Why Should I be Nice?
By Sophia Siedlberg, OII-UK
When the conference of "Genital cutting, slicing, dicing, liquidating, and carving forum" was being held in London in July 2008, I had a phone call from a researcher that one of the "teams" represented in the “Slice ‘em and dice ‘em” conference wanted to do more study on 5 alpha. I could have lots of blood tests, have my hip to waist ratio measured and be poked and prodded.
I asked about the biological side of this, like what techniques were they using to identify mutations in genes. The answer of course was they were going to be using microarrays. Immediately I spotted a problem with this and the conversation was left until the head of that team could get back to me. The problem is you can only place the mutations you know about on a microarray. The basic idea of a microarray is that you have a lot of samples of single stranded DNA on the slide which are the complimentary sequences of the mutations. You then dye the sample and wash it over this array and then you get spots that tell you which parts of the sample are known mutations. It is a bit more complex than this but that is the basic principle and the one that is relevant to this debate. On the other "measurements" I sort of get the feeling that it is about bone maturation and whether we are talking a masculine pattern of bone development or feminine pattern. Bluntly if your hips are one thing and you identify as the other, then they would probably deem you to be a "Paraphilic DSD" or something.
One side of me says that it would be a noble thing to do to submit to scientific tests and help further the understanding of 5 alpha reductase deficiencies (They certainly need to address some of the bullshit being peddled right now). However, the hip-to-waist measurements bother me. It does sort of remind me of racial scientists in far off lands measuring the heads of the natives in order to make comments about racial intelligence. (And believe it or not, much of McGinley's work, the "Textbook" on 5 alpha is characterized by this sordid approach.)
I am also very sensitive about my genetic interests. You see the problem is that I am trained as a geneticist. I know the subject very well. In some ways I live genetics because of the condition I have. And have in the past been known to write and produce some very
interesting things, only to be told I am a worthless freak and have my ideas handed on to other people. To have a team looking at my DNA using micro arrays, while measuring my hip-to-waist ratio and making proclamations about my "gender", while being reduced to lots of disparate bits of meat is not something I relish really. Actually no, it pisses me off big time.
The point is I have a mind of my own and my own sense of human integrity and while these people say they will respect this, they don't. If they respected it, I would have a university post right now; I would be given the credit for work I have done and ideas I have come up with. Of course if they said, "Well, you could have a say if you submit to all this and we will listen" (yes, right, like the time I was at a certain medical school being told my academic career would end if I refused to stand naked in a lecture hall). Like you really want me to be nice? On this point I will say I have only just got my sense of self back from the last round of medical abuse in the 1980's. Funny how the very things I was told I was not are the very things I have ended up as. Actually there is a good illustration of that I can think of. I have developed a system for mapping the human face. It is not spectacular but it would be ahead of the competition in terms of reliability. There are numerous applications this could be put to and more accurate facial recognition on CCTV footage would be one of them. (Not that I would agree with such applications given I hate control freaks). However, in my 40's I find my own face has what this thing would identify as "428 nodes" (138 out of 150 mapped regions which is not that bad if you like that facial type). Now I was supposed to be stupid but I came up with a polygenic modeling system for genomes. But I am stupid so that was taken from me and given to a norm born because that is more acceptable. As for 428 facial features I wanted those when I was a kid. And I used to get mocked by doctors for that (though the description did not involve the surface mapping of course), and here I am today with them, no cosmetic surgery either. That is how things ended up. That should give some doctor a nasty headache when looking via a CCTV camera.
This is my problem. I ended up designing artwork for video games (still goes with the nodes I guess) when in truth there were better things I could be doing with my life. (Mind you the weird stuff I do via mobile phones is ironic) But no, I am "invited" to be poked and prodded again because that is all I am worth as a human being. If I am considered human at all.
I do hope that Milton Diamond gets to read this because this is the real issue of what it means to be intersexed. This is the real reason people in OII are actually annoyed. The objections to Chase – Laurent are a side issue, a consequence, not the core issue. The core issue is one of being reduced to little more than a lump of meat that the medical profession mock with impunity. You see I find it hard to believe that "these people (doctors) are helping". To me it seems like they are about making sure that everything in life has some place in some larger scheme of things, and that will be obeyed to the letter.
It is a kind of malignant fatalism that the medical profession fails to see in situations like this. It annoys me enough that the Clarke Northwestern Clique, which consists mainly of Catholic and rat control freaks (Dr Martin Kafka being the latest addition to that) keep
publishing bullshit and those in science choose to implement it. It is however something else when someone trying to recruit me is surprised that I even know what a micro array is. (I also know what a Dell DX series machine is and such machines are popular with doctors and all).
The doctors may have figured out I am engaged in some kind of personal war with them. Well, I am sorry but what I was made to endure as a child and early adulthood is something I am not grateful for and when I just start to make some sense of self viability, I happen to get a phone call: "Hey lab rat want to be poked and prodded?"
They would have to pay me a lot of money before I consent to it really. I may even do some very nasty legal twist and include intellectual property rights in any contract that needs to be signed. This is what Milton Diamond needs to understand really. I am a human being and as such I am entitled to human rights, and unlike a lot of activists I will be blunt about what I am saying. I woke up this morning to a flurry of emails about conferences I as someone with 5 alpha am not supposed to know about, where every norm born doctor and control freak will be discussing things like the following. (including Elizabeth Reiss, The DSD Plagiarist General from Oregon)
I'm organising this Critical Sexology seminar on Wednesday 3 September
2008, 2pm-6pm.
The venue is Keyworth Centre Lecture Theatre A, London South Bank University, Keyworth Street, London SE1 6NG.
Speakers:
Emily Grabham, University of Kent
"Knitting the Nation, Stitching Permanence: Intersex Bodies and the Construction of the Nation in Time"
Iain Morland, Cardiff University
"Ways of Reading the Intersex Controversy"
Elizabeth Reis, University of Oregon
"What's in a Name? History, Medicine, and Intersex"
Respondents:
Sarah Creighton, UCL Hospitals Trust
Lih-Mei Liao, UCL Hospitals Trust
Location and travel: www.lsbu.ac.uk/about/maps
This seminar is free and open to all with academic, clinical or research interests in genders and sexualities. No booking required.
Notice it is the usual suspects, the DSD hit squad and the Clarke Northwestern. Notice also it is going to be about peewee theories and gender identity (when they say it is not) and quite frankly some of the titles of the presentation are taking the piss right?
Like what does
"Knitting the Nation, Stitching Permanence: Intersex Bodies and the Construction of the Nation in Time."
actually mean? I can guess, and some of these people are asking me to be a lab rat? It illustrates the casual contempt in which I feel I am held. I am someone to be stitched up permanently for the good of society perhaps? You will notice that at the end the announcement, one reads:
"This seminar is free and open to all with academic, clinical or, research interests in genders and sexualities. No booking required"
No mention whatsoever of those people actually living with this stuff. (Yes Milton Diamond the word "Tiergartenstrasse 4" does enter my mind at this point.) This is the casual contempt all in OII are upset about. We may express that unease in different ways, some would rather talk to people like Milton Diamond and hope that he can "advocate" on their behalf to the greater good. I do not have quite that attitude, because the brutality I endured as a child at the hands of doctors and control freaks means that I cannot bring myself to go cap in hand to those born better socially and given opportunities which were taken from me on the basis of bigotry. It is a harsh word "bigotry" but what else is being shoved off a university campus and branded a freak, or excluded from academic discourse, or having had years of hard work stolen if it is not bigotry?
Have I got to be locked up and stitched and knitted into silence so society can feel comfortable? This is the real problem, isn't it? That my physical form is something that at birth caused society to go into panic mode. Oh, don't worry I had a very suitable childhood when I was away from the doctors and control freaks. Somewhere where they were caricatured actually. Fun, eh?
What I am wondering is how blinded these experts really are to the consequences of their own actions. You see this is the real question. Are they blinded to what they are doing, or acting out of malice? The core question for people like Milton Diamond is why do some of us in the intersex community regard the medical profession as hostile rather than simply blinded. This is the question I sense Milton Diamond has been asking in recent discussions. The answer to that question is that it feels like malice. It comes across like malice. It has the same consequences as malice.
OK, why does a child with ambiguous genitalia present such a threat to society? It is a very serious question. What is the issue? How can a child, probably no bigger than a large shoebox represent a threat to society? Why are sexologists so concerned about such a child? All this "psychosocial development" is not science but controlling bullshit. Science simply studies and reports fact. Bullshit usually has an agenda. Conformity is that agenda and this (in the eyes of the sexologists) is the reason for the panic.
But we have to get real here. We are talking about a defenseless child, and that child is almost immediately subjected to "normalizing surgery" which can be both injurious and painful, but then the real hell starts, the child is subjected to "socialization". If that child does not accept the "socialization", they are branded as "transgender" and sometimes, as young as eight, they are subjected to public scrutiny in a freak show called the media. You see "transgender" means one thing to the community to whom that name is attached, but quite another to society. Society uses the term as a ghetto, as did the person who coined it, Virginia Prince. This is what Alice Dreger actually meant when saying those who reject their sex assignment are "transgender". You see society is so nervous about the birth status of such a child, they have to treat the person rejecting the socially imposed physical sex as if they were rejecting their sex at birth. They are way too frightened to admit that the physical state of the child at birth was intersex. They even have to invent euphemisms like "Disorder of Sex Development" to hide the plain fact that a new born child, no bigger than a shoe box, can be born with ambiguous genitalia.
What else is all this but malice, and quite frankly an absurd expression of it as well? I am sorry but I find the sense of utter dread and panic that seems to get associated with a new born child with ambiguous genitalia disproportionate to say the least. So no, I am not all that sympathetic to the usual gang of "experts" who seem to think they have the divine right to hold conferences where they can work out how to crush the individuality and humanity of people like me, and then claim they are "trying to help". I do not believe a word of it quite frankly. How many more "conferences" and how many more ruined lives is it going to take before these people actually wise up and see the damage they are doing?
So no I am not going to listen to verbose insults like:
"Knitting the Nation, Stitching Permanence: Intersex Bodies and the Construction of the Nation in Time."
And people can take that how they want. I believe strongly that this should be a two way process. I refuse point blank to have radical feminists and phallocrats talking on my behalf and claiming they know what is best for me; and as it stands, yes, I hold them and their society in the utter contempt it deserves. I really hope that Milton Diamond, who has, I agree taken the time to consider our views in the past realizes that the issue here is not about the personalities of people like Chase, Whittle and Morland (I consider them to be irritants who never represented my interests and never will). If in the future you people are going to discuss how I will lead my life, or anyone else in the intersex community will lead theirs, expect resistance and non compliance if you do not include us, those affected by what you say and do, in the debate.
As for Elizabeth Reiss, I would ask her to admit openly how much she stole from the OII and give credit where credit is due. I have frankly had a gut full of norm born doctors and control freaks who think they can simply plunder our ideas and writings for their own ends. I am not going to tip toe around this anymore (not that I ever did). I am going to say this as I and some others see it. If you experts want respect from me and others like me, then you will have to earn it. Why in the current climate should I be nice? I would also prefer things to be less acrimonious, but that is not going to happen while I have people with "inborn privilege" calling me a threat to society and bullying me, and that is what it is. Bullying.
