Books and selected journal articles on intersex issues, including fiction, peer-reviewed papers, and biographies.
Intersex refers to atypical internal and/or external anatomical sexual characteristics, where features usually regarded as male or female may be mixed to some degree. This is a naturally occurring variation in humans.
Hilde Lindemann, Ellen Feder and Alice Dreger comment on prenatal use of dexamethasone to modify appearance and gender expression associated with Congenital adrenal hyperplasia: There’s a common misperception that, now that the Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money is gone, so are all the ethical problems with the way people with genital anomalies are treated. Not…
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Chris Somers xxy (vice-president of OII Australia) and colleagues present an analysis of intersex issues for primary healthcare providers. Chris Somers xxy is a national and international intersex activist with a M.Ed. By Research (UWA); concerning Androgyny; B.Ed. (Melb); Hons Dip Creative Photography (Trent Polytechnic now Trent University, UK); who has worked in a number…
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Published in November 2008, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience by Katrina Karkazis is compelling and recommended reading. Meticulously researched and approachable in style, it presents a historical analysis of the treatment of intersex people, together with an analysis of both current medical practice and the impact on intersex people and our families….
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Richard Goldschmidt, in proposing the term intersex, noted the limitations of previous terminology and the significance of his different approach to the subject. Goldschmidt proposed that better terminology was needed when intersex was viewed from the then new perspective of “cytology, genetics, teratology, physiology, serology, endocrinology, etc.” He also invited endocrinologists to view sex differentiation…
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Karin at OII Australia has obtained a PDF rendition of the autobiography of British intersex woman Roberta Cowell. It was published in the UK in 1954 and has long been out of print. Roberta aka Betty underwent urogenital surgery in the early 1950s. She lived a long life, as a World War II fighter pilot…
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An article on Lili Elbe, the first intersex person known to have undergone urogenital surgery, has been published in the August 2009 issue of LOTL magazine.
The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has released a paper titled Surgery on intersex infants and human rights. We deeply regret the report’s equivocation on surgery to modify the appearance of intersex infants and children. The report acknowledges such interventions without commenting on their necessity or lifelong consequences. It is available for download here.
James Pate, MD has kindly provided us with the following: The first mention of “disorder of sex development” I could find was by CE Ford in 1961 (Ford CE. The cytogenetic analysis of some disorder of sex development. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. 82:1154-61, 1961 Nov.) Other historical terminology I found was: Disorder of…
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Dr Jessica Cadwallader of the Somatechnics Research Centre at Macquarie University has given OII Australia kind permission to provide the PDF of the paper she presented at the Regulating the Sexed Body: Circumcision, Genital Modification and Cosmetic Surgery public lecture at the University of Technology, Sydney. OII applauds Dr Cadwallader’s support for intersex people to…
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Download a copy of this book review as a PDF Published autobiographies written by intersex people are rare. Socially-imposed guilt and shame at being born intersex have led to fewer such books being published than one might wish for – we can learn so much from how others like us have lived. I’d always known…
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Five years ago, Tony Briffa had a letter published in the journal Nature. OII Australia fully supports the call made by Tony for protection of the right to physical integrity. Indeed, this is a core goal of our organisation.
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