Intersex Human Rights Australia

In anticipation of the first showing of a full documentary version of Intersexion, Mani Mitchell has been interviewed by the New Zealand Herald. It’s a great piece, which shows Mani’s humanity as well as Mani’s own perspective on surgery, one that is shared by very many intersex people:

She remembers being eight-years-old and going in to hospital for “normalising” surgery. It had “devastating effects, both in terms of how I felt about myself and later on as an adult my own sexual functioning.”

“You destroy sensitivity. You destroy functionality.

“I used to say I was a head that towed a body around. I was completely cut off and numb from my own physical body.”

Finally, aged close to 60, Mani can finally say, “I’m comfortable in my own skin”.

An initial version of Intersexions was fantastic. We congratulate Mani for the interview, and Mani and director Grant Lahood for what promises to be an excellent documentary.

Internal links

• For a medical research paper on satisfaction with surgery see the results of a German study of people with AIS in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, for example.
• Report on Intersex documentary “Intersexion (Is He Or Isn’t She?)”.

External link

• Intersexion world premiere in the NZ Documentary Edge Festival, 2012.