Gender bender on IAAF agenda

Dan Silkstone in Berlin

August 19, 2009 - 11:44AM

South African middle-distance sensation Caster Semenya was at the centre of an inquiry on Tuesday over concerns about whether she is a male or female.

The 18-year-old has emerged in recent months as a top 800 metres runner, and won her semi-final in commanding fashion at Berlin's Olympic Stadium on Monday night, eliminating Kenya's Olympic champion Pamela Jelimo along the way.

But the South African's physique and powerful style have sparked speculation in recent months that she might not be entirely female. IAAF rules state that competitors must be entirely female to compete in women's races but some people are born with a mixture of chromosomes and display both male and female characteristics.

The Herald understands that the world athletics governing body, the IAAF, has conducted a series of tests on the South African, including physical checks and genetic screening.

Officials were to meet late Tuesday to decide whether the teenager from Pretoria would be able to compete in the 800m final on Wednesday.

Australians John Steffensen, Joel Milburn and Sean Wroe cruised into the semi-finals of the men's 400m on Tuesday.

Steffensen was an impressive second in his heat in 45.37 seconds, behind reigning Olympic champion LaShawn Merritt from the United States (45.23s).

Petrina Price narrowly missed out on the high jump final, while Benn Harradine was eliminated in the qualifying round of the men's discus.

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Binary Sex System

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Hermaphrodite wins damage claim over removal of reproductive organs

Cologne - A surgeon was ordered to pay 100,000 euros (141,500 dollars) in compensation on Wednesday for performing an operation converting a hermaphrodite into a man without consent more than 30 years ago.

Claimant Christiane V., who was born without defining gender characteristics, was 18 years old when her reproductive organs were surgically removed without prior information or consent.

The doctor had been found guilty of unlawful intervention at a previous trial in 2008, but a second trial was needed to set the level of compensation.

Christiane V. said she considered herself a woman, even though she was raised as a boy.

A medical expert told the court that, even in 1977, it would have been possible for the claimant to live as a woman, by taking medicines and possibly undergoing operations available at the time.

During the initial trial Christiane V., now aged 50, had described years of suffering after the operation, including physical impairments, pain and psychological problems.

It was only during an appendix operation that the teenager, then called Thomas, was found to have a full set of female reproductive organs.

Up until that point the child was thought to have mixed male-female genitals and an atrophied reproductive system. In actual fact, the operation revealed a normal female anatomy, including an intact womb and ovaries.

The judges ruled that the surgeon should have aborted the operation at this stage.

During the trial, seen as setting a precedent, Christiane V. said she had been converted to a man against her will. While she demanded 'at least' 100,000 euros in compensation, she said she mostly sought 'moral recompense.'

The surgeon, who has now been found guilty on three separate occasions, can appeal the verdict.

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Hermaphrodite or not, does it matter?

There has been so many unfortunate events and death this year. MJ, Farah Fawcett and our very own local Yasmin Ahmad. All of the deaths makes me realize that Death with be delivered to your doorsteps and you will die without fail if you are meant to die. It does not matter if you’re young or old-when it’s time for you to go, you’ll go. I suppose, what matters most is living your life to the fullest, making your own history and legacy so that you will not be forgotten when you die.

Same goes with Yasmin Ahmad. Forgive me for the awkward timing of this article, but it bothers me that I did not write anything at all about the woman who tries to deliver the concept of One Malaysia even before PM Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak even started to promote it when she was alive.

She was known as Yasmin Ahmad. A woman known by Malaysians through her unity films as well as catchy Petronas ads. We knows so little about her. We only know her as a successful filmmaker who captured the hearts of many. We all know about her life as an adult. But we know nothing about her when she was a mere child.

Let me ask you this question. How many out there knows that Yasmin Ahmad was actually a hermaphrodite, and in her earlier years, she was known as a man who goes around with the name Zulkifley Ahmad? I guess not much knows about it. Even I did not know about it until I read an article and many outrageous comments in Marina Mahathir’s blog.

It seems that a Malaysian tabloid, KOSMO! had somehow published a degrading article about Yasmin Ahmad being a hermaphrodite or rather, a trans-gender, causing emotional scar to the late Yasmin Ahmad’s family and uproar in the cyberspace among her fans and fiend alike. She was barely buried, but many are arguing on whether her choice of choosing to be a woman after some time is correct or not.

All right, before any of you slammed me for anything, let me stress out something here:

Historically, the term hermaphrodite has also been used to describe ambiguous genitalia and gonadal mosaicism in individuals of gonochoristic species, especially human beings. The term comes from the name of the minor Greek god Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes andAphrodite. In a biological context, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has both male and female reproductive organs.

Let’s just say that sometimes, during a pregnancy, something goes wrong, and you get a child who is born with box sex intact. So in other words, rare as it is, it is a natural biological occurrence. Hermaphrodites are just people who are born with both sex.

Recently, intersex has been used and preferred by many such individuals, encouraging medical professionals to use the term. However, in Malaysia and many other countries in the world, not many understood that being a hermaphrodite means that someone is just having a rare biological condition. Many thought that hermaphrodites are screwed up people who chooses to change their gender just because they are uncomfortable being a man or a woman.

Same goes with the recently deceased Yasmin Ahmad. She was born a hermaphrodite. It was a condition not of her own choosing and yet many condemned her for choosing to be a woman after leading her life as a man earlier on. She was first known as Zulkiflee Ahmad, the first runner up in a singing contest back in the 70s for Bintang RTM, if I’m not mistaken. After considering her options and referring her conditions to the Islamic Council, she decides to be a woman. So now, she is Yasmin Ahmad. She was no longer Zulkiflee Ahmad. Even her identity card stated that she was a woman. Her burial rites (talqin) also stated her as a woman.

It is known that people with intersex conditions sometimes choose to live exclusively as one sex or the other, using clothing, social cues, genital surgery, and hormone replacement therapy to blend into the sex they identify with more closely. Some people who are intersexed, such as some of those with Klinefelter’s syndrome and androgen insensitivity syndrome, outwardly appear completely female or male already, without realizing they are intersexed. Other kinds of intersex conditions are identified immediately at birth because those with the condition have a sexual organ larger than a clitoris and smaller than a penis. Intersexuality is thought by some to be caused by unusual sex hormones; the unusual hormones may be caused by an atypical set of sex chromosomes.

So why the bloody uproar accusing the late Yasmin Ahmad for being a a screwed up transexual who went against the Islamic teaching and puts her family in emotional distress even when she was barely buried? She gave birth to a child, remember? That alone should qualify her as a woman, and people should not condemn her decision to live as a woman when her body functioned like a woman more than a man. I am sure many extremists and racists are upset with her films, ads and works she produced when she was alive, but to humiliate the dead and the family the way they did, was just low.

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This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International.

Intersex People – Disordered or Different? The DSD Debate

Intersex People – Disordered or Different? The DSD Debate

Curtis Hinkle – founder of OII

Should intersex people be regarded as having a disorder that needs to be fixed or should they be viewed as natural variations and simply different? Robert Davidson has traced the framing processes executed in a debate over the reshaping of a code among three groups of the intersex social movement in order to understand how the groups engage with the medical discourse on intersex. His paper entitled “DSD Debates: Social Movement Organizations’ Framing Disputes Surrounding the Term ‘Disorders of Sex Development’” is an ongoing PhD research project that summarizes the history surrounding the medical community’s treatment of intersex people. It also includes discussion of the influence of John Money and his nemesis Milton Diamond.

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The Witch Hunt.

By Sophia Siedlberg

© July 2009

The Catholic Exchange, a small but vocal website who aims to promote Roman Catholic Values also seeks to prevent "Transgender" and "Gender confused" people from getting any legal protection under the law in most countries.

The question is why? Well, I have a simple answer to this, and the two partners in crime at the Catholic Exchange are not going to like it. Dale O Leary and Mary Kochan make a number of comments and statements that really need to be interpreted at face value. It is best to look at their three main arguments and see what they are actually saying.

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Questions are a burden

By Sophia Siedlberg

© July 2009

The cheese and wine set in the UK are at it again, leaking little snippets of bad news, like if you have Klinefelters Syndrome or 5-alpha reductase deficiency, you have no access to any change in birth documentation or the Gender Recognition Certificates if you reject being assigned male. Here is an even more interesting leak, the UK Government have been naughty keeping a database of intersex people in Leicester. To what end I wonder.

Download the complete article in pdf: Click here