[Op/Ed] Stop Erasing Intersex with Yet More Acronyms like GLB(SGD)Q

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.