3. LH receptor defects (eg, Leydig cell

hypoplasia, aplasia)

4. Disorders of AMH and AMH receptor (persistent

mullerian duct syndrome)

(eg, severe hypospadias, cloacal extrophy)

46,XX DSD’s include

(A) Disorders of gonadal (ovarian) development

1. Ovotesticular DSD

2. Testicular DSD (eg, SRY+, dup SOX9)

3. Gonadal dysgenesis

(B) Androgen excess

1. Fetal (eg, 21-hydroxylase deficiency, 11-hydroxylase

deficiency)

2. Fetoplacental (aromatase deficiency, POR)

3. Maternal (luteoma, exogenous, etc)

Source: Consensus statement on management of intersex disorders

I A Hughes, C Houk, S F Ahmed, P A Lee, LWPES/ESPE Consensus Group

http://www.medhelp.org/ais/PDFs/Chicago-Consensus-Statement-06.pdf

(6) Germaine Greer's "The Whole Woman"

Online commentary: http://www.aissg.org/debates/GREER.HTM

(7) “Because all Klinefelters that have a Y are male, whereas Turners, who have no Y, are females. So it's not a dosage or the number of X's, it's really the presence or absence of the Y.” Quote from Eric Vilain

Source of the above quote: When a Person Is Neither XX nor XY: A Q&A with Geneticist Eric Vilain

(Please note: It appears that the homochromosexuals who wrote the proposed amendment that defined a person as a man if a person had one Y chromosome had read Eric Vilain’s “research”.)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=q-a-mixed-sex-biology

(8) Homosexual eugenics paper by J. Michael Bailey

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Bailey/Greenberg-Bailey/Homosexual%20Eugenics.pdf

(9) http://www.alicedreger.com/beyond.html

Sex versus Gender

2008-04-10T07:14:00.000-04:00

Exposing medical violence and dishonesty

by Curtis E. Hinkle

March 29, 2008

Medical specialists complicate and erase intersex experience and visibility by insisting that sex is a biological fact and gender a social construct.

The first harm done to many intersexed infants is what is called "assigning a gender". In other words, the intersexed child is actually being assigned a "gender identity" (not a sex because the sex is considered to be "ambiguous"). However, the same specialists write that there is no clear understanding of how a child develops a "gender identity". Then after having assigned a "gender identity" to the intersexed child, the specialists choose the sex corresponding to the "gender identity" assigned and that is what they put as the sex on the birth certificate and other documents. If the medical specialists were logical in their use of the terms "sex" and "gender" (but this is illogical and that is why I do not accept that sex and gender are two distinct categories in a linguistic sense), they would refuse to put a "gender identity" on a birth certificate as the sex of the infant but that is precisely what they do. Therefore, the birth certificate of an intersexed child does not state the sex of the child; it is the child's "gender identity" as determined by the experts, not the children themselves.

Then all during their lives, people are concerned about the "gender identity" of the individual. It can become exasperating because each little difference detected can become enormously important and exaggerated as a sign of non-conformity to the gender identity imposed by the experts.

Then when one consults a physician, "gender identity" issues can become the focus rather than the real health problems that need to be attended to because we are perceived within a bi-gendered lens and if one does not agree with the "gender identity" discourse, then one is made to feel the problem is in our mind, not the mind of the physicians.

How many hours have been lost discussing gender issues with doctors instead of getting actual health care? How many times have we had to explain we are not in the doctor's office to talk about our identity but because our feet hurt, for example?

Navigating all this dishonest discourse throughout one's life saps one's energy and has done little if anything to improve the lives of intersexed children and adults.

If one asks the specialists what a "gender identity" is, one is often given a definition such as this:

Gender identity is a person's own sense of identification as male or female.

If gender identity is a person's own sense of identification, how can these same specialists justify assigning a "gender identity" to an intersexed child? How can these specialists predict the future and know the "person's own sense of identification"? One reads in their own protocols that they cannot predict someone's personal sense of identification as male or female. This is not scientific. This is dishonest. It is a hoax.

We are told that gender is social and that sex is biological. Then we are told that our sex (that is our legal sex classification) is really our "gender identity" which many of these same specialists state is not biological. Therefore, if "gender identity" is not a biological fact, why use this concept in place of the sex of the child on their birth certificate? This is because birth certificates which state the sex of an individual are using that term in a way which has redefined sex as a "gender identity", which proves that competence within biology is not what is being applied. This is a social exercise, a social construct. It is not about biology.

If other sciences used terms in this contradictory and dishonest manner, they would be exposed as not being scientific at all.

To state that gender is a social construct but that sex is a biological fact can at first appear logical but the actual use of these terms proves that this semantic distinction is not valid because the semantic field of the word "gender" overlaps and intersects the same semantic field as the word "sex" in English and it does this in medical discourse about the topic and in legal discourse also.

It is impossible to categorize all people into two distinct biological sexes. We are not even aware at this time of the degree to which sexual orientation and sex identity are linked with the sex development of an individual. However, we do know that these categories would not be as functional without a binary construct of sex and gender which is the fundamental principal justifying such categories.

Sex is a social construct and so is gender and often they are one and the same if you look closely at how medical and legal discourse are defining and categorizing people.

Why OII denounces transphobia and the pathologisation of intersex people

Now, I hope it is clear that it is not necessarily the word "gender" which bothers me. It is the notion that sex is a biological category and that gender is purely a social construct which I find troubling and inaccurate.

It is important to expose the dishonesty of what the experts are trying to tell us.

The sex of an individual is not really a biological fact as that term is used medically and legally and intersexed children prove that sex as used in medical and legal discourse is really an identity (not a biological reality) that is imposed on children.

However, the doctors admit that one cannot predict a child's identity or personal sense of self as a male or female. Nevertheless, this does not stop them from imposing a gender identity on the child and that becomes the SEX of the individual.

If doctors really are convinced that the "gender identity" of a person is the real sex of the individual (and it appears that the protocols in effect would confirm that they do in fact believe that this is the case, otherwise why put a "gender identity" as the sex of a person on a birth certificate?), then it would be logical to conclude that any person who is not in agreement with the identity imposed is better placed to declare their TRUE SEX since in essence we are dealing with an identity and not biological facts which can be substantiated.

It is not the word that causes so much harm. It is the dishonesty of how the specialists use this word which causes so much harm.

It is only the individual person who can determine their own sense of self and their identity and not a doctor. If one disagrees with the doctor's imposed "gender identity", one is not ill. The person who is violently imposing his own definitions and using his medical and legal power to erase and damage another person's most initmate sense of self is the one who is part of the problem and the society which would knowingly condone this needs to be questioned, challenged and eventually given the help it needs to enlarge its vision of human rights.

Disorders of sex development: Sexist, Classist Eugenics

2008-03-09T18:21:00.003-04:00

DSD (Disorders of sex development): a sexist, classist ideology based on eugenics

A brief exposé by Curtis E. Hinkle

March 9, 2008

1) What is sexism?

2) What is eugenics?

3) Who controls the definitions?

4) Who is fit to be born?

5) Is our sex a disorder?

1) What is sexism?

Sexism can be considered from different perspectives, both intricately related one to the other, one based on discrimination itself and the other on the division of all humans into legal sex categories which is the fundamental tool used to perpetuate and justify the discrimination.

Discrimination against people which is based on their sex assignment as male or female, instead of their individual merits, is sexist. This discrimination is so prevalent in our societies that it appears natural because we assume that the underlying binary division of all people into male and female is also natural, but it is not. Intersex people prove that it is not and it can be argued rather convincingly that the erasure of intersex as a natural sex variation is a result of the basic sexism which is considered normal in our society. Unfortunately, sexism is "normal" because there are medical and legal norms which justify this sexism. However, the fact that it is "normal" does not mean it is natural.

The most basic form of sexism is the biological essentialism (1) which is used to divide all humanity into just two legal categories - male and female with all deviations defined as pathological and in need of medical intervention to "correct" their sex. There would be no reason to justify this division of all humanity legally and medically into just two categories (2) if we felt there were no fundamental differences between these two categories and there would be no need to pathologize all intersex people as disorders of sex development if this unnatural division of all humanity as male or female were not politically motivated. (3)

2) What is eugenics?

"Eugenics is the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)."

Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, (c) Random House, Inc. 2006.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eugenics

Eugenics has a very tragic, racist, classist history.(4) The nature of eugenics makes it a political ideology based on definitions of people which divide humanity into those who are fit and those who are unfit. The basic problem is that those who control the definitions are those who have political supremacy over disenfranchised populations. Denying the racist, sexist and classist history of eugenics is dangerous if one honestly wants to understand the political motivations behind eugenic movements.

In the 20th Century, abortion has been introduced as a tool for eugenic movements. This is very problematic because the conflation of women's rights with eugenics often obscures the underlying racism, sexism and classism involved in the justification of abortion as a eugenic tool. Both sides of this debate overlook the serious dangers and inequalities of women as a class. The pro-choice debate does not emphasize the lack of most women in the world to make a real choice because they are deprived of that power even when abortion is provided and this can often lead to the elimination of female fetuses. The pro-life debate fails to recognize the need for women to control their own bodies and have the right over reproductive decisions concerning their bodies.

Instead of dealing with the serious oppression of people based on race, sex and class, upper middle-class pro-choice models of abortion as the model for feminism assumes that women who are lacking almost all control of their reproductive rights can benefit from such a model. What can often happen is the choice to eliminate females and all deviations from male and female with only male births being favored.(5)

3) Who controls the definitions?

Those in charge of the definitions which determine who are male and female and whose sex is a genetic defect is a group of predominantly, Euro-centric male medical experts: the Lawson Wilkins Pediatrics Endocrine Society along with Eric Vilain and Alice Dreger both associated with the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). This is the group which is responsible for the Chicago Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders which redefined intersex as a genetic defect and recommended the new "disorder" terminology with "intersex" being replaced by "disorders of sex development". (6)

This same group published the following consensus statement on CAH which recommends surgery on intersex infants between 2 and 6 months of age:

Consensus Statement on 21-Hydroxylase Deficiency from The Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society and The European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (Joint LWPES/ESPE CAH Working Group)

http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/87/9/4048

4) Who is fit to be born?

Those who are closest to the ones who control the definitions. Let's be honest and stop trying to justify racism, sexism and this abuse of power over us just because those in charge of the definitions are powerful and have great influence around the world. We are not fit to be born because we do not look like them; we do not act like them and we are a threat to their two-sex system which keeps them in a privileged position. They are "fit" simply because they control the definitions of who is fit.

5) Is our sex, that is intersex, a disorder?

We in OII firmly reject the idea that our sex is a disorder and we therefore reject the pathological definition of our sex as a "disorder of sex development" or DSD. The real danger and disorders are the racism and sexism which are developing eugenic ideologies and technologies to deal with what are social problems. Instead of empowering and valuing sex variations, the solution is to eliminate us.

Open discussions about the abuse of power by those who control the definitions is one important way to confront the real problem - eugenics, Euro-centric racism and male patriarchal models of power which are at risk of collapse if the current binary male/female dichotomies are not firmly held as sacrosanct.

We in OII do not accept the current male/female binary categories imposed on all people in most countries as sacrosanct and hope that others will help us confront the political agenda of those who would eliminate us.

Footnotes:

(1) "Biological Essentialism: Biological essentialism refers to the idea that men and women are intrinsically different due to some internal essence. Biological essentialists argue that men and women are distinct from one another and that they are opposites. They claim that gender differences aren’t really differences in gender but that they reflect a biologically based difference that is consistent across cultures. Furthermore, biological essentialists stipulate that there is no variation in the expression of biologically essential characteristics."

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Bookstore/2603/NEW261Y_Definitions.html

(2) Project 1-0-1 intersex

http://www.101intersex.de/index.php?=SID&sprache=En

(3) RACISM and SEXISM: A COLLECTIVE STRUGGLE: A MINORITY WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW By Valerie Russell

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/racesex/

(4) Brief history of eugenics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#History

(5) What Is Gendercide? http://www.gendercide.org/

(6) Alice Dreger and some other women who have great privilege within the two-sex system have played a prominent role in pathologizing sex variations. For more information: click here

Alice Dreger: The unethical ethicist?

2008-02-29T07:20:00.002-05:00

By Curtis E. Hinkle

February 29, 2008

Alice Dreger, the DSD activist, who bills herself as a bioethicist has over the past few years become mired by one ethical scandal after another. Just to mention a few of her scandals, let me start with what will be one of the major setbacks in intersex history. It was Alice Dreger who was one of the prime movers of the shift from “intersex” to DSD, “disorders of sex development”. She did this by consulting with doctors and determining what worked for them and consulted the intersex community after the change had been made. Quite unethical for an ethicist because there is practically no support for this replacement of the term “intersex” with “disorders of sex development” and the ensuing Consensus Statement (1) which approved this change of terminology which elaborated a set of protocols that are a major setback for intersex people with surgery being recommended between two and six months of age. (2) This was a scandal of historical proportions.

After controlling intersex activism for over a decade and leaving it in shambles, she decided to move on to transgender activism. And already she is becoming the same divisive “activist” in the transgender movement that she was in the intersex movement. She has begun by taking sides with the gatekeepers of the trans movement, just as she placed herself with the gatekeepers of the intersex community and then left us with a more pathological terminology and set of protocols based on intersex being a genetic defect. (3)

As she started her trans activism, many of us in the intersex movement saw the same pattern slowly emerge that had been her hallmark within the intersex movement – siding with proponents of a highly problematic, pathological definition of transsexualism and attacking any opponents who resisted the academic and discursive control she was usurping over their own right to self definition and in determining their own sociopolitical agenda without having to contend with another interloper who had no experiential understanding of trans issues.

All of a sudden she picked a fight with Andrea James and tried to prevent Ms. James from being allowed to speak at the university where Alice Dreger works and alleged she was afraid of Andrea James. It was quite odd that the organization which invited Ms. James to speak at Northwestern University where Dreger works was evidently not frightened by Andrea James. Dreger decided to use the Bush foreign policy model of a pre-emptive strike against anyone who might possibly be viewed as a threat and published “The blog I write in fear” (4) in which she brought up an unfortunate event that had happened a few years ago between her colleague J Michael Bailey and Andrea James. She alleged she was frightened of Andrea and that she should not be allowed to speak at the University. This is the strawman that has been used for years now to silence any discussion of the unethical behavior that Bailey and Dreger have been involved in. Instead of dealing with the facts of their own behavior, anyone who dares discuss the facts is automatically smeared with ad hominem attacks linking them to the serious mistake that Andrea James made a few years ago. Dreger even did this to me when I openly questioned her DSD model as a replacement for intersex. (5) Instead of dealing with what she was doing, Dreger sent out an e-mail alleging that I had teamed up with Andrea James, someone I didn’t know at the time, and warned intersex people that if they were not vigilant, the intersex movement would be destroyed. Well, that was already a fait accompli and it was Dreger who was instrumental in its destruction. Many of us are trying to rebuild and move on.

We later found out why Dreger was alleging she was so afraid of Andrea James. She was working at the same University as J Michael Bailey and she was writing an article in defense of his unethical behavior and she was going to include Andrea James in that article. It certainly would be good fodder for the article if she could have provoked Andrea to get more dirt on her to include in her upcoming “exposé” of the “facts” to suit her employer, Northwestern University.

Dreger then published a 60-page tome in defense of her colleague, J Michael Bailey and in that article she once again threw ethics out the window and simply gives Bailey another platform to justify having sex with research subjects: “there is nothing intrinsically wrong or forbidden about having sex with a research subject[….] Some of my colleagues have had sex with their research subjects, because it is not unusual to ask one’s romantic partner to be a subject” (Bailey, 2005).” Rather disturbing ethical standards that Dreger is disseminating in this tome in defense of her colleague. (6)

Finally, someone is challenging Dreger on her ethics and many of us in the intersex community feel it is high time. Robin Mathy has filed ethics complaints with the American Psychological Association against Dreger and Bailey. One of the allegations in the complaint centers on Dreger and Bailey having both expressed that having sex with a research subject is not inherently wrong. Robin Mathy has also filed a complaint with the Illinois Board of Examiners of Psychology against Bailey for allegedly misrepresenting himself as a psychologist. (7)

It does appear that Robin Mathy has a lot of facts to substantiate these allegations along with many others. Ethics? Alice Dreger’s ethics seem to be focused on what is best for her career and gaining access to more power, not helping the powerless which she now has a history of dismissing, silencing and abusing.

Notes:

(1) Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders

http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/118/2/e488

(2) This is a quote from the Same group that gave us the Consensus Statement on DSD's.

Consensus Statement on 21-Hydroxylase Deficiency from The Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society and The European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Joint LWPES/ESPE CAH Working Group

Surgery is recommended at age 2-6 months:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Once a decision has been made to raise a newborn as female, surgery for those with virilized genitalia caused by CAH is recommended when the patient has a high proximal junction between the vagina and urethra (12, 13). Surgery on infants with ambiguous genitalia requires a high degree of expertise and should only be performed in centers with significant experience. Based on recent clinical experience, the recommended time for surgery is at age 2–6 months; although, at present, this is not universal practice. It is important to note that surgery at this stage is technically easier than at later stages."

You can download the complete Consensus Statement on CAH at:

http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/reprint/87/9/4048

(3) Alice Dreger: Disorders of Sex Development

http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html

(4) “The Blog I Write in Fear”. May 13, 2006.

http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear.html

(5) Email from Alice Dreger to some intersex activists

http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_26

(6) “In his online self-defense piece, “Academic McCarthyism,” published in October 2005, Bailey countered with this: “her ‘complaint’ is not true. The alleged event never happened. If I ever needed to do so, I could prove this, but there is no reason why I should” (Bailey, 2005). Bailey’s reasoning for why he should not have to prove he didn’t have sex with Juanita was twofold: first, he “insist[ed] that Juanita was not a research subject” when she claimed they had sex; second, “there is nothing intrinsically wrong or forbidden about having sex with a research subject[….] Some of my colleagues have had sex with their research subjects, because it is not unusual to ask one’s romantic partner to be a subject” (Bailey, 2005).”

Dreger, Alice. 2007. The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A

Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age. p. 43

(7) Debate resumes on methods of psych professor's research by Michael Gsovski

Issue date: 2/27/08

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=c6222fa5-96dd-47ee-b912-c58a9874fbdf

DSD: North American Medical fascism and manufacturing consent

2008-02-04T10:36:00.003-05:00

By Curtis E. Hinkle

Founder, Organisation Intersex International

One of the most important questions to ask concerning the controversy surrounding the term “DSD”, Disorders of sex development, as a replacement for intersex is a simple one. Why do we need to have a name at all? Why do we need to have a diagnosis at all? Other important questions include who is naming us and for what reasons? Does this have anything to do with us at all? Should it even concern us?

In the last several years, many people who are not intersexed have been working to come up with a new term to replace the term “intersex”? It is interesting that we in OII have found almost no intersex people that were actively involved in this search for a new term. We have found almost no intersex people who had previously been writing articles and scientific justifications for replacing the term intersex with the term “Disorders of Sex Development”. We therefore conclude that the search for a new term was something of intense importance to people who are not intersexed but of little or no importance to intersexed people themselves. The only exception that I can document is Cheryl Chase, the one intersexed person who co-authored the following article with Alice Dreger and Dreger’s husband, Dr. Aron Sousa.

“Changing the Nomenclature/Taxonomy for Intersex: A Scientific and Clinical Rationale”, Alice Dreger et al, Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism, 18. (729-733 (2005).

http://www.medhelp.org/ais/PDFs/Dreger-Nomenclature-2005.pdf

In this article, the authors propose replacing the term hermaphrodite and the 5-sex system which divides humans into females, males, true hermaphrodite, male pseudohermaphrodite and female pseudohermaphrodite with the term “disorders of sex differentiation” (later changed to disorders of sex development) because this would work better in a medical context. What is so problematic about this article which was seminal in the shift from intersex to DSD is that there is no challenge to the assumption that intersex variations need to have a medically accurate name at all. The whole article is based on the assumption that sex variations are indeed pathological and require treatment. However, the article gives no proof at all for such an assumption and that is the serious contradiction in the arguments put forward in the article. Any serious medical conditions that a person who is not standard male or female has are exactly the same medical conditions that standard males and females have. The more important question would have been to focus on medical conditions that actually do affect people who are intersex and explain how these might require slightly different medical treatments than in a person who is not intersexed. However, this article assumes that one’s sex variation is the disease to be treated and never challenges that assumption and it concludes by suggesting that one approach would be to use etiology-based diagnoses. (1)

For years both Dreger and Chase stressed that intersex was not a pathological condition but a biological variation. “Intersex is a socially constructed category that reflects real biological variation.” (2) If this is so, it is also obvious that the shape and size of one’s nose is also a biological variation just as the size and shape of one’s clitoris. If a person wishes to change the size and shape of one’s nose, that is available to them and there are surgeons who will do these operations for them. There is no group I am aware of that is coming up with an umbrella term to include all nose variations in the population which would make all these variations a medical pathology and which could justify changing the shape of noses without the consent of the person with the nose. Parents can still have cosmetic surgery on a child’s nose if they feel it will prevent their child from functioning well in society. There could be an argument made that nose shape and size could be more stigmatizing than the size of one’s clitoris or penis because we usually present ourselves in public with our noses exposed.

Despite the good intentions that are expressed in this article, the medical emergency that intersex supposedly represents is what is the focus for justifying the change of the terminology. In this article, the emergency now is coming up with a medical diagnosis which will classify all variations of sex development so that people with this “medical emergency” can get better treatment. But shouldn’t the more basic question be to ask why this is being treated at all? That is not the case.

Dreger’s article promotes the use of the old-time medical phrase “disorders of sexual differentiation" (later changed to “development”) – using the straw man of “hermaphroditism” as if it were the word being replaced (instead of intersex being the word they wanted to replace):

In conclusion, we suggest the language of ‘hermaphroditism’ and ‘pseudohermaphroditism’ be abandoned. One possible alternative . . . is to use instead . . . the umbrella term “disorders of sexual differentiation”. Such an approach would have the salutary effects of improving patient and physician understanding and reducing the biases that are inherent in the use of the current language of ‘hermaphroditism’. – Dreger et al.

That old medical terminology had been adopted in 2003 in the mission statement of "The Network on Psychosexual Differentiation" and the John Hopkins. It was that NICHD group of researchers, funded by NIH, who are behind the Northwestern/Penn State DSD Consortium that had hired Dreger:

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/aims.html

It would appear that the John Hopkins Medical University (responsible for all the traumatizing experiments on intersex children by Dr. John Money and the theories he developed which continue to justify irreversible sex assignment surgeries) has a vested interest in protecting itself from the possible litigation that could have been directed against them and it was the John Hopkins Medical University which started using the "disorder" terminology even before the NICHD. It is also interesting to note that the author and central figure in this shift in terminology, Alice Dreger, is the associate editor of one of the official publications of the Johns Hopkins University Press. (3)

There seems to be a conflict of interest on Dreger’s part. And if you read her articles closely this conflict of interest will become more and more evident. What appears at first to be a move towards depathologizing intersex starts being seen for what it really is – a way of pinning down intersex and ALL variations of sex differentiation as an illness.

In a recent lecture at the Kinsey Institute that Alice Dreger entitled: "No Matter How You Slice It? Parsing Intersex", Dreger stated:

“A couple of people at my Kinsey talk pressed me about the terminology and asked me to work more on trying to find a new, better term. What about, for example, "variations of sex development," as some have suggested? Honestly, I don't see that term flying in the medical system; I've asked about it, and it doesn't go anywhere. Part of the reasonable fear among medical professionals is over-de-pathologizing sex anomalies. . .” (4)

Sophie Siedlberg responded to Dreger's pathological defense: "Reasonable fear of de-pathologizing sex anomalies? Like what is that supposed to mean? That doctors are upset because some people object to terminology that in law allows the doctors to slice, dice and rotate children on a spit or something?" (5)

Is there a need for name for sex variations at all? Many people will not feel there is and feel comfortable with the terms male and female but to others the term intersex appears helpful and has been working well for many of us. It is to be noted that no one is imposing this term on anyone. It is not a legally imposed sex and intersex activists are not working to impose this term on people in a medical context either. Nothing could be further from the truth. People born with sex variations are free to consult doctors for problems which affect their health but does that give them the right to work to impose medically defined pathologies on all people who are born with sex variations who see their body as a natural variation, not a medical emergency? The fact is that there are almost no intersex people involved in doing this. It is people like Dreger who is not intersex and medical doctors and parents who are behind this and we should hold them accountable and ask them why they want to humiliate us and pathologize us.

Footnotes:

1. Page 733. “Changing the Nomenclature/Taxonomy for Intersex: A Scientific and Clinical Rationale”, Alice Dreger et al, Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism, 18. (729-733 (2005).

2. What is intersex? http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex

3. According to the official site for the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, the Associate Editors are Alan N. Schechter and Alice D. Dreger.
http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/perspectives_in_biology_and_medicine/editorial.html

(4) Dreger, Alice. Why “Disorders of Sex Development”? (On Language and Life)

http://www.alicedreger.com/dsd.html

(5) Siedlberg, Sophia. Treestumps and Broomsticks. http://www.intersexualite.org/Siedlberg.html#anchor_12

Elizabeth Reis defames and trivializes intersex people

2008-02-02T18:35:00.001-05:00

I notice a critical flaw in Figure 4-A. The figure contradicts Dr. Dre’s (PhD) treatise entitled ‘Bitches ain’t shit’. In it is stated that “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks”. While you have correctly shown that ‘Bitches’ and ‘Shit’ are two discrete groups (i.e. that “Bitches ain’t shit”), you have incorrectly shown the class of “bitches” as existing partially outside of the groups “tricks” and “hoes”. The correct formulation of the theory would have “bitches” as the intersection of the two classes, with no section outlying. Keep in mind, bitches ain’t shit but hoes AND (not and/or) tricks.
http://www.complex.com/blogs/2007/09/10/droppin-science-on-gangsta-rap/
When I first read Elizabeth Reis' article justifying DSD as the best term for intersex, I immediately thought of this Venn diagram.

Below is the abstract of a recent article written by Elizabeth Reis, someone who is not intersex, who tries to justify the unjustifiable by thinking some clever little slight of hand will make all well with DSD terminology. No regard is given to intersex voices and our real dignity and right to speak for ourselves and to have an equal say in our lives and our own struggle for human rights. Most women don't like being called bitches and ho's and I don't appreciate this woman telling me that DSD is a good slur for me by pretending I can think it means divergence of sex development rather than disorder of sex development. DSD is DSD and Elizabeth Reis would do better to stop trivializing and pathologizing intersex people and our struggle for human rights and to start listening to us.

Divergence or disorder? the politics of naming intersex.
Author: Elizabeth Reis.
Source:Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 50.4 (Autumn 2007): p535(9). (3827 words) Reading Level (Lexile): 1580.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Johns Hopkins University Press

ABSTRACT The conditions once known under the umbrella terms intersex and hermaphroditism are now generally being called disorders of sex development in medical settings. The terms might seem synonymous, but in fact there are significant differences with controversial consequences. Hermaphroditism, an older term that can still be found in many medical writings, is vague, demeaning, and sensationalistic, conjuring mythic images of monsters and freaks. In the 1990s, activists advocated intersex to describe discordance between the multiple components of sex anatomy, but that word alienated many parents of affected children, as it suggests a self-conscious alternative gender identity and sexuality. Disorders of sex development also refers to intersex, but it deemphasizes the identity politics and sexual connotations associated with intersex, avoids the degradation associated with hermaphrodite, and instead highlights the underlying genetic or endocrine factors that cause prenatal sex development to take an unusual path. I argue that using disorder is problematic, because it implies medical conditions in need of repair, when some intersex anatomies, though atypical, do not necessarily need surgical or hormonal correction. I advocate a less pathologizing new term, divergence of sex development, that might reduce some of the conflict over nomenclature and satisfy intersex people, their parents, and their doctors.

1) Elizabeth Reis cites only 1 intersex person who is opposed to this stigmatizing terminology. Her article is based on doctors, specialists and other non-intersexed people and what THEY think is best for us.

2) Elizabeth Reis uses a lot of ideas from our own website but never mentions all the hundreds of people in OII and their opposition to this humiliating treatment and the exclusion of almost all intersex people in coming up with DSD terminology and the subsequent protocols based on this change of terminology.

I am left with the impression that Elizabeth Reis is nothing but another feminist, norm-born woman wanting to speak for the intersex community in order to try to justify the unjustifiable and further marginalize us because we don't fit her definition of what it means to be fully human capable of speaking for ourselves. We are not a divergence; we are not a disorder and she would feel just as offended if we wrote such offensive articles speaking on behalf of women and why they should be a called a DIVERGENCE FROM MALE but not a woman.

I am not convinced this woman has come very far in her feminist principles. I would suggest that she stop speaking for us and listen to us - not just one or two intersex people who agree with her. - Curtis E. Hinkle, founder of the Organisation Intersex International

Articles by Curtis E. Hinkle

2008-01-17T19:20:00.000-05:00

For a list of articles in English written by the founder of the Organisation Intersex International:

http://www.intersexualite.org/Curtis.html#anchor_14

Against sexists in “Blackface”

2008-01-16T16:15:00.000-05:00

by Curtis E. Hinkle
© 2008
Translated and adapted from the French
French available at:
http://www.intersexualite.org/Curtis.html#anchor_27

Video depicting blackface performances and iconography and the implications of the commercialization of such stereotypes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kc4EwD5hoA

Changing one’s body does not necessarily change the identity of the individual in the body. This concept is essential to intersex activism. Otherwise, early surgical interventions on intersex infants would be easier to justify and rationalize.

Studying intersex in an academic setting does not change one’s identity either.

I would like to briefly discuss certain sexist tendencies that I do not personally like and I see a lot of commonalities between these particular sexist tendencies and certain elements from the racist history of the United States involving the tradition of performing in blackface.

I often see intersections between the struggles against racism and sexism. Those who are intersexed, victims of a brutal sexist system which often robs us of both our body and our identity, often need to be aware of the risks of sexist movements and their appropriation of our own visibility because there are many risks involved in our struggle for visibility in a world where we are not allowed to exist as human beings with full human rights.

This was true of African American slaves also. There were people who felt they had only the best of intentions who ultimately ended up creating some of the most damaging racist elements of American culture which did not help end racism despite all their good intentions. They actually reinforced the very slavery of the individuals they were trying to help by elaborating an artistic representation of stereotypes which are still very deeply rooted in the American consciousness. Images, theatrical performances, and music are extremely effective forms of communication and almost all propaganda is reinforced by an arsenal of iconographic representations which serve to embed the message more concretely than words alone can.

It is important to point out that I am specifically referring to artistic, academic and exhibitionistic iconographies which are focused on the “freak” body of intersex people and not the personal choices of intersex people themselves concerning their own clothing, what aspects of their own appearance they which to emphasize in a more positive manner or their own conceptualization of the intersexuality. I am specifically limiting this comparison to performances and other iconographic representations, both artistic and academic, which are intended to help those concerned, the intersexed.

“Performers with their faces blackened with burnt cork or blackface started appearing on the American stage towards the end of the 17th Century; they usually represented servants whose role was only to provide a brief moment of comic relief [1] with the intention nevertheless to make people laugh by mimicking the “Blacks of the Plantation”. It is important to note that the birthplace of the blackface minstrels was not the Deep South but the abolitionist North.” [2]

People often mistakenly believe that blackface performances have their roots in the Deep South of the United States. “In 1922 there were still serious debates in the pages of the New York Herald about who were the best actors depicting Black people, Whites or Blacks themselves. And we must remember that the minstrel was born in the anti-slavery environment of the North in the most sophisticated and most cosmopolitan city of America.” [3]

Those who started doing these performances were White people who wanted to help slaves and their ideas about Blacks were that they were content, obliging and musical, etc. They started performing in blackface but what they actually ended up doing was the commercialization and marketing of stereotypes intended primarily for the White public who were the consumers of the productions and it was the White public which controlled the market. Ultimately, African Americans themselves started performing in blackface in order to present their own talent to a public which was overwhelmingly White: a reinforcement of their own invisibility.

In my opinion, the same mechanisms are in play when a person enlarges their clitoris and becomes exhibitionistic and starts talking about intersex issues as if their choice for clitoral enlargement somehow helps them understand intersex issues. The same mechanisms are in play when an academic feels she has the right to help us without even consulting us and who writes protocols full of demeaning terms with an abject focus on genetic defects. These are all stereotypes, whether artistic or academically generated. The important point is that they are NOT generated for and by the people most directly affected, the intersexed themselves.

No matter how much the Whites wanted to help, putting on blackface and speaking for Blacks did not make them Black. It was racist. The same applies to certain help from non-intersexed people. No matter what they do, they are not intersexed and their help often ends up simply reinforcing the iconography of stereotypes already prevalent for intersexed people. Sexism sells just as racism does because the consumers who control the market and the production of stereotypical images, pathological diagnoses, etc. are not us. It is them.

[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Shakki/Traduc

[2] D'Emett Miller à Eminem : Chanteurs blancs, coeurs noirs ?
http://orta.dynalias.org/archivesrouge/article-rouge?id=4460

[3] Blackface :au confluent des voix mortes par Nick Tosches p. 19
Éditions Allia, Paris, 2003.

Support Groups

2007-12-07T05:01:00.000-05:00

Terms such as "abnormal", "disorder" and "dysfunction" reinforce negative stigmas that can contribute to negative sense of self. - Esther Morris Leidolf, http://www.mrkh.org/

Support groups are the best resource for information and emotional support. Patients usually find them on their own, or long after treatment. Some groups are offered in hospitals--gatherings that are organized by patients--and also on-line. Some groups are closely moderated while others are not. The common theme is that without each other we would be doomed to a life of ignorance, isolation and shame. These groups are where the experts are found. They are the survivors, the researchers, and provide the follow-up so desperately needed. Support groups offer patients and families a chance to hear from adults with real life experiences. This is what the survivors have taught us:

To read the complete article:
http://www.intersexualite.org/support_groups.html

Anthology of writings

2007-07-02T08:39:00.000-04:00

You can download in PDF anthologies of my writings

In English:

http://www.intersexualite.org/Right_to_ones_self.pdf

En français:

http://www.intersexualite.org/Hermaphrodites.pdf

DSD - Is there really a consensus?

2006-09-11T23:01:00.000-04:00

We in OII have been interested in the new term which those who feel they speak for us are now imposing on us. Just as our sex was imposed on us without our consent, now the experts and DSD activists are imposing pejorative terminology on us as our new identity. Was there really any consultation of those directly affected by this new pejorative identity label? It appears there was not. Most of us do not identify as disordered nor do we feel that our sex is disordered.

You can find information here about how we feel:
http://tinyurl.com/pzl52

Scroll down and you will see letters from intersex activists about DSD on the following site:
http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/91/7/554
Very interesting that one of the activists in favor of this new identity label is not intersexed but a parent and a doctor herself. The guidelines for OUR "management" are written for these two groups - doctors and parents. They offer no manual for US.

The Organisation Intersex International did a survey:

http://tinyurl.com/n2jyq

DSD Survey results thus far:

http://tinyurl.com/p9h8c

Disordering the lives of children

2006-08-18T13:32:00.000-04:00

Photo: Leading DSD expert

We are no longer hermaphrodites. We are no longer intersexed. We are all men and women with disorders of sex development according to many of the medical experts who have managed our lives over the past decades. We now have a new Consortium for the Management of Disorders of Sex Development and they are proposing to manage the lives of future children born with this disorder. What are the risks involved with this change in terminology? I think there are many.

Complete article:
http://tinyurl.com/pt467

Pathological (hetero)sexism and the medicalisation of sex in children

2006-07-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

Intersex – The sex that dare not speak its name

It is hardly a newsflash that we live in a sexist society. However, just when we think we might be making progress in our struggle for equality and dignity, we are sometimes surprised at the backlash and the political power behind it. We have seen evidence of this powerful (hetero)sexist machinery in the United States just recently with the announcement by ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, concerning its embrace of the term “disorder of sex development”. This term is supposedly better for children than the term “intersex”, according to this US group.

Complete text:
http://tinyurl.com/pd5k8

OII and diversity

2006-07-04T08:18:00.000-04:00

Organisation Intersex International
www.intersexualite.org
Note from President

I will not take public positions for or against certain members or groups associated with OII. As president, I feel it is my responsibility to let people say what they feel is important to them, not to publicly agree or disagree with them. My own positions on issues will be found in the articles I have written. Others are free to disagree and be heard. There are too many different ways to be intersex for any one person to speak for the intersex community in general. I cannot speak for the intersex community in general, only a certain segment of that community. Other intersex people have different experiences and perspectives from mine. They have a right to be heard, even when some of their views may not appeal to certain people or groups.

I often receive inquiries about certain essays or opinions on OII's web site. Often the person writing is assuming that intersex is an identity, which it is for some people, but OII is not an organisation for those who identify as intersex but for those who are simply intersexed, regardless of identity and for our allies, many of which can disagree among themselves. OII welcomes allies from all communities but the fact that these different communities have disagreements among themselves is not an issue that we feel we should resolve. We simply are very happy to see that many communities find that they share the same goals of human rights and of combating sexism that OII does.

Questions concerning opinions of transsexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, gender identity disorder and the disagreements about opinions expressed on these topics are not easy for me to answer except from my own point of view. My opinions on these topics will not reflect those of others. Members are free to have diverse opinions and also opinions which might not be politically correct to some people.

There is a rich diversity of opinion among the different members. No one person speaks for OII. All members do.

The opinions of one person or group do not mean that OII does or does not support a certain group or community. The fact that there are disagreements among the LGBT community or that there are disagreements among feminists is not central to OII's focus. For OII to get too involved in resolving disagreements over trans issues, lesbian issues, feminist issues, gay issues, etc. would simply divert OII from its primary focus - intersex visibility and human rights regardless of identity. Intersex people will have a myriad of opinions on all these topics. The point of OII is to let them express their own opinions. We are only beginning to have any voice. To censor a very small, marginalized group because some of its members do not express views which are politically correct to certain other identity groups or other political movements is not the goal of OII. Our goal is letting intersex people have not one voice, but many voices.

Thanks for your support and for listening to us.

In solidarity,
Curtis E. Hinkle
President, OII
Organisation Intersex International
www.intersexualite.org

Hermaphrodite Kisses

2006-04-09T16:30:00.000-04:00

Hermaphrodite Kisses

I look at you for the first time
You lower your eyes, the small timid guy
And slowly you smile and I take your hand
In mine – two hermaphrodite hands

I take you in my arms and press you against me
You the little guy with porcelaine skin
Soft as velvet – it gives me the shivers
And me the tall girl with a beard

I feel you finally collapse in my arms
Our two bodies sing in unison
I place my lips on yours
Two electric bodies – Souls sparkling

A long kiss, one we had waited so long for
Between two hermaphrodites who finally find each other
And I whisper softly in your ear
I adore boys who are girls…

Who love girls who are boys.

Curtis E. Hinkle

The fundamental error of conflating intersex with birth defects

2006-03-28T17:20:00.000-05:00

by Curtis E. Hinkle

In order to make a very strict separation between intersex and transidentified issues, the North American intersex movement has made a fundamental error and that error is conflating intersex with birth defects, an error they have committed so as to differentiate transidentified issues which are viewed as gender issues and intersex which are viewed as purely a body issue. In this essay we will see that it is not that simple and that this political tactic has limited the action and growth of the intersex movement and objectified intersexuals.

The fundamental problem with viewing intersex as a medical condition only is that unlike other congenital conditions which affect the body, sex is recorded on birth certificates. Intersex can often pose serious challenges in deciding which of the two official sexes to put on the birth certificate which then affects the whole life of the individual who has been placed in one of the two categories, often resulting in treatments deemed necessary to normalize their bodies so they fit the stereotypes of that sex and furthermore can result in assigning a sex which is totally alien to the person in the body which has been normalized. This can cause very serious trauma which affects many intersexuals and the underlying justification for these crimes is the legal need to impose one of only two sex categories on all individuals born. This legal requirement to sex all bodies as male or female is the one, basic justification that the medical community has for mutilating our bodies, putting us in boxes which may be totally unacceptable to us and coming up with a very rich set of pathological terms and labels to pathologize any deviation from standard male or female.

I like the analysis that Judith Butler has made about gender as performative. Many people have misunderstood her terminology and thought that the term performative was related to “performace”. She did later incorporate that idea. However, the original use of this term which comes from the field of linguistics is the more fundamental meaning she gives to the idea of gender as performative. In linguistics, the use of the word performative refers to statements which cannot be categorized as true or false but which “perform” the action they state. For example: “I promise.” “I swear.” “I pronounce you man and wife.” By saying these sentences, you have performed the act stated.

As opposed to people with other congenital conditions, intersexuals face a series of performative discourses which affect identity issues, not just their bodies. First, the statement, “It’s a girl”. The newborn in question is a girl because the person who writes this on the birth certificate has so stated. In other words the person’s discursive power and authority over the infant has placed her in the category simply by stating it and then recording it. This is all about the use of language to make something so, whether it is or not in reality true or false. Such legal discourse is purely performative because by saying it one makes it so and the individual is categorized without consent and for what purpose?

Then we are given a name on the birth certificate, another performative use of language and these names are often “sexed”. Then we might decide we wish to get married and once again we are faced with the use of performative language which often will not “pronounce us as man and wife” with the partner of our choice.

Medical, legal and religious discourse controls our lives in ways that other people with bodies that do not meet norms do not face and this is the serious problem with conflating intersex with just a body issue.

A person who is born without an arm is not faced with legal, medical and religious discourse which separates all people into one-armed and two-armed people and then sets very rigid norms which all the people of each category must adhere to. This is not recorded on the birth certificate. It does not require sorting through different lists of names, one for one-armed people and the other for those that are two-armed and it does not prevent a one-armed person from getting an artificial limb by making them agree to psychological treatments and being categorized as mentally ill for wanting to change their status from one-armed to two-armed people. Furthermore, it does not prevent a two-armed person from marrying another two-armed person.

Conflating intersex with body issues merely objectifies the intersexual and overlooks the complexity of issues and the trauma that many intersexuals face trying to live in a world that has no place for them.

Our society has norms and these norms are not natural. They only appear to be natural because we have often unconsciously internalized them to such a degree that they seem not only “normal” but natural. Sex, gender and orientation are all part of the same basic problem which results from sexing bodies into just two categories. Some of us are granted the privilege of normalcy, while others are not and it all is based on our bodies and who owns those bodies – the state or the individual.

Intersexuality is one of the most challenging threats to this arbitrary division of people into just two categories because intersex is based on what is supposedly the very criteria for placing us in the categories male or female to begin with, the body. In this respect, intersexuality is a body issue and very few people would challenge that and to understand the topic, one has to deal with the body and how many bodies do not fit the norms imposed legally, not naturally, which are then medicalized into conformity.

However, this need to normalize bodies and to categorize people into just two categories also involves gender norms and sexual orientation norms which affect intersexuals to a much higher degree we have found out than the population in general. To minimize the issues of gender norms and sexual orientation norms which are all based on the body we have been “normalized” into or legally defined by is a very serious disregard for the intersexual who has been placed in a legal category and normalized without their consent.

Until sex is no longer a legal category imposed on people, it is a very serious mistake to conflate intersex as just a body issue. It is about forced normalization, about people assigned genders they do not agree with. It is about people who love others that society sees as the inappropriate sex. It is about all of this. About mutilated bodies, mutilated genders and identities and often being deprived of legally marrying the partner of our choice.

About the violent construction of sex as a binary */**

2006-03-11T21:07:00.001-05:00

About the violent construction of sex as a binary */**
by Antke Engel

This is a very good article I translated with the permission of the author.
http://www.intersexualite.org/Dr-Engel.html

Test your I.Q. (Intersex Quotient)

2006-03-11T20:55:00.001-05:00

Have some fun. Take the following tests.

Test your I.Q. (Intersex Quotient)

The purpose of this test is to help you understand that sex, not just gender, is itself a social construct and that male and female are not discrete, essential categories any more than intersex is.

This next quiz serves the same purpose:

Am I Intersex?

Ten Misconceptions about Intersex

2006-03-11T20:49:00.001-05:00

Organisation Intersex International
http://www.intersexualite.org

1. Intersex means that a person has both sets of genitalia.
2. 1 in 2000 infants is born intersex.
3. Intersex is about homosexuality.
4. Intersex is not about gender. (This is a statement on ISNA's home page)
5. Intersex is part of the transgender movement.
6. Only true hermaphrodites are real hermaphrodites.
7. Transsexualism is not an intersex condition.
8. The intersex movement is an identity movement like other GLBT movements.
9. Most intersex people were assigned female.
10. Intersexuality is a condition which can be cured.

For the whole article, click here.

Why the Intergender Community is so Important to Intersexuals

2006-03-11T20:37:00.001-05:00

by Curtis E. Hinkle
Organisation Intersex International
http://www.intersexualite.org

Often those of us who are intersex who also affirm our intergender identity are marginalized not only by society at large but by the intersex community itself. It is time that we take our rightful place at the table and articulate our own views about the importance of our presence. We must speak up and resist the erasure of our identity both within the intersex movement and elsewhere. Our inclusion in society is crucial to ending the underlying violent oppression that many different people face, not just the intersex community.

One objection that often comes from intersex activists is to dismiss those of us who are intergender as insignificant because we are a minority. First of all, how do they know this to be so? Simply looking at one’s small circle of intersex friends and extrapolating generalizations from that close-knit community is very misleading. There are many intersex people all over the world who do identify as intergender. I don’t accept the premise that those of us with intergender identities are a minority. But, what if it we were? Is that a reason to dismiss us and our issues? If so, then society is perfectly justified in dismissing intersex since the definition that most experts give for it makes it such a small category of people. So-called “specialists” have defined intersex in such a limited way in order to erase almost all ambiguity which does not confirm the binary categories for sex which have been constructed in our societies and this is the same reason people, even intersex activists, erase intergender. They are just as uncomfortable with ambiguous gender as society is with ambiguity of sex. But what is really ambiguous, an intergender identity or the definitions that we have used to define gender? For the same reason that intersex is viewed as ambiguous, the ambiguity of gender ascribed to the intergender individual is not in the person but within the faulty binary lens that others view us through.

Another disturbing reason why many activists and “experts” dismiss intergender is a direct result of their insistence on a very essentialist definition of intersex. They often appear to have a vested interest in excluding as many people as possible from their “special” class. This seems quite odd for such a marginalized group of people as the intersexed, but it is true. However, the threat to the intersex movement is not from the intergender community. It is from the very essentialist ideas about intersex that many activists perpetuate based on faulty biological and pathological definitions which not only erase our existence by being so limited but also justify the elimination of any further “ambiguity” and intersex altogether.

No one has a problem with the idea that most people with female gender identities are of female sex and do not contest this. Is it not a rational assumption that most people with intergender identities are in fact intersex (i.e. of intermediate sex)? I think so. Should I require some medical proof that they are intersex? That is absurd. I would never ask a female or male to provide medical proof that they were a woman or a man. What would be the point? Male, female and intersex are not discrete categories. There is no clear way to determine where one category ends and the other begins. Why not let the person tell me who and what they are? I think they would most likely be more accurate than some outside expert who most likely views intersex as a rare pathology as most medical experts do – a view which is not scientific and which geneticists would not accept.

If we are ever going to expand our community and our visibility, the intergender community is essential. There is no way to exist socially without a gender. Gender is about how we perceive ourselves in relation to others within a social context. In other words, it is our most basic interpretation of where we fit based on our own core feelings and identity. To minimize intergender is one of the most effective methods for erasing intersex because it perpetuates the blindness and intolerance which is one of the main justifications for intersex genital mutilation and other pathological views of intersex.. Would it not be healthier for society to deal with the actual variations within the human population rather than to continue passing laws, making medical decisions and other intrusive forays into our private lives in order to enforce norms that most people really can’t meet? I think it would be and in so doing, we would be further deconstructing the binary construct of sex which is at the root of the binary gender expectations.

Another important contribution that intergender activists bring to intersex activism is their insistence on being viewed as whole people, not just bodies. They force us to take our focus from the body and away from an essentialist idea of who we are to the more basic idea of how we actually perceive ourselves and where we fit. For intersex activists to stay focused primarily on the body and our trauma without incorporating the needs of the actual individual in that body and his/her gender identity serves little purpose in the long run because we are seeking to be an integral part of humanity. One cannot be deemed human and intersex legally. To exist as a human legally, you must be categorized as male or female. By listening to intergender voices, we begin to understand the frustration of being silenced and mutilated psychologically and emotionally within this binary system. We have to be allowed to speak for ourselves and insist that not only does intersex exist but that it is the sex of a large part of humanity and moreover that many people are realizing this on their own, i.e. that they are not simply male or female but intergender. Their solidarity with us will help us eliminate a lot of the stigma associated with being intersex.

This is probably the most significant contribution of intergender activists. We clearly force society to deal with the fact that intersex bodies are not just mutilated but our identities are often mutilated too. This is something that many people can understand because it is obvious to a large segment of the humanity that the current social construct of sex and gender as a binary is oppressive and mutilating to their self actualization as fully functioning members of society. This increases our visibility and the solidarity from others that we so need for our very survival. Most people can see that gender stereotypes are harmful and this is something that affects not just intersex people. We welcome our closest allies who are intergender to join us. They understand our erasure, the silence that has been imposed on us. If everyone is just a man and a woman with male and female identities, then what is the purpose of intersex activism really? What do we have to offer society if we just stop a few medical treatments and disappear once again while society continues to forcefully categorize us and insist that we meet norms that are unrealistic and unnatural, while using violence and sexist propaganda to maintain this inhumane system?