Books and selected journal articles on intersex issues, including fiction, peer-reviewed papers, and biographies.
The UN Human Rights Committee has made a powerful call to recognise the human rights of intersex people, including through ending irreversible medical treatment that is not absolutely medically necessary, and that takes place before a child can comprehend and provide informed consent.
We announce publication of a joint consensus statement, the “Darlington Statement”, by Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand intersex organisations and independent advocates, in March 2017. It sets out common priorities and calls to action by the intersex human rights movement in our countries.
With kind permission from both author and journal, we are pleased to share a paper by Aileen Kennedy entitled “Fixed at birth: Medical and legal erasures of intersex variations”, published earlier this year by the UNSW Law Journal. There is complicity between the medical and the legal construction of variations of sex development as pathological…
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Intersex Awareness Day this year was very significant. The United Nations, regional human rights institutions and the Australian Human Rights Commission all made intersex-specific human rights statements for the first time. The UN also launched an awareness website. The United Nations and regional human rights institutions called for immediate action to end human rights…
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Body shaming is an intersex issue, perhaps even more than any other issue. This post intersperses quotations about intersex infants and children with quotations about the bodies of public figures.
Raising Rosie is a new book for parents of children born with variations of sex characteristics, written by Eric and Stephani Lohman, parents of a girl with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. When their daughter Rosie was born, Eric and Stephani Lohman found themselves thrust into a situation they were not prepared for. Born intersex – a…
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OII Australia co-chair Morgan Carpenter has been published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Reproductive Health Matters. Here is the article abstract: Intersex people and bodies have been considered incapable of integration into society. Medical interventions on often healthy bodies remain the norm, addressing perceived familial and cultural demands, despite concerns about necessity, outcomes, conduct and…
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Overnight, the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions has published an important guide to promoting and protecting human rights on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics. The guide was written by Chris Sidoti and Jack Byrne. The Australian Human Rights Commission is a member of the Asia Pacific Forum,…
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Congratulations to Esan Regmi, Parsu Ram Rai, and Jensen Byrne for the publication of Stories of Intersex people from Nepal, today. The stories in this book are based upon the writings of intersex participants at the First Intersex National Meeting in Nepal, held on 8-9 February 2016 in Kathmandu. The meeting took place with support…
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We announce that the 2015 survey of people born with atypical sex characteristics has now been published. This survey was an independent research project led by Dr Tiffany Jones. The book has been peer reviewed and published by an academic publisher, Open Book Publishers. The strong team of co-authors includes a reference group of community…
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Overnight, the UN OHCHR released a long-awaited intersex fact sheet, as part of the Free&Equal campaign. Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies. Being intersex is much more common than most people think – according to experts there are as many intersex people…
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Georgiann Davis’s first book, “Contesting Intersex, The Dubious Diagnosis” is hotly awaited, and the first chapter has just become available online, from the publisher. Here are a couple of quotes (references omitted): I show how contemporary U.S. medical experts on intersex, like much of society, tend to hold narrow, essentialist understandings of sex, gender, and…
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