Sex and gender recognition

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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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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The IAAF and the Sytematic Abuse of Female Athletes Human Rights

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In the deepening crisis embroiling the IAAF and it’s failure to uphold doping regulations is the tawdry tale of the human rights abuses meted out to female athletes who failed to conform to the artificial values the IAAF adopted to designate who it deemed female enough to compete in elite athletics. At face value the present…
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Lazy Sunday Afternoon*

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Idly musing on a sunny Sunday afternoon about the current positions shared by clinicians working within intersex medicine, and advocates striving to change those parameters Clinicians – we will talk to you – these are our terms: current clinical protocols. Advocates – we will talk to you – these are our terms: change the current…
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Should Doctors Operate on Intersex Babies?

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In a word, no.   However, that wouldn’t make for a very readable Buzzfeed article, so instead we have this.   This article is gaining some traction on fb. It’s easy to see why. It has an identifiable subject who has been subjected to appalling medicalised violence in the name of orthodox protocols. Protocols that…
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