Personal opinions
In YOUth & I, intersex youth tell their own stories, how they want to and in their own way. YOUth & I is an Australian publication created and edited by Steph Lum, and kindly supported by the ACT Capital of Equality grants program. Download a copy of YOUth & I for free.
Imagine being a proud member of the LGBTI community, and a survivor of childhood and adolescent conversion therapies, and seeing the organisation that abused you and tried to make you fit heteronormative stereotypes welcomed into the Melbourne Pride March. With no apology, and no evidence of change to their practices.
Steph Lum has won a prize for the poem “Intersex self-love”, in the Canberra SpringOut essay competition. Congratulations, Steph! Here’s the poem in its entirety.
On invitation, Morgan Carpenter has written a blog post for the journal Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters: “Intersex human rights: clinical self-regulation has failed”. Here’s an extract: There is neither clinical consensus nor clinical evidence to support current coercive practices [8]. Clinical bodies face multiple challenges in constructing evidence to support these clinical practices….
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Tony Briffa has written on being intersex and Maltese Australian in the book Living and Loving in Diversity: An anthology of Australian multicultural queer adventures (chief editor Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Wakefield Press). The book was launched at the 2018 Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council conference, “Living Loving Diversity”, and an edited extract has been published by Archer…
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We’ve had interviews like this piece, by Prospekt Magazine. Telling our personal stories is always challenging, bringing old wounds back to the surface. Alexander Berezkin, the interviewee in this article by Tatiana Kondratenko about intersex people in Russia, is to be congratulated. The problem with interviews like this is that Alexander’s story is incidental to…
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Last night I was at a sombre event, an evening commemoration of Transgender Day of Remembrance. Around six people spoke; two of them were trans women of colour, and three speakers were representatives of institutions based in New South Wales. One of those representatives introduced himself as his organisation’s spokesperson on sexuality, sex and gender…
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Mauro Cabral of GATE has announced, via the Intersex Day project, publication of a 2014 community submission to the World Health Organization on reform of the International Classification of Diseases.
A new Intersex Day project promoting human rights actions around Intersex Awareness Day and Intersex Day of Solidarity is presenting long-read commentary works by Morgan Holmes, Betsy Driver, Small Luk and more, as well as a compilation of events for the two intersex days around the world. Morgan Holmes is the only surviving intersex participant…
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In the wake of some objectifying news coverage of intersex bodies in Australian, UK and international media, Phoebe Hart of the AISSGA writes an important piece on “My intersex body: more than an object of fascination or repulsion to be ‘fixed’” in the UK Independent newspaper. While I am sure Dr Michael Mosely’s account of…
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The visibility of the intersex movement is hampered by our worldwide lack of resourcing. It’s also notable that intersex and LGBT movements can often diverge: while most intersex people know a lot about issues affecting same sex attracted and transgender people, this is frequently not reciprocal. There are few intersex voices in LGBTI spaces, our…
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Numerous studies were presented by Australian teams to the I-DSD conference in Belgium this month, including several from the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne. Two reports stand out, despite being listed in separate parts of the Conference Abstracts document. One on page 6 of 93 purports to show positive outcomes from early genital surgeries. Another, on…
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