IAAF plans to develop gender definition

By ROB HARRIS (AP)

BIRMINGHAM, England — World track and field's governing body will start examining next week how to determine gender in an athletics context, an initiative spurred by the case of 800-meter world champion Caster Semenya.

The IAAF's medical commission, which begins meeting Friday, could take a year to deliver that definition and the judicial commission will also be asked to consider future regulations, general secretary Pierre Weiss said Saturday.

"We are obliged to react. It would have been better if we had been prepared to, but we were not prepared," Weiss told The Associated Press on Saturday. "We will get a reply in the next 12 months — I don't expect anything to come out before. ...

"We were in Copenhagen (at the International Olympic Committee meetings) and I asked my colleagues from other sports if they had a definition and nobody has one. But nobody (else) has had the problem so far."

Weiss expects the IOC medical commission to also consider the issue in November in Lausanne.

The most common cause of sexual ambiguity is congenital adrenal hyperplasia, an endocrine disorder in which the adrenal glands produce abnormally high levels of hormones.

By the time Semenya won the 800 meters at the Berlin world championships in August, questions about the 18-year-old South African's gender had been raised because of stunning improvements in her times and her muscular build and deep voice.

Before the final, the IAAF announced it had ordered gender tests.

The IAAF has refused to confirm or deny Australian media reports that Semenya has both male and female characteristics. It says it is reviewing test results and will issue a decision in November on whether she will be allowed to compete in women's events.

"They are being analyzed worldwide by experts," Weiss said. "We will promote the outcome of this case as soon as it is known."

Source

Hermafrodita: Award winning film by Albert Xavier

Award winning Dominican feature, Winner of the Audience Choice Awards at the Chicago Latino Film festival 2009, stars Marilu Acosta, Garibaldi Reyes, Isabel Polanco, Olga Bucarelli y Rafa Rosario. Written, Directed and Produced by Albert Xavier.

Staceyann Chin's Poem About Equality & Our March

For more information about the National Equality March™, Oct. 10 - 11, 2009
Click here

Express your opinion about Intersex Human Rights

The Organisation Intersex International wishes to express its disappointment that the City of Toronto is hosting a conference which will further stigmatise and promote non-consensual surgery and hormonal treatments for intersex children. This conference gives no real representation from intersex people themselves and it treats us as “disorders” of sex development, a very offensive way of speaking about us.

We further are shocked that the conference will include three interactive surgeries for participants.

We are not disordered and we want access to treatments that we CHOOSE and we want to be able to give fully informed consent. Help stop the harm. Let the organisers know how you feel about human rights for intersex people.

Curtis E. Hinkle
Founder of Organisation Internationale des Intersexués (OII)
Montréal, PQ

Here is some brief information about the conference:

III World Congress on Hypospadias and Disorders of Sex Development

The 3rd World Congress on Hypospadias and Disorders of Sex Development will take place in North America for the first time. The congress will be held both at the Hospital for Sick Children and at the Marriott Hotel Toronto Eaton Centre.

This multiprofessional conference (Urology, Gynecology, Endocrinology, Social Work, Medical Genetics, Genetic Counseling, Psychology and Psychiatry) will have a portion dedicated to each specialty and another to all specialists in the plenary session. Surgeons will also have a full day with 3 live interactive surgeries and video sessions.

The conference will focus on the growing interest in the congenital urogenital problems of children where many questions remain unanswered, and will also focus on the reconstructive surgery of hypospadias and intersex, and on the psycho-social aspects of care. The congress will review the pathology in inter-sex gonads with a focus on which conditions are more likely to have malignancy and to relate this data to the timing of gonadectomy.

When:

Thursday, November 12, 2009 - Sunday, November 15, 2009

Where:

Marriott Hotel Toronto

525 Bay Street

Toronto, Ontario M5G 2L2

Canada

416-597-9200

For more information on the Congress or to register please log on to:

www.sickkids.ca/learninginstitute

Or contact:

li.conferences@sickkids.ca

Hijras commemorate the life of Jeannie Kay Hinkle

OII-India held a special ceremony 28 September 2009 in commemoration of Jeannie Kay Hinkle, beloved partner of Curtis E. Hinkle, founder of the Organisation Intersex International.The ceremony included prayers for and in the name of Jeannie Kay Hinkle as it was a Dussera festival day there.

Food was fed to 100 Hijras and poor after the prayers.

"Of all duties, benevolence is unequaled in this world, And even in celestial realms. He who understands his duty to society truly lives. All others shall be counted among the dead." - Tirukkural 22: 213-214

For more information about EKTA, the foundation sponsoring the ceremony: Click here

The Story of "R"

Thisstory is real. ‘R’ is a real person, and he still lives somewhere in Australia, still struggling with what the surgeons and the doctors and the psychologists have done to him.

If the medicos had all left ‘R’ alone as a newborn he would have had a very different life altogether, a much happier life no doubt.

Complete article: Click here

KENYAN CHALLENGES STATE OVER PRISON FACILITIES

Source Jillo Kadida (Mail & Guardian)

KENYA – 21 September 2009: An intersexed Kenyan has applied to Kenya’s constitutional court to be released from Nairobi’s Kamiti Maximum Security Prison on the grounds that he belongs in neither a jail for men nor women.

Richard Mwanzia Muasya, who was convicted and jailed for robbery with violence, says he is subjected to continuous human- and constitutional- rights violations at the prison, which is for men only.

He claims to suffer inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of male convicts, prison warders and the public.

Muasya was born with both male and female sex organs, but regards himself as a man.

He has asked the court to release him because, he says, he is neither man nor woman and there is no special prison for people like him. He argues that if he is transferred to a female prison he will suffer the same fate.

The second leg of his case challenges Kenyan law for discriminating against him. He argues that the law recognises only the two sexes, male and female, and should be changed.

The fact that Kenyan law does not recognise intersexuality makes it difficult for him to acquire vital documents, including the national identity card, Muasya says in papers filed in court. This is because he does not know whether to complete application forms as a

man or a woman.

The birth and death registration law also does not provide for intersexuality, making it impossible for him to acquire a birth certificate.

Muasya was arrested with three other suspects in February 2005 after a robbery during which a woman was gang-raped.

However, the rape charge against him was dropped after medical reports confirmed that he is intersexed. The medical examination determined that none of his sex organs was fully developed and that it was unlikely that he could commit rape.

Muasya and other intersexed people in Kenya suffer ridicule and discrimination. In some instances they are kept out of the public eye because people are ashamed of them. The problem facing Kenya’s constitutional court is that he has been convicted of an offence, yet the country has no separate facility for holding intersexed offenders.

In addition, the Kenyan constitution does not recognise the unique rights of intersexed citizens. Under South African law, the intersexed are recognised and their rights are protected.