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March 31, 2004
Dear Green Party of California,
My name is Emi Koyama and I am the director of Intersex Initiative, a Portland, Oregon based patient advocacy group for people born with intersex conditions, with a branch in San Francisco.
I have come across the draft version of your "sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression platform" (as of March 27) which mentions intersex, and thought that you might benefit from our recommendations.
1. Why include intersex in the first place? I am not arguing *against* inclusion of intersex in this document, but I'd like you to think about why. In general, intersex should not be "included" with LGBT issues as a matter of routine, because issues and priorities that people with intersex conditions face are very different from that of LGBT people. For example, we generally do not think that inclusion of intersex in non-discrimination policies, hate crime legislation, and other major "LGBT agenda" would be particularly helpful. There is a concern that including intersex in "LGBT" would make invisible unique needs and issues faced by intersex individuals.
Contrary to popular belief, intersex is not primarily an issue of gender, at least from the perspective of intersex individuals. As a group, intersex people are not dealing with the issue of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression (as your platform is supposed to pertain to), but rather the socially imposed shame, secrecy and isolation as well as the physical, emotional and sexual traumas caused by misguided medical interventions (of course, an intersex person could also be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender--but as a group, intersex is not about that). Including intersex in the platform about "sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression" further compounds the myth that intersex is about gender.
2. Of the seven points in the proposed platform, only #5 seems to apply to intersex. It states:
"We support the right of all persons to self-determination with regard to gender identity and sex. We therefore support the right of intersex and transgender individuals to be free of coercion and involuntary assignment of gender or sex. We oppose involuntary medical or surgical treatment|including the involuntary treatment of children| to assign gender identity or sex. We support access to medical and surgical treatment for assignment or reassignment of gender or sex, based on informed consent."
There are several problems here.
First, every child is assigned gender or sex involuntarily at or near birth, whether intersex or not. If your platform suggested that no child would ever be raised as a boy or a girl, then at least it would be consistent; however, the platform, if interpreted literally, would leave only intersex children (because transgender children could not be detected at infancy) be assigned no gender, while all other children are raised either as a boy or a girl. We oppose this position: it should be either no child should ever be assigned to a gender, or every child--including intersex children--should.
Perhaps you are confused about what it means to assign a gender to a child. Gender assignment is a social designation that happens to every child, intersex or not, based on physical examination of the child's anatomy and the adults' best prediction of the most likely gender identity for the child. We do not advocate that intersex children be raised without a gender or as a member of the third gender; we believe that intersex children should be treated the same way as all other children, that is we make best educated guess about the gender that would be most likely to fit the child, based on a number of factors. And then, of course, if the child wants to change the assigned gender, we'd adjust to it whether the child is intersex or not. This should continue as long as our society operates under the two-sex system.
What activists oppose is the *surgical* "reinforcement" of the socially assigned gender, and that is not just because the assignment could be wrong: we feel that the surgery is itself harmful to the child, even if the gender happens to match (and in the vast majority of cases, child does not have gender problem, but rather trauma and anger issues from surgeries).
Also, while surgery is a major issue the intersex movement is addressing, it is far from the only one or even the most significant one. The mission statement of Intersex Society of North America states that it works to end "shame, secrecy and unwanted genital surgeries"--in other words, shame and secrecy come before surgery in terms of its priorities. We feel that surgeries are symbolic of the pattern of shame, secrecy and isolation that happens to intersex children, and these problems would continue to impact intersex lives even if surgeries were to end tomorrow.
Thus, our goal is not to simply stop surgeries, but replacing it with social and psychological support, education and social change. We are working to replace non-disclosure of information with full informed consent; secrecy and shame with honest communication and affirmation. When intersex is dealt with simply as a matter of gender assignment or ending surgeries, it trivializes the vision and scope of our movement. (This happens to be the same misperception Traditional Values Coalition expressed in its March 11 press release denouncing us as part of the "homosexual agenda.")
This policy statement tries to cover both intersex and transgender in one breath, and ends up sounding like a transgender platform that has been modified to address surgeries of intersex children. I do not feel that it was designed from ground up to address pertinent concerns of intersex people, but rather intersex was attached as an afterthought within the priorities and agenda or the transgender rights statement.
Personally I feel that the Green Party needs a separate policy statement to address the rights of intersex people rather than cleaverly attaching intersex to what's clearly written from LGBT point of view. If you are serious about protecting intersex rights, it would be helpful to coordinate with intersex groups such as ourselves and ISNA.
Also, there is an essay I wrote on the topic of intersex "inclusion" in LGBT politics that you might wish to take a look at:
http://www.intersexinitiative.org/articles/lgbti.html
Anyway, thank you for your willingness to address intersex rights in your platform. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.
Emi Koyama
Director, Intersex Initiative
http://www.intersexinitiative.org/