Intersex: intersectionalities with disabled people
The lived experience of intersex people, and the intersex movement, have many intersectionalities with experiences of disability and the disability movement.
For an introduction to these issues, see our page on bodily integrity
The lived experience of intersex people, and the intersex movement, have many intersectionalities with experiences of disability and the disability movement.
The rights and concerns of intersex people do not simply overlap the rights and concerns of women, of LGBT people and of disabled people, we exist at the intersection between these different forms of discourse.
Please note that this document is no longer current, nor an accurate guide to the demands of intersex advocates in Australia. It has been superseded by the Malta Declaration, a Senate committee inquiry into the “Involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people” and the 2017 Darlington Statement.
Alice Dreger, Ellen K Feder and Anne Tamar-Mattis write in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 30 July 2012, on the “use of dexamethasone in pregnant women at risk of carrying a female fetus affected by congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH)” in the West. To our eyes, this is not just an intersex issue but an LGBTI…
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OII Australia, together with OII Aotearoa/NZ, today released a submission to the American Psychiatric Association regarding the draft Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition.
We invite comment on our draft submission to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) 7th Standards of Care, and the APA’s draft Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th edition.
Sociologist Georgiann Davis Ph.D. recently had published her paper on DSD in Sociology of Diagnosis, Advances in Medical Sociology, Volume 12, 155–182. The paper, “DSD is a perfectly fine term”: Reasserting Medical Authority Through a Shift in Intersex Terminology is a hugely important critique and highly recommended reading. The context Even though the diagnosis carried…
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Legal advocate for intersex people Anne Tamar-Mattis of Advocates for Informed Choice – AIC has further contributed to public education about intersex people in a recent, at-length and in-depth interview with San Francisco Bay Area radio station KPFA. The program – now available as a downloadable MP3 file – was broadcast on the Against the Grain program on Monday, March 5, 2012. Remember all…
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Over at the Open Society Foundations Lydia Guterman asks the question “Why Are Doctors Still Performing Genital Surgery on Infants?” The answer is simple – so long as doctors, commentators, bioethicists, parents, erstwhile allies – and intersex people ourselves – believe that intersex is a “disorder”, a DSD then doctors will continue to try to…
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The Journal of Sexual Medicine has published, in 2011, significant research on the subjective nature of “normal” female genitals. The study, by Reitsma, Mourits, Koning, Pascal and van der Lei, is entitled “No (wo)man is an island – the influence of physicians’ personal predisposition to labia minora appearance on their clinical decision making: a cross-sectional…
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We are gravely troubled by attempts by the Australasian Paediatric Endocrine Group to take “special medical procedures” on intersex children out of Family Court jurisdiction.
The UN Committee against Torture sitting in Germany from October 31 to November 25 2011 has considered a German report on torture and other abuses and has produced a groundbreaking statement on intersex and torture: Intersex people 20. The Committee takes note of the information received during the dialogue that the Ethical Council has undertaken…
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