Dear all Thank you very much for your contribution to the Commission’s brief consultation regarding the terminology used to describe people with a range of sex identities and gender identities. The majority of responses we received supported some means of separating issues relating to sexual orientation from those relating to sex and/or gender identity and…
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We encourage parents and society to appreciate intersex people, rather than treat us as problems to be fixed. We note that CARES denies the existence of male-identified CAH people, and plentiful statistics that show a low birth-rate, low marriage rate and high rates of “same sex attraction” among CAH “females.” So you have just been…
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In 2009 Dr Reis’s book, Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex, examined the cultural contexts that both inform and drive western medicine’s attitudes and responses to intersex bodies. Beginning with the profound homophobia of the 19th through to the 21st centuries, to the taboo topic of neo-vaginal dilation, Reis challenged standard medical practices…
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Michael Noble wrote and presented this biography at the Gay and Lesbian Feast Festival, Adelaide, South Australia in 2002. He subsequently revised it for publication here.
The Star Observer reports on CAH and dexamethasone: Bioethicists have criticised the use of an experimental drug to reduce the risk of girls with a congenital disease being born with an intersex condition and make them conform to sex and gender stereotypes. Girls born with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) often have enlarged genitalia, and in…
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Tony Briffa is interviewed in The Age: Hobsons Bay deputy mayor Tony Briffa is thought to be the only person to describe his sex as “other” in the Victorian Local Governance Association survey of the numbers of males and females in local government. The Altona ward councillor was born with an intersex condition, which caused…
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Defining Transgender The New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Act defines a transgender person as someone who: identifies as a member of the opposite sex by living, or seeking to live, as a member of the opposite sex; or has identified as a member of the opposite sex by living as a member of that sex; or…
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This report focuses on the cosmetic outcomes of non-consensual cosmetic genital surgery performed on infants. OII Australia regards such surgeries as reprehensible, and wishes to see them cease. From the abstract: Issues of childhood genital surgery in individuals with genital ambiguity remain controversial. Poor results reported in some centres triggered questioning of the appropriateness of…
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The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday carried a story by Steve Dow on Norrie’s campaign for “legal recognition as a person of no specified sex”. Born male and transitioned to female, before choosing a middle path, the article presents Norrie’s personal journey. OII Australia believes that anyone should be able to choose a “not specified” sex…
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Professor Alice Dreger writes in Psychology Today’s blog, “Fetishes I Don’t Get”: In a brief article entitled “Bad Vibrations” just posted at the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum, my colleague Ellen Feder and I express our shock over the follow-up techniques being used by pediatric urologist Dix Poppas at Weill Medical College of Cornell University on…
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However much sympathy we have in this tragic circumstance, we cannot help but be alarmed at the way CAH individuals are being portrayed. While it is understandable that a defense team might use every means at their disposal to have their client acquitted or the sentence minimized, the publicity this case has received paints those…
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From the ‘Response of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to the Proposed DSM 5 Criteria for Gender Incongruence’: (4) Adding a specifier of “with or without a Disorder of Sex Development” is an improvement over the need to use the “Not Otherwise Specified” diagnosis because individuals with intersex conditions may have a similar…
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