Books and selected journal articles on intersex issues, including fiction, peer-reviewed papers, and biographies.
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.
New Scientist magazine has published a review of Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes, by Gerald N. Callahan PhD, an immunologist and pathologist at Colorado State University. The review is worth reading, and we are now seeking a review copy of the book so that we can look at it…
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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. The issues it raises remain to be addressed: Countries across the world, along with the United Nations, have long recognized the rights of children to physical integrity and have banned the practice of female genital mutilation. True, the operations performed on children…
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The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has released Sex Files: the legal recognition of sex in documents and government records. This is our response.
Intersex people are often asked to justify why intersex newborns should not be “normalised” – our genitals surgically made to resemble those of other people. This report, the result of a series of hearings by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, gives some very good testimony against non-consensual genital surgery on infants, from intersex people…
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