The popular singer Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite

The popular singer Lady Gaga, who recently said that she is a hermaphrodite, is the topic of the American music magazine.

Lady Gaga - Transmission Gaga-vision: Episode 40

London Pride

By Sophia Siedlberg

© May 2009

I have sort of kept quiet about this because pride festivals bore the hell out of me quite frankly. They have a huge one not far from where I live and to be honest it tends to consist mainly of people waving rainbow flags and corporate logos around. It sort of reminds me of that Advert for Honda that was out in 2006, with all the little rainbows and bunny rabbits with the word "HATE" written everywhere. I say that because the "Diversity" and "Unity" are often restrained affairs that pander to stereotypes. 

However, this is precisely why London Pride sparked my interest last year when the oh so liberal organisers insisted that transsexual women use the men's toilets and pretty much turned a blind eye when the inevitable happened and one of them was sexually assaulted. The fact is there is a deep prejudice that runs in the LGBTQQXYZ community and this is the reason I as an intersexed individual have avoided pride festivals like the plague. 

If they cannot deal with transsexual folks (This is obvious given that this year there are profound differences of opinion between London Pride and Trans@London more on that later). What chance have they of understanding the needs of intersex people? 

They would probably call me as a "Subset of transgender". Well fine but it does not describe me or my experience. I think transsexual folks are also coming to similar conclusions about the LGBTQQXYZ movement as it currently stands. 

If I am honest, I was quite shocked to read that in 2008 there was an incident where a number of transsexual women were told to use the male toilets. I was even more shocked to read that one of them had been sexually assaulted and the organisers of the Pride festival didn't seem to care much about it. In one sense this illustrates the point of many transsexual folks I have come across. They claim that the term "Transgender" is used to define them as "Men in dresses" and not the men or women they have become after surgery. In fairness to the organisers of London Pride I don't know fully what happened but this row about some policy on toilets is nothing new. 

To read the complete article: Click here  

This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International

Frauds, Liars, Nutjobs and Burqa Wearing Sock Puppets

05/26/2009 — Suzan
About 12-13 years ago Out Magazine (IIRC) ran a cover story on Intersex. It had Cheryl Chase and Kiira Tirea and several other folks.

Wow yeah… Instant sympathy Suzanne Kessler wrote a book Lessons from the Intersex and I though that infant sex assigning via surgery sucked as bad as FGM (female genital mutilation) as performed in North African nations.

First of all I believe in consent and agency and all those sorts of empowering things. Sort of how people with transsexualism are treated as adults by enlightened physicians.

Then I encounter Kiira aka Denise Tree on various lists. Having a knowledge of the lesbian feminist history of California some of the things she confided in me regarding did not ring true. She claimed to have been part of the Berkeley Women's Music Collective, a band that was active during the transwars.

This was when Sandy Stone was getting trashed. The devil is in the details. I know that John Money is sort of discredited yet he wrote a very detailed acount of many various intersex conditions.

But something else didn't ring quite true and this is because I've heard so many impossible claims to intersex from people unwilling to admit to the intersex condition they do have which is transsexualism

Actual intersex people would have more to gain by pointing to the way transsexualism is dealt with in matters of agency than in perpetuating IGM.

Interestingly much of the surgery is pretty much the same other than agency.

Details, details. If one were actually transsexual and trying to pass oneself of as IS, what better way than pointing fingers at actual people with transsexualism and belittling the idea that it too is an intersex condition.

As time has gone on Kiira has been shown to be a fraud and a liar as has Cheryl Chase aka Bo Laurent. See Andrea James website.

Now we have the latest darling, Hontas Farmer. Am I supposed to be impressed because this one is a culture vulture hiding behind a burqa? I don't think so. Lay that one on some one who believes in invisible sky daddies. You are about as real as some of the fake Indians like
Carlos Castaneda.

But I must admit it is sort of amusing to watch Taliban Christers have social intercourse with people who fantasize about being actual Taliban.

Go read Ayaan Hirsi Ali and grow up. You are a human sock puppet and a laughing stock as well as an insult to actual women who are so oppressed they are forced to wear that crap for fear of having acid thrown in their faces. 

Source: Click here

Miracle baby stuns the world again

Excerpt: "Despite the good news, various doctors have advised the family to consider gender reassignment. While plastic surgeons can create a penis that looks natural, they warn that the reconstructed organ will have 90 percent less sensation than normal."

Northwest Asian Weekly - Seattle,WA,USA

Miracle baby stuns the world again

May 21st, 2009 by admin.

By Kids Without Borders

For Northwest Asian Weekly

Dubbed the miracle baby, Vietnamese toddler Thien Nhan Phung, who was abandoned at birth and brutally mauled by wild animals, has once again lived up to his name. It was believed that Phung's testicles had been severed in the attack.

However, recent tests performed by Thai specialists at Bangkok's Preecha Aesthetic Institute revealed that the toddler, who is almost 3, has retained two undescended testicles.

This condition exists in only about 3–4 percent of male babies at birth. Had Phung's testicles descended normally, they would likely have been lost during the mauling.

Found 72 hours after his teenage mom had left him in a fallow field, his ravaged body was covered with blood and ants.

The infant was carried for two hours by a motorbike over rough mountain roads to the closest hospital in Quang Nam, Vietnam. He survived but was later released to the care of relatives who were unable to care for him.

When Vietnamese journalist Mai Anh Tran, 35, first met the boy, then 16 months old, he was severely malnourished and suffering from chronic urinary tract, gut, and skin infections.

"After all that he had been through, I could not bear to see him suffering like that," said Tran. "I could not sleep at night thinking of him living in those conditions."

Tran and her journalist husband, Quang Nghinh Phung (no biological relation to Thien Nhan Phung), adopted the boy when he was 20 months old. The child now lives in Hanoi along with the family's two biological sons, ages 4 and 8.

"At first, Nhan was like a wild animal," recalled Tran. "All he ate was cold rice and bananas. But he soon began to gain weight and his terrible rashes cleared up. He is now very bright, active, and talkative."

In August 2008, the Seattle-based charity Kids Without Borders and American philanthropist Greig Craft arranged a urethral surgery for the child at Dartmouth University Hospital in the United States. Thanks to this operation, for the first time in his young life, Phung could urinate free of pain.

"Thien Nhan has overcome a great deal but many more challenges remain," said Craft. "Along with prosthetic care, he will need multiple surgeries over the next 10 to 15 years to rebuild his genitals."

Despite the good news, various doctors have advised the family to consider gender reassignment. While plastic surgeons can create a penis that looks natural, they warn that the reconstructed organ will have 90 percent less sensation than normal.

"We do not agree to turn him into a girl," said Tran. "Thien Nhan's character, way of thinking, and behaving are very obviously male. If we changed him into a female and then found that in 20 years he couldn't accept it, we would all feel terrible."

Approximately one-third of the boy's penis remains intact and the family hopes that by the time he reaches adolescence, technology will have advanced enough to allow the reconstruction of a functioning, sensate penis. They are currently investigating advances in transplants and stem cell research.

Next month, Phung will return to Bangkok for more tests in preparation for surgery to create a scrotum in order to bring down his testicles.

"We hope that if we can raise enough money and gain the support of pioneering doctors, Thien Nhan will one day become a fully functioning man," said his mom.

A special fund to cover medical treatment for Phung has been created.

Ongoing fundraising efforts are led by Kids Without Borders and the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation, which is founded and managed by Craft.

For more information, visit www.KidsWithNoBorders.org or www.asiainjury.org.

Posted in: World News.

Tagged: 2009 · Vol 28 No 22 | May 23 - 29

http://www.nwasianweekly.com/wp/?p=252

OZ LEADS ON INTERSEX RIGHTS

In a world first, the Inner City Legal Centre will launch a legal advice service specifically geared towards the intersex community.

It is an important step for the intersex community and will provide invaluable assistance for people wanting advice on medical and discrimination matters, a board member for the Organisation Intersex International (OII), Gina Wilson, said.

“Worldwide, intersex people have no specific human rights or legal protections,” she said.

“For us to argue anything as far as our health goes, our human rights go or discrimination, they’re always very difficult and complex arguments. Because of that, I suppose we, more than most groups, need legal assistance.

“The intersex rights movement is giving voice to people to come forward, be proud of their differences and stand up against some of the things that have happened to us.

“These kind of services make that kind of freedom and that kind of a voice more possible.”

As a founding member of OII, Wilson said she was proud to see the initiative beginning in Australia and hoped to see it adopted in other parts of the country and overseas.

“We’ve started talking with other groups and have some prospects of similar help in a few states in America,” she said.

“A member of ours over there has been relatively successful in advocating for intersex rights in, surprisingly, Texas.

“There has been some movement in a few midwestern states as well, but nowhere near as definite and specifically directed as this, but we’re under way.”

info: The Inner City Legal Centre is at 50-52 Darlinghurst Rd, Kings Cross. The intersex advice service runs on Wednesdays from 6pm. Call 9332 1966 to make an appointment. For more on OII, visit intersexualite.org.

OII-Australia: Click here

Original article: Click here

Condemn Horowitz's Speech and Israeli Apartheid

AN OPEN LETTER

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

We, transgenders, bisexuals, intersexuals and queers, citizens of Israel, wish to express our outmost rage and disgust with Israeli Knesset Member Nitzan Horowitz’s appearance in the World Congress on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity that took place on May 15, 2009 in Paris, France. Not only did MK Horowitz exclude transgender, bisexual and queer issues and misrepresented lesbian and gay issues in Israel, he also represented and advocated the Israeli apartheid in Palestine/Israel in his patronizing speech.

While the conference Horowitz attended dealt intensively with issues of gender identity, transgenderism, bisexual, intersexual and queer politics, in his spokesman's message to the press Horowitz talked exclusively about lesbian and gay issues, excluding this way our predicament from his illusioninst description. In contrast to this description, discrimination in medical care and access to jobs and incrimination with "impersonating" are some of the distinct issues transgeners and intersexuals in Israel face. Violence and social unrecognition are ongoing difficulties for LGBTQI people in Israel. Horowitz's claim that the main issue for lesbians and gays in Israel is legalizing marriage or couples agreement has no evident basis.

Moreover, Horowitz's regard to Palestinian gay rights is outrageous. By creating a false racist picture of Israel as the western liberal and the Palestinians as the oriental conservatives Horowitz sent a message that advances the "white-washing" agenda of the Israeli foreign ministry he has chosen to represent. Horowitz's appeal to the Israeli goverment to grant sanctuary for persecuted gay Palestininas is no more than a service to the Israeli apartheid and the "permit" system that puts restrictions on Palestinian movement in the first place.

In accordance with the Palestinian call to sanction Israel until it ends the occupation, sieges and apartheid, dismantles the separation wall and allows the return and compensation of dispossessed Palestinians, we further uphold that Israel should have been banned from participating in this conference from the outset. Horowitz's appearance only testifies to the moral disgrace of this failure.

Sincerely,

Yotam Ben-David

Yossi Bartel

Shiri Eisner

liad kantorowicz

Yossef Mekyton 

ayala shani

Sharon Schlesinger

Roy Wagner

Curtis E. Hinkle

Read a report on Horowitz's speech here:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3716470,00.html

TRANSSEXUALISM will no longer be classified as a mental illness in France

published on Saturday 16 May 2009 at 20H07

Translated by Curtis E. Hinkle, Founder of the Organisation Intersex International

TRANSSEXUALISM will no longer be classified in France as a mental illness, a government decision hailed Saturday as "historic" by the associations concerned, on the eve of the International Day Against Homophobia and transphobia.

The Minister of Health, Roselyne Bachelot, has appealed "in recent days" to the High Authority of Health in order to make a decree that transsexualism be removed from the category of psychiatric disorders, a spokesman for the department stated.

Until now, transsexuals benefited from a fee waiver for their medical care by being classified under ALD23 (affection de longue durée 23 – long term condition 23) for “recurring or persistent disorders”.

For the Department of Health, it is a "strong signal sent to the whole community", since transsexuals felt that being included under the ALD23 was stigmatizing.

This classification, arising from that of the World Health Organization (WHO), was also linked to the fact that transsexualism appeared on the list of pathologies identified in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to which the medical profession refers, as was the case for homosexuality a few years ago.

In a forum published in Le Monde (newspaper) dated Sunday-Monday, numerous personalities including first secretary of the Socialist Party Martine Aubry, the communist Marie-George Buffet, Green (party member) Daniel Cohn-Bendit and even Nobel Prize winners such as Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (medicine) and Elfriede Jelinek (literature), asked the WHO  “to no longer consider transsexuals as being affected by a mental disorder".

It is because the WHO decided on the 17th  of May 1990 to remove homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses, that this date has been retained for the International Day Against Homophobia and transphobia, celebrated Sunday, starting Saturday in many places.

It is therefore symbolic that France chose this time and date to be "the first country in the world" to "remove transgender identity from the list of mental diseases", commented the IDAHO Committee.

This "historic decision" is also "an explosion of hope for all trans persons around the world", according to Joël Bedos, secretary-general of the IDAHO Committee.

The HES (Association for Homosexuality and Socialism) also “hailed” this announcement which is in response to “demands that the LGBT community have been making for a long time in France.  For HES, it is time, at present, to go beyond the symbolic and take concrete actions to fight against the violence and discrimination facing trans persons.

Because beyond "this measure for declassification, there is still much to be done before transsexuals (...) are recognized as full-fledged citizens",  insisted the coordinator of the group Inter-LGBT.

Original French article: Click here

“Can you ordain a hermaphrodite?”

Santa Clara University theology professor says Church had long history of ordaining women that ended because of “virulent misogyny”

 

Gary Macy, a professor of theology at Jesuit-run Santa Clara University, told attendees at a Monday night lecture at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee, there is little room for historical doubt that women were ordained in the Catholic Church until about the end of the 12th century. 

 

To read the complete article: Click here

Vanderbilt University has posted a podcast of Macy’s lecture and the question-and-answer session. To hear it: Click here

This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International

New Intersex Support Group forming in San Francisco

Kellyn Antolak, a clinician at New Leaf Services in San Francisco, is in the process of forming an ongoing Intersex support group. If you know anyone who would benefit, please pass the following information along. Please feel free to contact Kellyn Antolak at kantolak@newleafservices.org or (415)626-7000 ext.415 with any questions.

Intersex Support Group

Now Forming

New Leaf’s Intersex Support Group will offer a professionally facilitated, safe space to meet people with similar experiences.  This will be an opportunity to share your own struggles while receiving and offering support to others.

Who:  Anyone who identifies themselves as intersex.

Where: New Leaf Services at 103 Hayes Street (at Market St)

When: Every Wednesday evening (Time TBA)

For more information on New Leaf Services, please visit www.newleafservices.org or call 415-626-7000

This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International

Transphobia and Intersex Experience

I woke up this morning to a set of transphobic comments on my last blog post. Rather than mope (OK, I did mope, but rather than continuing to mope), I thought I'd use this as a teaching moment.

Transphobia 101

Transphobia is the disrespecting of people who are transgendered--considering trans people to be pitiable or disgusting or evil or deluded or just plain weird. It is usually expressed by cis sexed people--those whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. (Note that my definition of cis sex treats an intersex person assigned female at birth in the same sex category as a person with normative-appearing female genitals and gonads.) But other people can be transphobic.

To read the complete article: Click here

This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International

To all people searching for pics of intersex genitals

by Caitlin Petrakis Childs

Excerpt:

"I want to start by saying, I am glad you are here. I am glad you stumbled upon a page of an actual intersex person. I hope that you take advantage of this opportunity to educate yourself.

Intersex people are not something you can can gawk at to fill your curiosity, get a good laugh or get your rocks off. We are real people with feelings, lives, friends, families, jobs and hobbies just like you. Our bodies have been marginalized, mutilated, photographed without our consent, poked and prodded by multiple doctors, nurses and medical students. We have been labeled disordered, freaks, accidents, mutations, defective. We have been told our bodies are wrong, that no one could ever love a body like ours and that it needs to be 'fixed'.”

To read the complete article: Click here

This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International

Disciplining Sex: Economies Etched in Intersex Flesh

By Dr. Jessica Cadwallader

Excerpt from article:

 

“Some intersex advocates have recently adopted the term ‘DSD’ or ‘Disorders of Sexual Development’ as a better term than intersex (see www.isna.org). I resist this for a number of reasons, which I hope will become clear as the discussion progresses; but briefly: the adoption of medical language in this case works to reinforce that there is a proper order of sexual development, an order which intersex bodies fail to follow properly. This minimises the challenge that intersex poses to our assumptions about sexual dimorphism, as we shall see.”

 

To download the complete article: Click here

This is a service of OII-Australia 

There are not just two sexes

Interview with Curtis Hinkle, founder of the Organisation Intersex International

Dulce María López Vega

For years it was thought that the distinction between sex and gender was a useful tool in achieving equality. It was believed that the world was divided into male bodies and female bodies, because the belief prevailed that there was an essential difference and that this difference was related to sex.  However, what is sex really?  Is gender the only one of these two categories that is a social construct?

Curtis Hinkle is the founder of the Organisation Intersex International. Intersex activists, previously known as hermaphrodites, have much to teach us about the misconceptions surrounding the classical concepts concerning the difference between the sexes.

How does one define intersex?

It is difficult to answer this because we do not have precise definitions for male and female.  Without  the discursive power of modern biomedical technology, intersex would not exist at all, because in past centuries the majority of people who were intersex did not even know it since the modern technology necessary to determine it did not exist.  It is a quest specific to our modern societies, armed with the required technological innovations, that is determined to define the “true” sex of every human being.  Personally, I find this search (or so called “research”) to determine the “true” sex of every individual ridiculous, because it is something that we cannot define. Once we feel we have found the precise definitions for male and female, new technologies emerge which reveal even more variations and exceptions.

The problem which results from this inability to conceive of more than two sexes and all the variations possible is that many infants are subjected to very painful and irreversible treatments.

For many intersex people, their intersexuality is not something that is detected at birth. It appears only later, and for the children that are detected in infancy, there are surgical and hormonal treatments, which are very difficult because they often require numerous interventions to reshape or cut the clitoris or to construct a penis which is more in conformity with what the medical experts feel is appropriate for a male. This is very traumatic and all this is undertaken without the consent of the child and since these interventions are done at such an early stage of the child’s life, they have no way of taking into account the gender identity of the child. And we know that in many cases, the individual is not in agreement with the assigned sex. For this reason, it is very important that parents be told what the most likely gender identity will be and above all that the doctors inform the parents that the child may change opinions later.

In our societies, we constantly have to declare our sex: forms, legal documents, bathrooms…

The most basic problem is the idea that there are only two sexes because that is not true. It is a problem based on binary thinking and categorization, heterosexism and sexism in general.  All three of these are violations of our basic human rights and that is why I am an activist. Presently, it is impossible to get sex designations off birth certificates because it is obligatory: before leaving the hospital it is necessary to have a sex on the birth certificate in almost all countries. Why is it necessary to put the sex on birth certificates? I don’t think it is and that this only serves to perpetuate sexism in our societies.

For example, in the state of Louisiana where I lived before moving to South Carolina, it was necessary to put the race of all persons on birth certificates, but like sex, it is difficult to define the race of everyone because there are people who are neither black nor white and therefore the state of Louisiana had to come up with a whole group of categories and if an individual had only one eighth of “black blood”, the race on legal documents was black. This is now illegal in Louisiana.  This is similar to the same situation now concerning sex on legal documents: it is sexist. It is a way of oppressing intersex people and women. 

Health care professionals, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts need to listen and revise their theories

If there were so much difference between the two sexes, then intersex people could not exist at all. If there is so much difference between males and females, then how is it possible for so many intersex people to present as either or to switch quite easily from living as one to the other? And for many intersex people this can prove rather easy, especially if they have not had too many early treatments.  This would not be possible if there truly were so much difference. No, all this is an invention of modern technology which oppresses many people.  That is what I think.

Original article in Spanish: Click here

Said Tamcarit – Morocco

Translated by Curtis E. Hinkle

 

I am a hermaphrodite and am known here in my Moroccan village as the “half-man”.  When people see me, they wonder if I am a man or a woman.  I am a question mark.

 

When I was born, I had a micropenis and my father never accepted me.  Most Moroccans want their first child to be a boy so that the family name will be carried on.  But I was not what my father wanted and he was very violent with me.  My mother, however, never treated me like a “half-man”.  Still there have been many arguments in our home because of me.

 

My childhood was very difficult.  I was always alone: I didn’t play with the boys or the girls.  I looked at them from a distance.  Neither group accepted me.  With my brothers and sisters (who were born after me), things did not go well either.  They never accepted me.  So, I had no one to talk to.  I was alone in my own world.

 

I was exceptionally gifted in school and received my diploma.  Then, I had to go to the college which was a boarding school 30 kilometers from our home.  But I had a very hard year and I could not continue.  I quit in 1985.  In the dormitory there were 54 boys.  I did not feel comfortable with them.  I could not sleep at night.  I couldn’t take a shower because I was afraid of taking my clothes off in front of them.  I didn’t dare use the toilets there either because I have to sit down and the stalls didn’t have doors.  They made fun of me and the boys would fondle my breasts out of curiosity.  They asked me all kinds of questions that I don’t like to answer.  All kinds of “why’s” and “what’s that?”.

 

I have trouble getting to know and like people because of their glances and questions.  I don’t like to travel.  I don’t like crowds.  I didn’t even attend my sisters’ marriage ceremonies.  I have never moved from our family home.  I live with my mother, and my sisters and brothers.  My father is dead and I was the only one to take care of him when he came down with a serious illness.  When he was near death, he asked me to forgive him and I cried because all my life, he had never been nice to me.  My brothers and sisters still won’t accept me.  One day, one of my nephews asked me to stop coming to get him at school because the other children were making fun of him.  They were saying that he had an “uncle with big breasts and who looked like a woman”.

 

Recently, I wanted to undergo medical treatment to become a “real man”, with a beard and to remove my breasts.  I had never seen a doctor about this and no one had ever given me any treatments or medications.  A year ago, I went to see a gynecologist.  For the first time, someone looked at my genitalia but he did not seem to care about my situation.  I wanted to know if I was a man or a woman but the doctor told me I would have to have a lot of tests, an ultrasound and then go to an endocrinologist.  However, that was far too expensive.  No one could help me.

 

I tell myself that God created me and that I should be proud to be who I am, proud to be a man in a woman’s body and I have given up the whole idea of undergoing any type of medical treatment to change my appearance.  I have to live in the present and forget the past and my future is in God’s hands.  It is He who will guide me and lead me down the right path.  That’s for sure.  Everything has an end and we do too.  We all have an end and I have suffered all my life and I know that the suffering will come to an end.  I know that God will reward me in paradise.

 

Islam proves the existence of hermaphrodites.  However, in France, you can only have males and females – no third sex.  A hermaphrodite from France told me that in your country, they change hermaphrodites at birth so that they will be either male or female, whereas here in Morocco, there are many intersex people like me who have never undergone any surgeries or hormone treatments.  Here we are easily spotted.  It’s not like in France where they are changed: the effects of testosterone cause drastic changes!

 

But being a hermaphrodite is still very hard and it is hard for those close to you, your family and friends.  We are not accepted and we even do not accept ourselves.  I have been looking for friends for six years here and still it is impossible.  I have never been able to find a man or woman to love.  I am afraid of their reactions, especially the people here where I live.  However, I do know that I need to love someone and have someone to share my life with; the sex of the person doesn’t matter.

Said is an artist.  You can view his work on OII's website: Click here

This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International