Personal opinions
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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Morgan Carpenter spoke at The Mental Health Services Conference in Perth this August, as part of an intersectional symposium entitled Diversity & power in mental health services, Addressing structural violence. The conference is the largest and longest running multidisciplinary mental health conference in Australasia: TheMHS Conference attracts over 1000 mental health clinicians, managers, consumers, carers/families,…
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Over a decade ago, intersex and trans activist Raven Kaldera wrote that trans people seeking classification as intersex might be seeking legitimisation, as if a physical cause is necessary to obtain social or familial validation. He said that trans people using brain sex theories to claim intersex status were basing a political stance on unproven…
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In Australia, and indeed in the rest of the world, intersex is not recognised as a third gender identity but rather a biological state of being, meaning we are born intersex. Here in Australia, intersex has been in the news quite a lot over the last number of months and the reasons for that had…
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Historically and currently, Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM) legislation is used to make trans people undergo medical treatment in order to change the sex marker on their documentation. Despite this, the link between birth registrations and medical treatment on intersex people is not clearly understood. Indeed, this area of legislation is often seen as an…
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On 18 June 2013, The Guardian newspaper published an article by OII Australia president Morgan Carpenter on recent progress for intersex people in Australia. The article presents information on the progress towards our inclusion in anti-discrimination legislation, plus the new federal sex and gender recognition guidelines – and also our attempts to raise vital issues…
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A version of this article, by journalist Andrew Bock, was one of two published by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers on 20 June this year. This is the full original text of the feature article, with title and text as written and kindly made available for publication here by Andrew Bock. Intersexuality and…
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In the journal Transformations, Morgan Holmes writes about a third sex or gender. Morgan Holmes approaches the subject as a scholar and an intersex person; she was formerly a member of ISNA and is now an assistance professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada. The paper is recommended reading for people interested…
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The M.Ed. thesis of Chris Somers, Vice President of OII Australia, has recently become available online. Submitted in 2003, Chris’s work was considered ground breaking at the time. Chris says: The thesis is the presentation of my life experiences in narrative form and through my own photographic artworks – It is a comprehensive impression of…
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On the Eleventh Day of Intersex we draw your attention to intersex and religion. What is intersex? Intersex people are people who, as individuals, have congenital genetic, hormonal and physical features that may be thought to be typical of both male and female at once. That is, we may be thought of as being male…
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