Author:

Bhakti Ananda Goswami, board member, OII

“Some sociologists and legal experts have suggested that eligibility for new ID cards or other benefits might require a physical exam and test to see how claimants urinate.”

This ’suggestion’ by “sociologists and legal experts” is appalling in its anti-scientific ignorance. Objective scientists and biologists know that human beings cannot be divided into any discrete/distinct category of male or female based upon how they urinate, or anything else! Humans are generally, but not exclusively, sex-dimorphic or strictly sex-differentiated as male or female. Thus, realistically/scientifically speaking, there is no way to create some artificial system to categorize them as strictly male or female.

The news article quoted above addresses some of the problems faced by intersex people in Pakistan, who have a feminine gender identity and expression.

Pointless Distinctions

Although the article makes a distinction between “a born eunuch or hermaphrodite” and the supposedly other people who have traditionally been accepted as part of the Hijra communities, purely based on the biological evidence I consider all such people to be intersex.

In all other so-called sex-dimorphic social species with a gendered ‘language’ of sex-signaling, ‘male to female’ cross-gendered behavior is without question associated with some real-world physical/biological process of feminization. Hence no scientist/biologist studying such sex differentiation related animal behavior will ever consider it to be ‘psychological’ or ’satanic’. And for decades the creatures exhibiting such behavior have been called ‘intersexed’ or ’sex-reversed’ in behavior by the scientists studying them.

This observation by objective scientists has carried no moral value-judgment on the creatures observed.

Throwing out Scientific Objectivity

However, when it is human cross-sexed behavior at issue, tragically scientific objectivity has been almost entirely left-out of the social discourse, and this has resulted in the continued inhuman treatment and even demonization and murder of such people today.

Please consider that even in nations and societies that generally do not approve of abortion, if a condition of intersex is detected in an infant who is still in utero, this is most often counseled as a reason to abort the child.

So, although we are in a new age of science and technology, socially most of humanity is still living in an age of ignorance, superstition and fear in its perception and treatment of people who are physically or behaviorally intersex or sex-reversed. It is not just the poor uneducated Hijras in India and Pakistan etc. who are unemployable outcasts being forced into prostitution for survival. Even high-achieving intersex people in developed countries like the USA have to try to hide their ’secret’, or constantly fight the ignorance, prejudice and outright violent hatefulness that they encounter, usually from the ‘religious right’.

Issues of Legal Identity

Today there are serious problems facing intersex people involving local, national and international identification and travel law, and the rules of competitive sports, such as in the Olympics. To learn about the sex-testing human rights issues in the Olympics, please see the Organization Intersex International (OII) petition on the OII Australia website.

Oii Australia: Sign the Intersex petition against sex testing by the IOC http://www.intersexualite.org/IOC-petition.html

The OII is the world’s leading international and multilingual association of intersex people. I am on the USA OII Board of Directors.

My body looked normally female at birth, but I never had a female gender identity, and eventually my own high level of androgen production virilized my body to the point that, as a young adult with a full beard, I could no longer even publicly ‘pass’ as a female any more.

As I had always considered myself to be male, finally being legally sex re-assigned to male was a great relief to me. That was more than 35 years ago, but now, thanks to the insane and anti-scientific homophobic elements of the USA Real ID Act, there is a high likelyhood that when I must renew my driver’s license in 2011, my State, in order to comply with the Real ID Act, will, using my original birth certificate, put “female” on my driver’s license!

After more than 40 years of living as a man, this will certainly be a problem for me, but at least as a masculine-looking person I will probably not face some kind of sexual harassment or assault because of it.

However I am concerned for the safety and social welfare of the many dear female-gendered intersex-bodied souls, living as women, who will be forced to carry ‘REAL ID’ that says that they are male.

This is NOT about sexual orientation, or who someone is sexually attracted to. It is not about who a person ‘loves’, it is about who a person IS. It is about the basic human right of BEING. And, as a Christian I must accept the Gospel message that Jesus loves ALL of us JUST AS WE ARE, and that He gave Himself for us, everyone of us, regardless of our race/nation, social status or sex.

Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free …

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. … bible.cc/galatians/3-28.htm

Colossians 3:11: Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or …

In him there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free person. Instead, the Messiah is all and in all. … bible.cc/colossians/3-11.htm

Aborting the ‘Defective’

Are you a parent? Do you hope to be one? If you learned that your unborn baby was intersex or would grow up to be ‘trans-gendered’, transsexual, homosexual or lesbian, would you consider an abortion? Do you think that it is ok to routinely abort sexually different infants, as so ‘defective’ that they have no right to live?

There are hundreds of millions of intersex people in the world, not including homosexuals, transsexuals and transgendered people. But, the rest of the human race has so generally feared and despised them that they have everywhere been forced to either live in denial of their own existence, or live in some outcast and oppressed subculture. Homophobia is a major social force compelling the religious demonization and maltreatment of these dear souls, for whom God died.

No one can kill God, but God can experience mortality and even death if He chooses to. Why would God choose to offer Himself as a redeeming sacrifice for ‘eunuchs and barren women’, if He did not desire their salvation? If the Bible itself testifies that such people are worthy of God’s Mercy in Christ, then how can the rest of humanity reject them as unworthy of mere human love and social inclusion?

Education Please

Please become educated about the existence of intersex people, and the human rights problems facing them.

Please inform others, and pressure your governments to provide appropriate ID laws for intersex people, and legal protection for them, and all of their basic human rights.

The nation’s hijra community – mostly eunuchs and hermaphrodites – has long lived on the margins in the Muslim nation, barely tolerated and more often abused. A new ruling gives its members some rights. …

Los Angeles Times: A small victory for Pakistan's transgenders

The court decision to bolster transgender rights, however, has raised questions of what it means to be a hijra. The term refers to a born eunuch or hermaphrodite, a group seen as marginally acceptable because their birth was God’s will. But many others even less well-regarded in society – homosexuals, transvestites, bisexuals and transsexuals – also claim hijra status. …

Some sociologists and legal experts have suggested that eligibility for new ID cards or other benefits might require a physical exam and test to see how claimants urinate. …

Editorial comment:

Thereby setting up yet another set of castes and further discrimination. Some “victory”!

Consider the possibilities – those who sit to pee, those who stand to pee, those who mostly stand but sometimes sit according to circumstances, those who mostly sit but will stand when they have to due to a lack of apparatus to sit and pee upon, ad infinitum.

The multitude of variations, each with their specific rights and privileges or lack of them, will surely give birth to a whole new layer of bureaucracy.

Where will it end? Will it ever end? Why do these people even bother?

Persecution is persecution whatever name it is given at the time.

It has been proposed by some human rights activists that a new term be coined to encompass all varieties of diversity in sex, gender and sexual orientation. The acronym for that term is GLB(SGD)Q, standing for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual (Sex & Gender Diverse), Queer.

I am uneasy with this acronym though I understand why it is used and have listened to the arguments for its adoption.

GLB(SGD)Q - yet another 'all-inclusive' acronym that in fact excludes intersex yet again.

Intersex has a long history of social erasure. The surgery that is sometimes performed on us as infants is an attempt to erase that child’s intersex. The notion by medicine and society at large is that intersex is a disease or “medical condition” that is amenable to being “cured”.

We Reject the Notion of a ‘Condition’

OII Australia rejects the use of “condition” in connection with intersex because of its association with medicine and disease.

Such terminology is used in disability and disability legislation. Intersex is not a disability despite being thought of as such by many people. If people referred to a homosexual condition or a lesbian condition then there would be a tidal wave of protest. Michael Kirby has a homosexual condition? Tony Abbott has a heart condition? Gina Wilson has an intersex condition?

The forced gendering of intersex from the time of Herculine Barbin to the present is likewise an attempt at a cure, an attempt to erase sex differences that fall outside sex binary expectations.

Gendering is likewise an attempt to erase intersex. Intersex are gendered at birth and we cannot be sexed because our sex is unknown. The whole reason for surgery and subsequent medical interventions is to try and predict whether we will be penetrators or penetrated in heteronormative sexual relationships. The fear our differences provoke is therefore homophobic.

Intersex First Proposed in 1903

Intersex as a term was first proposed by Goldschmidt in the first edition of Endocrinology published in 1903.

The term was introduced to replace the wildly inaccurate use of hermaphrodite and pseudo-hermaphrodite that were then used by the scientific community to describe sex differences that were in no way hermaphroditic.

From that time on we have had an accurate way of describing sex difference in place of one that more properly means the possessor of complete possession for male and female reproductive parts that can allow both male and female reproduction in a single individual.

We always use worms, snails and so on as examples of real hermaphrodites. An example of a pseudo-hermaphrodite in nature is the grouper which is female when young and male when older. This fish possesses both male and female parts, however they are not simultaneously active as they are in an hermaphrodite.

‘Hermaphrodite’ is an Insult

We were referred to as hermaphrodites both inaccurately and quite insultingly in medicine, but not in science, until the late seventies when intersex started to become the preferred term.

It has been a long, hard slog since then for intersex to not only have the term adopted but to have it accepted as a way of describing our differences and a way of effectively connecting ourselves to bring about political change.

It is our way of unerasing our anatomical differences from the mainstream psyche.

Medicine goes on the Attack

When medicine became aware of activism by intersex there was considerable consternation within that fraternity.

Intersex activism challenges medicine’s right to decide who is male or female – they won’t decide on something else because they don’t want that possibility to exist – to perform non-consensual experimental cosmetic surgery on infants’ genitals, to construct generalized medical paradigms where the possession of certain chromosomes dictates their right to designate sex, to evade prosecution because those they treat have no rights outside of the sex and/or gender binaries.

To assuage its anxiety about intersex activism, medicine decided to do what they have always done to us and that is erase intersex.

In 2006 medicine coined a new term, “Disorders of Sexual Development” aka DSD, to replace intersex. Intersex, to medicine, then became a small group of disaffected individuals who rejected their birth assignment or transsexuals who were so self-loathing they pretended to intersex differences. I consider the latter position, which I come across frequently, to be homophobic. Transphobia is a clone of homophobia.

A Double Erasure

So we have a double erasure. First the attempt to cure us and erase our physical differences then the discussion to replace the word that describes us with one that cannot be used to effectively call for human rights without admitting to a “disorder” or a “medical condition”, both repulsive to most intersex.

By adopting the term expressed in the acronym GLB(SGD)Q its supporters have, in attempting to be inclusive, achieved the erasure of intersex yet again, just like all their predecessors. “Sex, sexuality and gender diversity” is not a phrase that immediately brings intersex into the minds of people. We have worked long and hard to raise awareness of intersex, and we have only succeeded in the last five years or so in getting it used by mainstream media and having it reported as that.

Within the LGBT community we still face huge obstacles in having intersex included and not excluded as is its habit. This month the ILGA has accepted intersex as have NSW and Victorian GLRL. This has happened because of the huge efforts by intersex around the world to get intersex inclusion and to get allies for our cause and support from similar disaffected minorities.

Intersex rights might be included in legislation that used words such as those that AHRC Commissioner Innes described – by the way he absolutely refused to include intersex in his Sex Files: the legal recognition of sex in documents and government records project and refused dialogue with intersex organizations in writing his white paper about us – but we will only be included with certainty if the word intersex is used.

Yet More Exclusion a Vital Issue for Intersex

It may seem a small thing or a big thing to the GLB(SGD)Q enthusiasts – I don’t know. It is a significant issue for intersex.

I recently read an article by Bayne McGregor decrying the lack of inclusion in LGBTI for those who reject the sex/gender binary but are not intersex. I understand this needs to be addressed in some way. I reject the notion that it can be addressed by erasing intersex from LGBTI. GLB(SGD)Q does not represent us – it hides us in a term nobody understands. It feels very much like DSD to me.

We have battled all of our lives to get people to understand intersex and use that word to describe us. We have battled for years to get LGBT organizations to include us, to use the acronym LGBTI, and to use the word intersex and to know what that means.

I will support a term that can describe non-binary sex and/or gender but not if that means intersex is erased in an attempt to find an all-encompassing term.

NSW Births Deaths and Marriages then issued the ‘Sex Not Specified’ Details Recognition Certificate in accordance with recommendations made by the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2009 report on the legal rights of sex and gender diverse people proposing a greater scope of legal recognition be used beyond male and female for certain individuals.

The Scavenger: Sex not specified: Australia leads the way with legal document

“This decision now has fundamental ramifications for neuter and intersex identified individuals in that they no longer have to be forced to live as male or female,” said Tracie O’Keefe, spokesperson for SAGE.

“Furthermore it is an enormous legal breakthrough for the rights of intersex children whose doctors and parents are confused about their sex at births and that they could be registered as ‘Sex Not Specified’ until they decide what sex would be right for them,” O’Keefe continued.

“Many intersex children have been forced into male and female identities, when not medically necessary, which they later felt were incorrect, including unnecessary brutal surgery to give them stereotypical looking genitalia, often leaving them without sensation or function.”

Editorial comment:

“Intersex identified?” Sorry, but intersex is not an ‘identity’. Intersex is a biological fact.

Please leave intersex people out of identity politics. Intersex is anatomical differences and thinking that intersex has any connection to identity politics simply muddies the waters.

That aside, OII Australia is pleased that Norrie has received the first ‘Sex Not Specified’ Details Recognition Certificate and is grateful to NSW Births Deaths and Marriages for issuing it.

In doing so, NSW BDM has recognized the fact that not all human beings consider themselves a part of the sex binary.

The notion that this offers some kind of solution to parents of an intersex child misapprehends intersex and the problems faced by both the parents and children in this situation.

OII Australia does not agree that the identity of a child should be battled out on an already contested body. Children should be given a ‘conditional’ assignment of male or female and gender neutral names. When the child decides then they can then change their birth certificate under already existing regulations that allow for a change of designators because of a mistaken assignment at the time of birth.

A seven or eight year old child does not need to be saddled with a birth certificate that declares their difference in a society that currently struggles with such differences and threatens those who have them. This is not dissimilar to having BASTARD stamped across a birth certificate. Parents and child alike do not need the burden of such a document when they already face their own internal prejudices and those of the community around them. Intersex are aware from the time they learn of their differences that they have unacceptable bodies.

It is one thing for a cogent and strong activist to opt out of the sex/gender binary and make it so in law. It is another thing entirely to expect a seven or eight year old to understand these issues and to face down the prejudice such a document would engender.

OII Australia is interested to know if this sex non-designator is available to everyone or is it only available to those who can show medical and/or anatomical non-binary inclusion. If it is not available to all people we consider it analogous to creating a third sex for those who have physical differences of sex. OII Australia opposes the creation of such a category.

OII Australia also notes this is not a change of a birth certificate, simply the provision of an official recognition. Just how a child or parent could use such a document is unclear. Intersex have the right to have their primary documents changed in NSW under current arrangements and for the vast majority of intersex that is adequate.

The document in question is a “recognition certificate” and as such is similar to the UK “gender recognition certificate”. OII Australia considers both to be inadequate. Although it might be seen by some as a step forward – that has not proved to be the case in the UK – OII Australia stands for the removal of all sex designators from birth certificates.

We support “Not Specified” as a sex designator so long as it is available to all and that it is on the birth certificate itself. If that were the case then we would encourage all people to do away with the sex designators on their birth certificates.

External link:

• The Scavenger: My journey to getting a ’sex not specified’ legal document

“Before, we knew we got fewer males than we should have, and we got hermaphrodites. Now, we have clearly shown that many of these animals are sex-reversed males,” Hayes said. “We have animals that are females, in the sense that they behave like females: They have estrogen, lay eggs, they mate with other males. Atrazine has caused a hormonal imbalance that has made them develop into the wrong sex, in terms of their genetic constitution.” …

TS-Si: Hormone Disruption By Atrazine Pesticide

“What people have to realize is that, just as with taking pharmaceuticals, they have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs,” he [Dr Tyrone B. Hayes] said. “Not every frog or every human will be affected by atrazine, but do you want to take a chance, what with all the other things that we know atrazine does, not just to humans but to rodents and frogs and fish?” …

External links:

• ABC Science: Weedkiller ‘makes boy frogs lay eggs’
• Atrazine Lovers - the website of scientist Tyrone B. Hayes PhD
• Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), Australian Government: New U.S. EPA Review of Atrazine
• CSIRO: Bug Puts the Bite on Pesticide Problem
• Friends of the Earth Australia: Atrazine expert to visit Australia

The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million to 140 million women worldwide, but especially in northern and central Africa, have endured female genital mutilation, or FGM.

Usually done to girls before age 15, the practice involves at least slicing off part or all of the exposed clitoris. In some cultures, the cutting is more extensive, and disfiguring. It’s done occasionally by health care practitioners but most often by an older female relative.

A lot of people inflict the damage. …

denverpost.com: Trinidad surgeon helps women escape past of mutilation

Editorial comment:

What some call IGM, or intersex genital mutilation, is always done by health care practitioners.

Those who seek to excuse FGM and IGM always cite cultural reasons as the justification for these disgusting, brutal practices.

Those support and practice FGM and IGM are equally brainwashed into believing in their dire necessity. There is no legitimate excuse for either FGM or IGM.

OII Australia points out that FGM and IGM continue to be carried out in Australia, on Australian citizens and residents, and demands that FGM and IGM cease immediately.

OII Australia thanks Dr Marci Bowers and Clitoraid for their work in restoring the genitals of women who have been subjected to FGM but we ask who is working to help restore the genitals of men and women who have been subjected to IGM?

Where is the worldwide effort and fund to restore the victims of IGM (Intersex Genital Mutilation)?

Oh yes, that’s right, IGM is okay because it is done for cultural reasons.

External links:

• Clitoraid.org
• Marci L. Bowers, M.D.

Urgency Required: Gay and Lesbian Rights are Human Rights is an admirable and timely project in the form of a book, through which the authors provide a comprehensive exploration of the state of LGBT rights worldwide. The book takes as it’s reference point the 2006 Yogyarkarta Principles, the premise of which is that gay and lesbian rights are human rights. The book is divided roughly into three sections: a historical perspective and exploration of concepts and terminology around same-sex intimacy and transgender; a discussion on the struggle for ‘Gay and Lesbian’ rights (LGBTIQ) in Africa, Asia and Latin America; and a section that explores the range of strategies for furthering gay and lesbian rights and equality.

allAfrica.com: Criminalising Homosexuality - a Threat to Human Rights

On[e] major criticism is that though the introduction has a section on terminology – ‘LGBT’ and ‘LGBTIQ’ ‘Queer’, the default acronym is ‘LGBT’, thereby excluding intersex people in a general sense. By not addressing issues of specific concern to intersex people, they are made doubly invisible. Again this is made more confusing by the title which refers only to ‘Gay and Lesbian’ rights. It highlights the need to for us to think more critically about language, and how particular words and terminology are exclusive.

Download the book as a PDF:

• Urgency Required: gay and lesbian rights are human rights

External link:

• Hivos Knowledge Programme

OII Australia attended the presentation by New Zealand artist Rebecca Swan at the Australian Centre for Photography (ACP) on Thursday, 4th March.

Ms Swan spoke about her project Assume Nothing. One of her subjects in this project is New Zealand intersex activist Mani Bruce Mitchell.

Rebecca Swan showing images from her project 'Assume Nothing'. Photograph © copyright Morgan Carpenter 2010.

The cover of the book of her project 'Assume Nothing' at the presentation by Rebecca Swan, Australian Centre for Photography. Photograph © copyright Morgan Carpenter 2010.

OII Australia interviews Rebecca Swan at the Australian Centre for Photography, 4th March 2010. Photograph © copyright Morgan Carpenter 2010.

Download and listen to the audio interview:

• OII Australia interviews Rebecca Swan, ACP, Sydney, March 4th 2010.

Society defines womanhood and decides who fits the role, but the question is how. Is being born with female genitalia requisite? Nature won’t be so easily categorised, and people are born with the genitals of both sexes, or neither, more often than you might think.

The Nation: The parts of a woman

In fact, any of the presumed “female” characteristics – vagina, ovaries, breasts, menstruation, XX chromosomes, oestrogen, the ability to get pregnant – can be absent in a woman, whether by birth, age, design, medical procedure or accident. This contrariness makes a precise definition of a female elusive, as in last year’s case of South African athlete Caster Semenya. …

The WHO’s diagnosis of these “gender identity disorders” has a price tag in term of stigma and discrimination that not all transgenders are willing to pay.

The WHO definition is trouble. It’s partly designed to offer trans people in developed countries the hope or expectation of subsidised gender-based healthcare, especially sex-reassignment surgery.

But if transgenderism is really a psychiatric condition, it could be argued that it should be treated with psychiatric drugs. Sex-reassignment surgery, people could then say, would leave the root of the condition untreated and maybe even make it worse. Basing her argument on conflicting medical opinions rather than solid principles of human rights, Yollada also opened herself to attack by the guest physician, a cytologist who wasn’t necessarily an expert on sexuality. The doctor insisted that gender is determined only by sex chromosomes.

Again, remember Caster Semenya. …

The issue with the IOC – International Olympic Committee – is sexism and every woman should be outraged.Why?

Physical advantage

Every gold medallist since the beginning of the modern Olympics, and most likely those in the old Olympics has a physical advantage over his competitors. The underlying prejudice in the current situation is that ‘male’ physical advantage is acceptable within the sex binary paradigm, even a delightful sign of machismo and sexual prowess, so long as the person with that advantage is thought to be a ‘man’.

Men are not subjected to tests for masculinity. They are not inspected to see if they have too many female parts.

The idea, I suppose, is that if a female can win as a male then she has achieved the ultimate that a female can achieve and that is to qualify as a man. (I give you Margaret Thatcher.)

For example, FtM transsexuals have to endure much less prejudice than MtF. The employment rate amongst FtM is near the national average while for MtF the employment rate is about 20%.

Lesbians are far more acceptable to society than gay men. Lesbianism is the number one male fetish. Gay males are represented more in hate crimes than people of colour or ethnicity. In this I propose that lesbians qualify as acceptable because they like what men like – women. Gay men do not qualify because they like what women like – men.

The point is to underline the patriarchal view that permeates society where being sex diverse is a disadvantage, where being different provokes prejudice, where being female is good (yet still provokes deeply held prejudice), where being male is ideal (as it does not provoke prejudice it is eugenically selected for in China and India).

The issue for Mokgadi Caster Semenya would not arise if she had competed as a man, even if she had won. There has never been a sex test (as far as I know) for any man competing in the Olympics.

Testosterone testing for males is only ever done as a doping test. If the individual happens to have a genetic difference that causes overproduction of testosterone then that person still qualifies, even if that genetic difference is an intersex one.

No thought of asking a male to cut one of his balls off, to even out the field a bit, would enter anyone’s head (save for mine).

Examples of genetic physical advantages that are clearly evident but not tested for and that do not disallow contestants:

• Short stocky build for weight lifters – lifting a weight to 1.5 metres is easier than lifting to 2 metres and lifting from a wide base is easier still.
• Large feet, long torsoes and increased lung capacity – advantageous in swimmers and are features that are selected for by swimming coaches.
• Thin bodies with long legs – selected for in marathon running.

The IOC is only concerned when a woman posses what are considered male physical advantages.

The IOC is attempting to lay down what physicality is allowable for females.

This is reminiscent of the long-standing position on AIS women where it is deemed that they should always have their testicles removed because they might become cancerous.

This is a lie. There is little evidence to support this and what evidence relies heavily on male testicles and is induced to include XY females who are still regarded as “really being male” by a large slice of the medical fraternity.

The idea that an athlete should have their body modified to conform more exactly with sex binary expectations is repulsive.

If the IOC wins on this then what other anatomies will not qualify as female? What other parts will have to be removed to be a real woman? This is analogous to transsexuals only being allowed to change their identity documents after they have had sufficient maleness or femaleness surgically removed.

In all of IOC history only one person has ever been put forward as being a male disguised as a female.

She was Dora Ratjen. Dora Ratjen was intersex.

No physical advantage can be shown or has ever been shown of intersex over the general population beyond what is within normal variability. Mokgadi Caster Semenya did not break the world record. Will they test the world record holder for excess testosterone levels? Generally intersex have a distinct disadvantage because of their physical differences.

If Ms Semenya has AIS – Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome – or PAIS – Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome – as is sometimes supposed then her body will react less to testosterone than non-AIS females. It does not matter how much androgen is available, it will not be used by AIS bodies. On the other had if a non-AIS female takes testosterone her body will be able to metabolise it and it may confer an advantage.

My position

I disagree with sex testing in athletics. I do not accept that there is any clear boundary between being male and being female. Intersex bodies most clearly demonstrate this blurring of definitions, however all bodies are likewise unbound from absolutes.

I think that attempting to find an absolute distinction will be fraught and prejudiced by the expectations of the testers. So long as Western medicine is involved there will be a fundamental sex binary expectation projected onto any attempt to determine sex.

I understand that sex binary expectations are rooted in homophobia and the inferiority of women. Intersex are assigned male or female with the expectation that they will go on to be the penetrators or the penetrated in heteronormative relationships.

Medical professionals consider an intersex person who ends up in an apparently homosexual relationship as a failure of assignment. Where possible surgery will make men of intersex, but the main reason that more intersex are converted to women is as a result of surgical limitations. When surgery was not possible, most intersex were thought to be male – Herculine Barbin and Dora Ratjen – or male-like (they still are).

I do not support the elimination of sex segregation in the Olympics. I take this position on feminist principles.

Men have dominated women’s lives for the most part because of an advantage in physical strength and aggression. In fact, primarily because of aggression. Men are responsible for wars, most domestic and civil violence, rapes, incest and so on. This is at the heart of human dysfunction. Societally-sanctioned physical aggression keeps all of us in our place – men against men, men against women.

This is not to say that all females are physically weaker than men. Many are not and they go on to win medals at the Olympics. This is about bell curves and averages, where there are huge overlaps.

This is also about a society that raises females to be submissive, to pretend intellectual inferiority in the presence of males and to learn incompetence in areas of male expertise. Females with physical and intellectual advantages are discouraged.

We will never know how many powerful, supremely fit and able females are out there so long as such women are encouraged to  be Paris Hilton and are terrorized away from being Ms Semenya. What woman would want to be thought of as “butch”, a “man”, an “hermaphrodite”, a “cheat” and so on because they used their anatomy to its full capacity?

Segregated competition allows men to burst through and bloom in their cloud of self-congratulatory adulation while women have their own place and their own opportunities.

Women’s competition is generally considered inferior – name me one woman’s sporting event that gets the same coverage as football or cricket – however there may come a day when patriarchy is replaced with equality. Not equality at law – heaven knows there is enough of that about and it makes the same difference as drawing a line in water – but rather equality in social acceptance and expectation. There may come a day where all people are able to reach their full potential without the hindrance of one group asserting their superiority over another.

In supporting segregation I encourage all people to move away from the need for it.
In supporting sex segregation I oppose absolutely the notion that intersex should be a separate sex and should have separate events. I do this for the reasons I oppose intersex as a third sex or third gender.

In supporting segregation I oppose, absolutely, sex testing and any attempt to do that. People who compete in good faith as the sex or gender they enroll in as should be treated as that and treated with respect. The IOC and their ilk should confine themselves to discovering cheats not differences. They should get out of the business of what makes a male or a female and get into the business of what makes an honest athlete.

One day in paradise there will be no need to proscribe and define sex differences. We will judge each other on the basis of our deeds, our talents, our contribution and our personal preferences.

Right now the IOC is in the same quicksand South Africa nearly drowned in thirty years ago. They are trying to decide who is black, who is white and who is coloured in the sex wars.

New Zealand photographer Rebecca Swan will be talking shop at the ACP – Australian Centre for Photography – tomorrow, Thursday 4th March, between 6pm and 8pm.

The ACP is located at 257 Oxford Street, Paddington in Sydney, NSW.

Rebecca is known for her book and exhibition titled Assume Nothing, which includes at least one intersex person amongst its subjects.

Rebecca Swan talks shop at the Australian Centre for Photography, 6—8pm Thursday 4 March 2010.

Editorial comment:

Several members of OII Australia will be attending. We’d love to know what “alternative gendered people” means though, especially in application to intersex.

We hope that Rebecca can enlighten us in her talk.

We wish to point out that intersex is not a gender nor a question of gender. Intersex is a question of sex diversity.