Human Rights

Toeing the Party Line

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  “Lies, damn lies and statistics” ~ attrib. Benjamin Disraeli “My point, however, is that intersexuals are not as rare as people may think” ~ Anne Fausto-Sterling Who is privileged enough to hold forth on who is, and is not, intersex, and what even intersex means, if it is understood at all, was long ago…
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Say my Name: politicisation of the body and the legitimisation of institutionalised violence toward intersex children

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There is no surprise that clinical psychologists hold conferences, nor that they write up their conclusions of the meetings and debates they attend. Except that something at a conference in 2000 held by the Tavistock/Portman clinic caught one of the attendees askance: a conference on gender identity entitled “Atypical Gender Identity Development: Therapeutic Models, Philosophical…
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Intersex Activism – Aims and Goals

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Current Intersex Activism strives toward achieving complete personal autonomy and bodily integrity for everyone born Intersex At present intersex activism engages with human rights NGO’s using two statements as the basis for securing intersex legal protections.  These statements were compiled at two international meetings of intersex advocates: one meeting was the 3rd International Intersex Forum,…
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Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture

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Juan E. Méndez, the Special Rapporteur assesses the applicability of the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in international law to the unique experiences of women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons. Building on the Special Rapporteur’s ground-breaking report of 2013, that called for the end…
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A Narrative fed by Comfortable Assumptions

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The often assumed belief that addressing gender pronouns is a desired end game for addressing intersex activist’s concerns needs to be repeatedly challenged, especially so when articles are published in press that fail to acknowledge the continuing human rights abuses of intersex infants and young children. There is little comfort in later being able to…
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Fundamental Human Rights

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A core imperative of intersex advocacy is the securing for everyone born intersex their fundamental human rights of personal autonomy in all decisions made about, and for them – primarily in the medical environment, but equally so throughout an intersex person’s life.   Allied to that fundamental human right is a person’s right to bodily integrity,…
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