Intersex fight for change

Intersex fight for change

The Organisation for Intersex Australia (OII Australia) together with OII Aotearoa/NZ today released a submission to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), regarding the draft Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition.

The APA is the body that, until 1973, classified homosexuality as a mental disorder, and currently regards gender non-conformity to be a disorder, including gender non-conformity by intersex people.

Intersex people can have the biological attributes of both sexes or lack some of the biological attributes considered necessary to be defined as one or the other sex.

Intersex is always congenital and can originate from genetic, chromosomal or hormonal variations. Many intersex people, when their status is discovered at birth, are arbitrarily assigned a gender, and this may be surgically reinforced.

OII Australia president Gina Wilson said the organisation regards the proposed classification of “gender dysphoria” as problematic in the way it relates to intersex people who reject an arbitrarily assigned gender.

“We also reject pathologising language that defines intersex variations as ‘disorders of sex development’,” Wilson said.

“We regard ‘gender dysphoria’ to be a form of minority stress, a result of problematising gender variance.”

The British Psychological Society submission on the DSM draft also noted its concern that clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued medicalisation of their natural and normal responses to their experiences.

“We believe that classifying these problems as ‘illnesses’ misses the relational context of problems and the undeniable social causation of many such problems,” its submission reads.

The OII submission is also being presented to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health 7th Standards of Care, which addresses intersex people for the first time.

“The issues some intersex people may have in dealing with earlier gender assignments they are uncomfortable with are not to be conflated with transgender health issues,” OII Aotearoa/NZ representative Michelle O’Brien said.

“All standards of care for intersex people, whether they have gender assignment issues or not, should be developed in full consultation with intersex individuals themselves, and organisations that represent them, just as has been the case with standards of care for transgender people.”

Western Australian Senator Louise Pratt has also commented in a letter of support in the submission.

“As this submission from OII asserts, in order to properly address health and human rights issues for people who are intersex it is vital to recognise that there is a natural, biological basis for any gender non-conformity,” she wrote.

“It is a submission informed by sound research as well as the experiences of intersex people.”

The closing date for public submissions on the draft DSM is June 15.

Read the OII full submission here.

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8 responses to “Intersex fight for change”

  1. I haven’t faulted OIIs lobbying, I wish them the best. Just leave me and people like me out of it. Same goes for those lobbying for the transgender umbrella, leave binary transsexuals out of it. If we want change, for ourselves, we’ll lobby for it, just like Transhealth Australia are doing… for ourselves.

    I’m not sure what you meant by ‘It’s not OII’s fault that their agenda doesn’t fit with your world view, and saying as much is really akin to accepting that bigots have a right to be homophobic/transphobic towards those in the GLBTI communities because we don’t fit with their world view.’ I would think carefully before accusing anyone of being homophobic/transphobic, there are consequences.

  2. What don’t you understand?

    I want OII to lobby for themselves for what they need and desire.

    I want the transgender umbrella to do likewise.

    What I demand is that they don’t lobby on the behalf of binary transsexuals such as myself.

    How simple is that?

  3. Oktobr … with respect, I urge you to do some more (deeper) thinking on the subject.

    It’s not OII’s fault that their agenda doesn’t fit with your world view, and saying as much is really akin to accepting that bigots have a right to be homophobic/transphobic towards those in the GLBTI communities because we don’t fit with their world view.

  4. I believe in the gender binary. Such a horrible thing to do, huh? I believe also that Oii should lobby on their own behalf and that lobbying should not affect what is going on for those not intersexed. Same goes for transgenders. Lobby for their own issues, but leave transsexuals out of it. Many transsexuals are not under your transgender umbrella, and do not want to be forced under it by transgenders with agendas different from ours.

    I am a transsexual, I believe in the binary, deal with it… or don’t, but don’t politic for us. Your refusal to accept that many of us feel this way is disrespectful. We believe in your rights to feel as you do, just stop pushing your rainbow umbrella over us.

  5. Oktobr said: “The only problem with this submission and the attempts by various transgender militant activists groups to de-pathologize the DSM and the Standards of Care is that it does nothing for the binary-centric transsexual whose only wish in life is to be the opposite sex from which they were assigned at birth.”

    A person that is transsexual, and unbelievably calls themselves a binary-transsexual says that this submission has “problems” … Truly Unbelievable!

    Oktobr … Have you stopped to consider that perhaps it is YOU that has a problem here … for believing in a “gender-binary”?

  6. DSM is supposed to be about mental issues. Intersexed issues are physiological, and the sociological components of how others deal with it makes gender identity not so clear. In fact, for an intersexed person, even if their gender identity is firmly with either gender, it cannot conform to the person’s anatomy – completely. It seems absurd to classify this as a mental disorder when there is no definition of what “health” would look like to an intersexed person. This is NOT a mental disorder, and does not require treatment.

  7. The only problem with this submission and the attempts by various transgender militant activists groups to de-pathologize the DSM and the Standards of Care is that it does nothing for the binary-centric transsexual whose only wish in life is to be the opposite sex from which they were assigned at birth. While we respect the rights of the Oii to politic for intersexed persons rights regarding this issue, the transgender activists would deconstruct everything to achieve their desires, leaving everyone else to deal with the fallout of their ‘achievement’ should they succeed.

    It’s kind of summed up in one little saying… ‘a transgender comes home, puts on a bra and shoes… a transsexual comes home and takes them off’. Transgender is a fetish, transsexual is identity and everyday. Leave us binary transsexuals out of your lobbying, please, most of us are happy to work with the system already in place and to better it, we don’t need it destroyed so that we have to pick up the pieces to be able to quietly live our lives in peace and inner harmony.

  8. It is a miss-representation to say that the Standards of Care for Trans*people have been developed in full consultation with Trans*people. WPATH which publishes the SOC is like the APA made up almost entirely of health ‘professionals’ who have a vested interest in the continue pathologisation of trans* and now Intersex.