Gina Wilson at Mardi Gras, Sydney, 2010. © Copyright Morgan Carpenter 2010.
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It also helps to attach some big-name talent to the enterprise. People like Oscar-winning actresses Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow and director Lasse Hallström.
Hallström says that, if all goes well, shooting on The Danish Girl will begin in May in Europe, and he couldn’t be more enthusiastic about a project that’s already generating controversy, and which will test the talents of all concerned. But the 63-year-old filmmaker isn’t worried.
“It’s the story of the first man who ever did a sex change: a Danish painter. Nicole is playing the man who turns into a woman, so that will be fun.”
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None of this would matter if Mardi Gras did not also fail us queers.
Wed to a very fixed sexual identity, Mardi Gras, and gay activism in general, does not have a great track record with transgendered or intersex people. Without a pre-fab, Mardi Gras approved sexual identity, forget about representation that matches the intensity of your struggle. As for us bisexuals, they, like our parents, would much rather we just make up our minds.
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Telecoms giant BT has launched a new website to provide lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people with essential business travel information. The firm has teamed up with the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) to provide information on policies, laws and resources across the globe.
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Though hard to believe, genital mutilation has been happening in the United States for quite some time. Of course, the prominent discourse has not framed the repeated medical procedures as such, in part due to ignorance and to avoid the acknowledgment of the infringement of human rights.
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Where is psychiatry headed? What the discipline badly needs is close attention to patients and their individual symptoms, in order to carve out the real diseases from the vast pool of symptoms that DSM keeps reshuffling into different “disorders.” This kind of careful attention to what patients actually have is called “psychopathology,” and its absence distinguishes American psychiatry from the European tradition. With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs. …
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In high school, Paul McKerrow was the starting quarterback and valedictorian. His classmates voted him best looking and most likely to succeed, but today, some may not recognize Helena High’s golden boy….
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OII Australia is participating in this year’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. As far as we know this will be the first time intersex has specifically been included in the parade.
OII will march with the Inner City Legal Service (ICLC) float.
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Reply from Audrey Ko, Executive Director, Corporate Service, Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services, page 1.
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To: sheriff.amandak@police.qld.gov.au
Dear Amanda
Please find attached recent correspondence between Organisation Intersex International and Assistant Commissioner Paul Stewart.
There are a couple of things I seek clarity on:
- Is an agency able to request a police check without the individual in question knowing?
- Are third parties able to request security checks on an individual and be provided with the results of that check in their own right?
I am concerned that if the results of the check disclose private information on an individual which that person might like to remain private that information could be come public through the third party applicant. What mechanism do you have for preventing that?.
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We, the undersigned, support the members of the Organisation Intersex International, in their demands that:
- The International Olympic Committee (IOC) abandon its demands that female athletes with intersex variations have their variations diagnosed and treated.
- The IOC allow the above mentioned athletes, known as intersex women, to compete as females without having to undergo diagnosis or “treatment.”
- The IOC, the press, and medical practitioners refer to females with intersex variations as “intersex women,” and not “women with disorders of sex development.”
OII Petition to International Olympic Committe regarding Intersex Athletes - Click to read and sign it.
People with atypical internal and/or external sex anatomy are commonly and historically known as “intersex men” or “intersex women.” OII is the largest intersex organisation in the world, with over three thousand members on all continents except Antarctica, and all our members reject the term “disorders of sex development” which the IOC is using to describe us. This term pathologizes our differences, which none of our other labels throughout history has done, and was imposed on us in 2006 by a group consisting primarily of physicians, without taking our views into account.
The question has arisen as to whether intersex women athletes are really female, and we declare that yes, they are. As we have all seen, there is a spectrum of masculinity and femininity within males and females, even amongst those without intersex variations, and in today’s legal system one is either male or female. Thus, intersex adults who are not legally male are legally female, and should be allowed the same legal rights and privileges of any other women. They should be allowed to compete in sporting events as female without having to undergo unnecessary medical “treatment” to validate them as women.
The IOC claims “Athletes’ health might be endangered if their disorders are not diagnosed and treated,”[1] but only a very small percentage of women with intersex variations have any health issues related to their variations. Some have “salt-wasting syndrome,” and some have internal testes which may be at risk for becoming cancerous. Both of these risks can be tested for and acted on if necessary.[2]
However, the IOC states, “Those who agree to be treated will be permitted to participate. Those who do not… will not be permitted.”[3] Thus health is not the real motivator for “diagnosis” and “treatment.” If it were, the IOC would require all female athletes to be “treated,” as all women with ovaries are at risk for ovarian cancer.
The IOC is falsely framing their demands as a health issue to obfuscate the fact that they are singling out women they deem overly masculine and forcing them to “fix,” i.e. “feminize,” their “masculine characteristics” in order to compete. We believe this is astoundingly discriminatory.
The issue which intersex female athletes present is one of “fairness.” However, as many have pointed out, unfair physical advantages are endemic to sports. Men with low testosterone levels have been muscled out of medals since sports began without calling for their rivals to be banned from competition. The only fair solution is for the IOC to celebrate, not regulate, “masculine” women’s physical talents, just as it does men’s.
References:
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/sports/olympics/21ioc.html
[2] http://oiiaustralia.com/media/articles/notes-intersex-journalists/ – Grave Health Risks
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/sports/olympics/21ioc.html
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