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Intersex Human Rights Australia Shaming in Healthcare, Education, Employment, Ihra.Org.Au Diversity and Inclusion, and Anti-Bullying Policies

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Intersex Human Rights Australia Shaming in Healthcare, Education, Employment, Ihra.Org.Au Diversity and Inclusion, and Anti-Bullying Policies Being an ally Find out more • Be clear in your language and frame of reference. Framework documents Intersex is about sex characteristics. It is distinct • Darlington Statement from legal sex, sexual orientation and gender darlington.org.au/statement identity, and not contained within LGBT. • Yogyakarta Principles plus 10 • Affirm the 2017 Darlington Statement yogyakartaprinciples.org/yp10 by Australian and Aotearoa/NZ intersex organisations and advocates. Non-fiction Our bodies ourselves • Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority and Lived Experience by Katrina Karkazis • Many medical papers on people with intersex variations explicitly identify fears of stigma, • The Legal Status of Intersex Persons by Jens gender identity issues and non-heterosexual Sherpe, Anatol Dutta and Tobias Helms (eds) behaviours as reasons for medical interventions. • Critical Intersex by Morgan Holmes (ed) • Work with us in our call to prohibit harmful • Raising Rosie: Our Story of Parenting an Intersex practices on infants, children and adolescents Child by Eric Lohman, Stephani Lohman and born with variations of sex characteristics. Georgiann Davis • Challenge body shaming and the elimination of Fiction intersex traits via genetic screening technologies. • Golden Boy: A Novel by Abigail Tarttelin • Support intersex inclusion in human rights and • None of the Above by I W Gregorio health initiatives. Documentary films Combat discrimination • Orchids: My Intersex Adventure (2011) • Intersex people face discrimination in healthcare, education, employment, and other services, often • Intersexion (2012) due to physical characteristics, developmental • XXXY (2000) intersex issues, or assumptions about our identities. Organisations • Include measures to combat stigma and body • Intersex Human Rights Australia shaming in healthcare, education, employment, ihra.org.au diversity and inclusion, and anti-bullying policies. • AIS Support Group Thoughtful inclusion in surveys and forms for allies aissga.org.au • Make surveys relevant to our concerns and lived experience. • Recognise the diversity of intersex people Intersex Human Rights Australia • Intersex and non-intersex people alike benefit ihra.org.au from F, M, X and multiple sex/gender options. facebook.com/intersexaus • Find more information at ihra.org.au/forms twitter @intersexaus Nothing about us without us IHRA 2019 (2019-02) • Put people with intersex variations and intersex- IHRA acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land led organisations front and centre when talking Acknowledgements and resources: ihra.org.au/allies about intersex. Please recycle responsibly Who are intersex people? Do intersex people have health issues? Are intersex people LGBT? Intersex people are born with physical sex Intersex people, like all people, have health issues. In a Some of us are LGBT, but many of us are not. We have characteristics that do not fit medical norms for female few situations, immediate medical attention is needed the same range of identities as non-intersex people. or male bodies. We are a hugely diverse population, from birth. Some health issues, like fertility, may be Many of us are heterosexual and many of us are not. with at least 40 different underlying traits known to associated with specific intersex variations, but being Most of us identify with sex assigned at birth and some of science. Intersex variations can become apparent at intersex is not a health issue in and of itself. Natural us do not. Some intersex people who have rejected the many different life stages, including prenatally through intersex bodies are most often healthy. sex assigned to them at birth may identify as transgender the use of genetic screening technologies, at birth Current medical protocols promote interventions or gender diverse, while others may see themselves and in early childhood, at puberty, and later in life - for designed to make the bodies of intersex people more as correcting a mistake made by doctors without their example when trying to conceive a child. typically female or male. These often take place before consent when they were children. Intersex is often Intersex people use many different terms to describe we are able to personally consent, or with limited mistakenly associated with gender and nonbinary gender ourselves. Sometimes personal choices are intended to disclosure of long-term consequences. Rationales identities. Anyone can have a nonbinary gender identity avoid discrimination, misconceptions and stigma. include ideas that medical interventions will “minimise whether or not they are intersex. family concern and distress” and “mitigate the risks of Identity frameworks can be awkward in relation to How common are intersex people? stigmatisation and gender-identity confusion”. intersex people. They can encourage inappropriate A low-range statistic for traits evident at birth is around Such surgical interventions intrinsically focus on assumptions, and we are at risk of human rights violations 1 in 2,000 people (.05% of births) but a more likely appearance, and not sensation or sexual function. before we have agency to freely express any identity. figure may be closer to 1.7%. These clinical practices lack firm evidence. Medicine Even so, we share common issues with LGBT people. What issues do intersex people face? has failed to self-regulate to end them. At a We encourage respect for our diversity as a population, fundamental level, homophobia and stigma underpin including respect for our sex assignments, sexual We do not share in common any gender identity or mistreatment of people born with intersex variations. orientations and gender identities. LGBT and LGBTI are sexual orientation. Instead we share an experience of not synonyms, and we encourage the deliberate use of stigmatisation and discrimination due to our physical Very many intersex people suffer lifelong physical and specific terms appropriate to each situation. characteristics. This can include risks of elimination emotional effects from such interventions, and related from the gene pool, and early so-called “normalising” shame and secrecy. The UN and many other human What do intersex advocates want? surgeries and hormone treatment designed to make us rights institutions recognise them as harmful practices and forms of violence and ill treatment; they must end. We seek access to the same rights as endosex (non- appear more typically female or male. intersex) people: bodily autonomy, the right to We face body shaming and stigmatisation in education, What are DSDs? determine what happens to our bodies ourselves; the healthcare, sport, work and other settings. Medical In 2006, clinicians replaced the term intersex in right to a life without stigma and discrimination; and education is limited, and awareness of intersex people in medical settings with the term “disorders of sex the right to a life free from shame and secrecy. The biology and sex education at school is often absent. development” or DSD. An immediately controversial demands of the intersex movement in Australia and What about the word hermaphrodite? act, this has been challenged as it entrenches a Aotearoa/New Zealand are set out in the Darlington medical model that sees intersex bodies as intrinsically Statement: darlington.org.au/statement The term hermaphrodite has origins in Greek disordered. The terminology justifies forced and mythology. Historically, western law recognised What is IHRA? coercive medical interventions and so is linked to hermaphrodites as either female or male depending human rights violations. Intersex advocates and human Intersex Human Rights Australia is a charitable on prevailing characteristics. Over time, the term has rights institutions have called for change to clinical company, registered in 2010. We were formerly narrowed in meaning. In biology it has come to define frameworks to ensure they meet human rights norms. known as OII Australia. We are run by volunteers and an organism that combines both “male” and “female” (since the end of 2016) two part-time staff funded functioning reproductive capacity. This makes the Some intersex people use this terminology, particularly by philanthropy. We engage in systemic advocacy, term misleading when applied to intersex people. The when accessing healthcare or if taught by their parents community-building and education. Cumulatively, we term also has a meaning in obsolete, pejorative clinical or doctors. Other people may use diagnostic labels. have many decades of experience in human rights terminology. Some intersex people find the term But many people change service providers or avoid advocacy. We bring together qualifications and offensive while others reclaim it. It is best used only by necessary healthcare because of this clinical language expertise in law, bioethics, healthcare, youth work and people born with variations in sex characteristics. and the way they are treated. public administration..
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