For an introduction to these issues, see our page on intersex for parents
We have recently received a copy of “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”, a schoolbook by Australian publisher The Spinney Press in their “Issues in Society” series. It also contains content on intersex people and intersex issues. That content includes an intersex for allies guide, and “It’s time to defend intersex rights“, an article on the…
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Following discussions with the National Children’s Commissioner, we have made a late submission to an inquiry on intentional self-harm and suicidal behaviour in children.
Andrew Solomon A.M. Homes and Robert Hoges spoke recently at Sydney Writers’ Festival on growing up different from parents – something he terms “horizontal identity”, in contrast with (for example) ethnic heritage, and typically religion and nationality which are “vertical identities”, shared between family members. Radio National presented extracts of this talk on Monday 2…
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The World Health Organization, together with OHCHR, UN Women, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF, have issued an interagency statement on Eliminating forced, coercive and otherwise involuntary sterilization. The statement covers intersex people, trans people, women, women with HIV, indigenous and ethnic minority women, and people with disabilities. This is an important development, that recognises the…
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OII Australia has made a submission to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) on the deselection of intersex traits using Assisted Reproductive Technologies.
A study published in the peer reviewed medical press this month describes the birth of an intersex child as a “challenging clinical emergency”, and finds that the incidence of post traumatic stress symptoms in parents is comparable to that amongst parents of children diagnosed with cancer. OII Australia believes that the framing of the birth…
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The Australian Senate is currently conducting an Inquiry into the involuntary or coerced sterilisation of people with disabilities and intersex people. Two recent submissions by the Australasian Paediatric Endocrine Group (APEG) and the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne (RCH) to the Inquiry offer some surprising admissions: medical interventions take place for social rationales, sometimes portrayed as…
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I loved this book. It vividly captures the effects of secrecy and shame on an intersex adolescent, and a family in crisis. It’s compassionately and beautifully written, from the perspective of six key characters: Max the protagonist, his brother, parents, doctor and friend. Unlike Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, which manages to convey the impression that intersex…
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Lizzie Reis writes about the M.C case taken by Advocates for Informed Choice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Crawford family and pro bono lawyers. Writing at Nursing Clio Reis says: M.C. had been identified male at birth, but his genitals were sufficiently indeterminate that surgeons removed his ambiguous phallus, a testis, and testicular tissue…
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This page is for new parents of an intersex child, prospective parents planning a pregnancy or undergoing genetic or preconception screening, and also parents of older children.
Advocates for Informed Choice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, pro bono lawyers and parents Pam and Mark Crawford have filed “the first ever impact litigation lawsuit” in the US for “performing an irreversible and medically unnecessary surgery on an infant who was in the state’s care at the time of the surgery”.
Long awaited documentary about the experiences of a number of intersex people around the world, Intersexion, was made for New Zealand television broadcaster TV One by Grant Lahood with the assistance of Wellington-resident intersex activist and counsellor Mani Bruce Mitchell.
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