AliceDreger

Alice Dreger: Disorders of Sex Development

A report from OII, Edited by Curtis E. Hinkle

Alice Dreger recently announced that she is resigning from the Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development (“The DSD Consortium”), and is trying to distance herself from the pathologizing terminology being used by that Consortium – as if she never had anything to do with it.

In a letter dated September 15, 2006 and addressed to "Dear handbook contributor", Dreger said:

However, Ms. Dreger cannot rewrite history and escape her record as a major champion of the use of "disorders of sex development" (DSD) as the umbrella term for intersex variations.

Dreger is the editor-in-chief of the new ISNA handbooks which heavily promote that terminology, and it was to the contributors to those handbooks that she sent her recent letter:

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/clinical/index.html

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/parents/index.html

Dreger is even credited by ISNA as being the prime mover who brought those handbooks forward:

Furthermore, Dreger’s job title at Northwestern University includes that very terminology:

Perhaps most significantly, Dreger, as a new hire at Northwestern University, was the principal author of a journal article that began the Consortium’s process of popularizing their terminology as a replacement for intersex, both within and outside the medical community:

“Changing the Nomenclature/Taxonomy for Intersex: A Scientific and Clinical Rationale”, Alice Dreger et al, Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism, 18. (729-733 (2005).

http://www.medhelp.org/ais/PDFs/Dreger-Nomenclature-2005.pdf

Dreger’s disorders paper promotes the use of the old-time medical phrase “disorders of sexual differentiation" (later changed to “development”) – using the straw man of “hermaphroditism” as if it were the word being replaced (instead of intersex being the word they wanted to replace):

That old medical terminology had been adopted in 2003 in the mission statement of "The Network on Psychosexual Differentiation". It was that NICHD group of researchers, funded by NIH, who are behind the Northwestern/Penn State DSD Consortium that had hired Dreger:

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/aims.html

http://www.intersexualite.org/English_OII/IAIA/IAIA_index.html

As lead author of the “disorders paper” and as a spokesperson for the Consortium, Dreger became a staunch defender of that terminology, even as the early backlash developed (although using somewhat obscure logic in her defenses), as seen in a March 2006 ISNA blog entry:

Note: That entry has recently been removed from the ISNA blog page.

To counter the escalating backlash, Dreger and ISNA ramped up their efforts to promote the terminology on behalf of the DSD Consortium during 2006 – including helping with widespread dissemination of a so-called “medical consensus statement” published on May 4, 2006 and again in August 2006. However, contrary to all appearances, that “consensus” involved many medical DSD supporters but had almost no intersex representation.

“Consensus statement on management of intersex disorders”, by I A Hughes, et al; Archives of Disease in Childhood ac98319 Module 2 5/4/06:

http://www.medhelp.org/ais/PDFs/Chicago-Consensus-Statement-06.pdf

“Summary of Consensus Statement on Intersex Disorders and Their Management”, Christopher P. Houk, et al; PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 2 August 2006, pp. 753-757

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/extract/118/2/753

“DSDs and the Chicago Consensus Meeting/Statement”, AISSG-UK

http://www.medhelp.org/ais/15_ANNOUNCE.HTM#16%20Aug%202006

The terminology was then positioned for major national exposure, in a glowing article about Cheryl Chase in the New York Times on September 24, 2006:

"What if It’s (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?"

However, those efforts have clearly failed, because of the huge backlash that has developed in the intersex community against such terminology – and as prominent researchers such as Prof. Milton Diamond made eloquent pleas for the use of less pathologizing language:

“Variations of Sex Development Instead of Disorders of Sex Development”,

Milton Diamond, ADC-Online, 27 July 2006.

http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/91/7/554#2460

Just one month before she announced her resignation, and now under obvious pressure, Dreger posted an entry in her blog entitled “My Identity/Politics”, in which she said:

By then many intersex people were asking themselves: “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

And now, in the midst of an unstoppable backlash, Dreger has suddenly announced that she is resigning from the DSD Consortium – and goes on to criticize others for using the very terminology she has so widely promoted.

Here we have yet another interloper (her own word) who intrudes into the lives of intersex people and does great harm against us, without getting to know us in large numbers and consulting us, and without giving us a real voice through her writings. Then, when the going gets rough and the harm she’d been doing is exposed, she is now simply walking away - leaving it to others to clean up the mess she created.

Dreger in Denial

By Curtis Hinkle, OII

September 28, 2006

Today Alice Dreger posted a page in her website that at first reads as a claim that she is NOT resigning from the DSD Consortium:

Dreger goes on to elaborate that she doesn’t really support the term "disorders of sex development" as a replacement for "intersex".

However, we have recently exposed Dreger in her own words on the record as having been one of the principal instigators of and staunch promoters of the use of that terminology. There’s just no getting away from it Alice, you really did push this terminology onto intersex people, and with considerable determination:

In today’s denial page, Dreger goes on to say:

Here we see Dreger claiming special elite status as a "historian" to paternalistically dismiss intersex people as being powerless to speak for themselves and effect social change, and to accuse intersex people of "ripping into each other over language".

However, those are obviously distorted, disingenuous, self-serving claims:

- Intersex people are NOT ripping into each other over language. We are ripping into Dreger over HER use of language. And we appear to be doing it quite effectively, thank you!

- Furthermore, independent of Dreger’s claim, intersex people DO have the power to speak for themselves and press for social change and reform. And we sure don’t need interlopers like Dreger putting us down as being unable to defend ourselves, and then seizing centerstage and speaking for us!

- Later in her denial page, Dreger pleads to be let off the hook, saying "Oh, come on people, who cares?", as if it doesn’t matter what the truth really is.

To intersex people, that statement is an incredible slap in the face by someone who has pathologized us and now seeks an escape from responsibility, hoping that nobody really "cares".

In her conclusion, Dreger finally reverses the impression created at the beginning of the page, and admits that she resigned from the DSD Consortium:

Of course she claims it had nothing to do with the huge backlash that’s developed against the DSD terminology and against her over-promotion of the use of that terminology.

Instead she says:

"I resigned for personal reasons."

Alice Dreger has claimed in many places that "disorders of sex development" is the preferred terminology for intersex people but now claims that she is "uncomfortable" with the DSD terminology. Thus she stands exposed as duplicitous.

We suggest that Dreger is being duplicitous about her resignation too. It seems that she is in denial, unable to take the heat from the backlash against DSD - and THAT has everything to do with "language".

The following is an e-mail that Alice Dreger mailed to some intersex activists. In this letter she does her typical smears against transsexuals and any intersexed person who might disagree. For the record, Curtis E. Hinkle, founder of OII, was not even aware of Andrea James until Alice Dreger started attacking her on her site. Curtis E. Hinkle and OII are not associated with Andrea James or Alice Dreger.

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From: "Alice Dreger, Ph.D."

To: Recipients’ Names removed

Subject: DSD terminology

Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 09:58:56 -0400

Folks,

I hope your intersex rights work is going well as I write. As always, I personally appreciate what you're doing to help build a better world for intersex children and adults.

I see that Curtis Hinkle is up to his usual behavior, this time attacking me personally about the DSD terminology. I want you to know one thing, and then to make a suggestion.

The thing I want you to know is that I pissed off trans activist Andrea James (see http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear), and as a result she decided she would try to attack me via attacking the DSD terminology. She told me this explicitly in an email on June 1, 2006. I quote: "I could care less about your kid and your sense of breeder entitlement. I am, however, going to do what I can to discredit your lame-ass DSD model. At least you got that part right."

I also quote here from her email of May 27, 2006: "DSD is going to be your merm and ferm. You have made a spectacular misstep with this disease model, though still not as inept as Bailey’s. Can’t wait till you and DSD are discredited by intersex activists (e.g., the world outside ISNA) and top-tier ethicists (e.g., not you) looking at the bigger picture. Your one-issue advocacy is selling out a larger movement for the sake of expediency. Bad move, mommy."

So besides sending me threats about my son, James has opted to team up with Curtis to achieve her aims. Hence her links to Curtis's work on her general-attack site.

I want you to know this because I think a lot of intersex people are in danger of having their progressive energies sucked up by an offshoot of James's attempts to irritate and discredit me, which are offshoots of her attempts to ruin other people.

That said, I do think it is definitely worth having productive discussions about the DSD terminology and when it is worth using, and I'm glad people are taking about it.

So my suggestion is this: When you're engaged in discussions about this, PLEASE do not waste time discussing what I think or what I have said or anything else about me. Focus on what matters -- intersex people and their well-being. It doesn't matter what I think or say, except insofar as perhaps some people wish to know how I see the debate. What matters is how well people with intersex are.

So please try to keep the discussion focused on what really matters, and that way James won't be harming the intersex community the way she has so tragically harmed the transgender community. (You won't know about a lot of that harm, but I do, because since I spoke up, many trans people have written to me to tell me what she's done to them. They are much too afraid--for obvious reasons--to speak publicly about what she's done to them.)

As I talked about in my recent blog on the terminology (http://www.alicedreger.com/dsd), I would really like to see people try to direct their writing, speaking, and thinking energies towards engagement with those with real power. That is not Curtis Hinkle, or for that matter most other intersex activists, including me. That is the doctors and the parents who need our help understanding how to make things better and better. That's why I spend the vast majority of my energy doing that kind of engagement and I encourage you to do the same, even as people whack at you (or your friends and allies) and try to distract you from your real work that I know you do so incredibly well--peer-support work, human rights work, educational work, medical reform work.

Please feel free to share this email with whomever you wish. I also welcome those of you who have my DSD resignation letter to go ahead and leak the rest of it; there's nothing in there or any of the rest of my work that I'm not proud of. Indeed, I'll attach the letter here so you all have the whole of it.

It has been my great privilege and honor to be so well advised and supported and led by you and your colleagues.

Best wishes,

Alice

Alice Dreger, Ph.D.

Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program

Feinberg School of Medicine

Northwestern University

Response from Michelle O’Brien, OII-UK

Recently, I have been hearing about how Dr. Dreger is spreading rumours amongst people who are sympathetic to OII and unhappy about the new terminology she has been involved in consolidating, that this all has something to do with a Ms. James. Let it be made quiet clear that I have nothing to do with Ms. James, and have never had any conversations with her; I am not aware that she has anything to do with OII.

Here in the UK, as far as I am aware, beyond her website, Ms. James has little relevance to the trans community – let alone intersex people. I do not approve of some of methods in relation to Prof. Bailey (but I think I understand why) detailed in Dr. Dreger’s Blog.

The taking-issue about the terminology of disorder is something that has emerged from discussions within OII & other intersex groups, and has not been inserted by anyone outside seeking to cause disruption. If the allegations in her latest e-mail to certain intersex activists about recent private correspondence between Dr. Dreger & Ms. James are genuine, then it would appear that Ms. James is quite perceptive in being able to see where that new terminology would lead. Anyone can link to OII’s website; a link from another website in no way means that there is collaboration between two sites – simply that there may be points of intersection in the eyes of the linking site.

Dr. Dreger should be addressing facts, not rumour-mongering. To work behind the scenes seeking to undermine people’s credibility displays a distinct lack of integrity, and only serves to undermine her credibility further. It adds weight to the concerns I and others have expressed about the way the exclusive Prof. Bailey list at NWU she is a member of works. Instead of discussing these matters openly, and consulting with those affected, embracing intellectual discourse, she and others are choosing to operate more like a politburo which disseminates party dogma and carries out character assassination.

Here in the UK, some very unpleasant situations have arisen because of the way Animal Rights extremists have responded to what they regard as the extreme mistreatment of animals. Personally, I have no strong views on this matter, but I can understand why some people would want to protest practice in this area; I have no idea how people can go to the extremes that they do in their actions, but they do – and it is intolerable. However, what we have seen time and again in this country is that every time there is some atrocity carried out by Animal Rights extremists, somebody who is operating within the legal framework is pulled in to the media and asked how they can defend this sort of behaviour. They usually make it clear that they do not support extreme activity, and explain what their role is and what they are seeking to change. Yet, the insinuation is that these peaceful activists are in some way connected with those at the extremes. Guilt is by association, not of persons, but of issues.

People will believe a big lie easier than a little one; if you keep repeating it people will come to believe it. It is a propaganda technique first articulated by Hitler, then by Gobbels about Churchill, then by OSS about Hitler, and by Kevin Kostner in his film ‘JFK’.

I see this recent insinuation by Dr. Dreger as a similar smear tactic. Tell people Curtis & OII are irrelevant enough times, rather than asking why you need to be saying this if they are, rather than asking why a group of intersex people should not be listened to in a debate about these issues (rather than experts like her and her medical superiors), they might come to believe we are irrelevant. Tell people Curtis & OII are puppets of Ms. James enough, and they might start believing it. Insinuate that OII are extremists and political activists who support the sorts of extreme behaviour that Ms. James is supposed to have done (things that any reasonable person would condemn), and they might believe it. Tell people that OII believe in a third gender, no medical treatment for any intersex issues, non-assignment of intersex children, or that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of an intergalactic plot by beings from a planet in the Sirius system to take over the world – make the lie big enough and keep repeating it, and people might believe it.

Well, this is simply not true, Dr. Dreger, and I am calling it out into the open. I for one would like to know the truth about this myself. There are many people who disagree with Prof. Bailey, but they do not carry things to extremes. There may have been actions carried out by Ms. James that are inexcusable, for all I know, particularly when it comes to Prof. Bailey; this may have been directed against Dr. Dreger, I don’t know, because all there is on this are Dr. Dreger’s fears on the matter. If this is true, it would be a great shame, because Ms. James’ website is an excellent resource, as I recall (if it is true, I would urge Ms. James to look for more constructive ways of putting her obvious talents to better use). But, regardless of that, the simple truth is, Ms. James is not involved with me, or anyone in OII I know of – any more than OII or I are involved with Ms. Koyama following a set of e-mail exchanges we had a couple of weeks back. I am sure Emi would be first to accept that!

What concerns me with the insinuation is that it is a red-herring. Instead of discussing the issues, what we will end up with is ‘why do you support Ms. James doing XYZ?’: well, I don’t, and it has nothing to do with OII. It is a tactic to avoid authentic discussion on the part of Dr. Dreger. I may agree that the blanket reduction of all male to female transsexuality to simple homosexuality, sexual practice and paraphilia is wrong, but that is not the same as supporting tactics that I consider to be inappropriate in any discussion. In the same way as my not approving of some of the things sanctioned by the fundamentalist-led US government does not make me an Islamic extremist.

Let us get this clear now. This is my position, and as far as I am aware, it is true for OII:

• I do not support any threats or character assassination against somebody’s person or family – even though there are people within OII who have been on the receiving end of such things.

• I do not agree with Prof. Bailey on his characterisation of all transsexual people on the basis of a small unrepresentative sample.

• I commend the good work done in the guidelines and handbook – I do not agree that the application of disorder to intersex people is to anyone’s benefit.

• I am glad to see some protocols and guidelines have been recommended; however, I am concerned about what is not said, and that there is no practical means of ensuring that these are followed.

• I am concerned about the deliberate exclusion of people who do not conform to outcome expectations for the categories that have been constructed, or who have no clear diagnostic category.

• I am concerned about the language of sexual disorder throughout being peppered by references to psychosexual and gender outcomes, whilst being told that these issues have nothing to do with sexuality or gender identity.

• I am concerned about the healthcare of adults, and that this issue has not been addressed, and I fear it will now fall by the wayside because of the new terminology and the resistance this has generated – and people within the consortium moving on.

• I am keen to see OII focus on the needs of adults, represent adults, create an inclusive vision for intersex that does doesn’t seek to alienate other groups in the lesbian, gay and trans communities. The healthcare of adults is an area that has been somewhat neglected in the focus on early intervention.

• I consider that the flaws of perception that led to the use of ‘sex disorder’ are the same flaws that regard gender variance as disorder. Those flaws are connected to a historically rigidly heteronormative medical paradigm.

• I would like to see Dr. Dreger and others involved in the debate focus on the issues, rather than seeking to undermine credibility and avoid genuine debate.

• I would like to see the NWU list run by Prof. Bailey become less excluding, and more open to academics & researchers who do not necessarily have the same perception as Dr. Dreger and Prof. Bailey. As far as I am aware, few dissenting voices are allowed on that list, which gives a false sense of consensus.

It is perfectly clear that the DSD consortium made a mistake in not consulting all those involved about the terminology – those who could be excluded by the terminology, those outside the USA who would be affected, and those inside the USA not connected to ISNA. I have published the initial results of my survey which found only 10% agreed with the terminology (this was consistent for all who responded, regardless of whether had experienced childhood surgeries or identified as intersex). The survey is soon to close, but the results have remained consistent. I have yet to see any public details about any consultation and how those that took part were selected, what the figures were, etc. In seeking to encourage a community to adopt a change of terminology in such a deeply significant way, some sort of substantive feedback should have been sought and documented – why has it not yet been publicised?

Mistakes can be rectified, discussion engaged in, but not if people continue to be shut out from debate, subjected to secret whispers behind the scenes. Instead of perpetuating the silence, accusing people of this or that irrelevant thing – whether that is that the terminology is irrelevant, or Ms. James is behind it all, or the George Bush fundamentalist administration is funding this as part of some political agenda, or whatever, let us engage in the debate openly. Failure to do so will damage everybody, possibly even causing the loss of all the good work that has been done so far.

The Rhetorical castration of the Intersex community

An analysis of Alice Dreger’s Rhetoric of Power as applied to the DSD controversy

First of all, it is very hurtful and in fact traumatizing to many of us in the intersex community to have an intersex activist who is not intersexed to tell us repeatedly that we are powerless. This is what Alice Dreger has now been telling us for several days. For many of us, this is part of the very damaging and stigmatizing messages we have received since early childhood. Our only hope for any sense of control over who we were and what was to be done with our bodies and our very sense of self was to retreat, to withdraw, hoping that by becoming invisible we could avoid further harm. Our families helped us in most cases by actually reinforcing the conspiracy of lies about who we were and only made the shame and powerlessness we felt as children seem justified. We were often so shameful that we could not speak about it. We could not dare say what we were. We were just beginning to move beyond this paralyzing shame.

Once again, we are in a similar situation. We are being told that intersex is NOT something that any child should have as a label and those in power, those that Dreger convinced by her own articles and activism to stop calling us intersex, are going to deny us this one small crumb of human decency – a name that we were beginning to feel proud of as we slowly worked through our shame and trauma. And it has been very alarming and chilling to witness the open castration of the intersex community in Dreger’s rhetoric of power in which she reminds us of our proper place – powerless victims of those who know how to speak about us, who know how to manage us and who will once again “assist” us as we go back into our shells, brutally scarred once again from the current struggle to have some place in society and some voice, and hide, hoping we can heal from this last major attempt to castrate all remnants of intersex voices.

This is not acceptable. Alice Dreger’s rhetoric is NOT empowering. It is meant to make us feel powerless, to convince us that we are. This is not acceptable. It is in fact cruel to treat a marginalized and very damaged group of people in this way when she knows we are bleeding from this last operation performed by her and ISNA that stabbed into the very heart of our slowly emerging identity and sense of being a small part of humanity. It is as if we have once again been excised from public view, that our very fragile sense of community was crushed into total submission – the eternal eunuchs.

Another technique used by Dreger is to repeat and define the categories of people who do have power in the debate and by doing so, we are excluded from the debate about OUR lives, our identites, our BODIES. We have been told over and over by Alice Dreger that those with real power are:

PARENTS AND DOCTORS

NOT THE INTERSEX COMMUNITY

She has made it clear that she is a mother many times. She knows that many of us can never have children. We do not begrudge her the happiness that she has in being a parent but in addressing us and telling us that we need to speak to those in power which she defines as doctors and parents, it is very cruel to remind us at the same time that she is a mother. It is a dual edged-sword this parental power rhetoric. It disempowers us by placing us in a category that most of us could never be in and then she reminds us that she is in that powerful category.

Reminding us that doctors have power and most of us know that her husband is a doctor is also a two-edged sword. Equating power with doctors is something that is traumatically painful to many of us who remember the power they did exert over us and the very pain this abuse of power inflicted on our bodies and our souls.

We have been castrated publicly. This is cruel. We should reclaim our power and take the scalpels of privilege and stand proud and say NO.

We do have power and we will speak openly and proudly.

Quotes from recent messages from Alice Dreger to the Intersex Community:

DSD Consortium: Homophobia and transphobia exposed

Very oddly, the DSD Consortium handbook website lists no DSD Consortium address, contact information or member information, but simply posts links to the brochures published by ISNA, as you'll see at the following links:

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/about/consortium

In particular, the Consortium website does not mention the actual "research" group behind this front, namely the "The Network on Psychosexual Differentiation", funded by the NICHD and based at Penn State and Northwestern University:

http://www.intersexualite.org/English_OII/IAIA/IAIA_index.html

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/

Nor does it mention the pathologizing language in the "mission statement" of that group:

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/aims.html

The DSD Consortium website also fails to mention that the principle author/editor of consortium information is Ms. Alice Dreger, a failed academic who recently resigned her position from Michigan State University under a cloud of acrimony (she has since written highly negative things about academic life). Dreger has recently been hired by Northwestern University into an administrative position as a spokesperson for NU's sex research, with the title of "Project Coordinator for publications of the Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development".

Among other things, Dreger is a defender of the notorious J. Michael Bailey, a disgraced faculty member who is a member of NU's sex research group. Mr. Bailey is well-known for advocating homosexual eugenics, and was a key participant in the early meetings that established the pathologizing terminology and mission of the DSD consortium, as you'll see in the attendee lists:

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/meetings.html

Mr. Bailey's work has become notorious in the GBLT community for his defamations of GLBT people, and he has been denounced by almost all key advocacy groups, as in these examples:

http://www.glaad.org/action/write_now_detail.php?id=3827

http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/NYTBisexualityFactSheet.pdf

http://advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid29121.asp

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=96

Furthermore, gay media have recently refused to take ads for research subjects from projects that involve Bailey in their work:

Could it be that Ms. Dreger wishes to minimize the exposure of the DSD Consortium's close ties with the pathologizing thinking of such infamous Northwestern University sex researchers?

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UPDATE Sept. 24, 2006: Ms. Dreger is planning to resign from the DSD Consortium. She has apparently cracked under the pressure of the exposure of the "DSD pathologizations" that she and Cheryl Chase and the NICHD crowd recently launched against intersex people. She now appears to be going into denial that she had anything to do with this mess, even though she was one of the principle authors of it all!

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Chicago Free Press

August 9, 2006

Editorial: Bad Science

Recently, CFP ran an ad for a research study seeking gay men with gay brothers. The study is based at Northwestern University and other institutions.

A few CFP readers looked into the study and found that one of the principal researchers is Northwestern psychology professor J. Michael Bailey.

Bailey is a controversial figure, to say the least. His 2003 book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen,” has been heavily criticized by transgender activists, who say it falsely characterizes transgenders as “especially motivated” to shoplift and asserts that “the single most common occupation” of transgenders is prostitution. The book was not footnoted, as serious research commonly is, and some Chicago transgenders said Bailey befriended them in bars and never told them he was using them as subjects for his book, which is clearly wrong.

Northwestern officials investigated the complaints, and while they would not comment on their findings, Bailey subsequently resigned as chairman of the school’s psychology department, although he remains on staff there. Bailey never responded to CFP questions about his book or his research. He has since created a “Book Controversy Question & Answer” section on his website, but it doesn’t address any of the allegations listed above.

The book is not the only controversial aspect to Bailey’s research. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation blasted Bailey and an article about his research in the New York Times in 2005. The subject of that article, a research paper co-written by Bailey and a graduate student, asserted, “It remains to be shown that male bisexuality exists.” Bailey based that claim on experiments involving a widely discredited scientific instrument developed in Stalinist Czechoslovakia in the 1950s to measure soldiers’ responses to sexual stimuli.

Media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting said in a statement about the Times article, “In suggesting that men who claim a bisexual sexual orientation are liars, the Times relies heavily on a single study whose senior researcher has a career marked by ethics controversies and eugenics proposals.”

Bailey has also generalized that gay men tend to be feminine boys, and part of his current study is aimed at pursuing that theory. He has generalized that most gay men are ashamed of being perceived as feminine, an assertion that demonstrates how Bailey lets his own feelings and assumptions about what’s masculine or feminine, even gay or straight, guide his findings.

The current study is also aimed at finding a genetic basis for homosexuality. If that were discovered, and parents were consequently able to ensure that their offspring were not gay (something that many scientists believe isn’t possible), Bailey has said that such a choice “would be morally unproblematic.”

“It is quite hard to see how being heterosexual causes any harm to the child,” Bailey said at a 2004 forum at Northwestern.

Thanks to the heads-up from our readers, we looked into Bailey’s involvement in this study and found it to be substantial. Since we cannot in good conscience steer our readers to a study that Bailey is part of, we’re canceling the ad. And in the future, before accepting any ads for research studies, our ad staff will ask who is involved. If Bailey is, we won’t accept the ads.

There are other researchers involved in this study. They may have good motives, but we question their association with Bailey. We appreciate good science. We don’t appreciate being used to further the dubious agenda of someone who believes he should not be held accountable to our community.

Talking About What Matters?

A response to Alice Dreger

From: Curtis E. Hinkle, Founder OII

Revised by Jim Costich,

OII-USA (New York)

www.intersexualite.org

I am writing this response publicly because I write this in fear of further distortions and retaliation from the self-appointed Mother of the intersex community in the United States, Alice Dreger. She recently wrote a blog in which she once again tells us in the intersex community what is best for us, something which has been typical of her activism for years: “The Mommy Knows Best” syndrome of intersex activism. The title of her blog entry is “Talking about What Matters”

(http://www.alicedreger.com/dsd).

In this blog entry and others she has recently written, the message is clear:

We, the intersexed, do not matter.

I think it is time to tell Ms. Dreger just how offensive her activism is to many intersexed people from all over the world and it has indeed been VERY offensive to many of us for the following reasons:

1) She has a history of silencing people and denying them access to being heard if they do not conform to HER ideas on sex and gender.

2) She works closely with people who have eugenic ideas concerning children who are not born “normal”. She actively defends them as serious scientists and condemns those who oppose their pseudoscience as the ones who are radical. She has been actively defending J. Michael Bailey, well-known for supporting selective abortion for homosexual fetuses and who is now involved in intersex research along with Alice Dreger. [See footnote (a)]

3) She has consistently refused to give any visibility to Intergender issues and has written that Intergender does not in essence exist. In her world only males and females have a "real" gender identity. All others need help from her experts from the Consortium of DSD, (Disorders of Sexual Development) to know what gender they “should” be. In essence, she advocates forcing gender assignments on the intersexed. [See footnote (b)]

4) She is one of the main architects of one of the most universally offensive paradigm shifts in intersex protocols in recent history. It is she who wrote the article that recommended that the term "intersex" be replaced by "Disorders of Sex Development" and she did this without consulting almost anyone in the intersex community. It is almost impossible to find any support for such pejorative terminology among actual intersexed people.

[See footnote (c)]

5) She has consistently been in favor of pathologizing any rejection of one’s original sex assignment and has written many times over the years that transsexuality is a mental illness.

6) She is now recommending that a person with a sexual fetish for feminizing surgeries, Anne Lawrence, be invited as a speaker. People in the intersex movement adamantly oppose Anne Lawrence and others who have surgical fetishes being involved in intersex. Lawrence is now on an influential APA committee for intersex. Not only is this offensive to many intersexed people who suffered genital surgery as infants in order to “normalize” their appearance but Ms. Lawrence is in no way connected to actual intersexed people. [See footnote (d)]

7) She misrepresents the objections of intersexed individuals to the denial and erasure of our experience of ourselves by accusing us of promoting establishment of a third gender. What we have been advocating in OII is allowing the intersexed child self-definition and self-determination of their bodies and identities. Intersexed people and our allies from all over the world have voiced our objection to the physical violence against our bodies and the psychological violence against our lives imposed by a medical paradigm that was not patient centered. She has mistranslated this to mean that we want to be raised as a third gender and that mistranslation furthers a violent image of us as freakish and marginalized.

Ms. Dreger does not in fact talk about things that really matter to the intersexed. The following list illustrates some of the things she has misused her position of power to impose on the intersexed. These were done without knowledge of or input from actual intersexed people themselves. We object!

1) Supporting the eugenics movement and conflating intersex with a birth defect.

2) Perpetuating the binary identity movements of male and female only.

3) Telling doctors to change the terminology from "intersex" to "Disorders of Sex Development".

4) Actively supporting a well-known sex fetish and one of its main apologists, Anne Lawrence and thereby conflating issues involving people who get sexually excited at the idea of feminizing surgeries and children who undergo these same surgeries without consent.

Not only do all the above issues not matter, they actually undermine intersex visibility and progress. Intersex is not about identifying as a male or female which is something that applies to the whole human population. Intersex is not about birth defects to most of us and it is certainly not a disorder to most of us. And please, no sex fetishists for feminizing surgeries need apply to “help” us. Intersexed people, by and large are ardently working toward an end to genital surgeries which have been historically forced upon us without informed consent. I would recommend that Dreger start talking about what matters: actual intersex issues as articulated by intersexed people and that she stop supporting eugenics, sex fetishes, imposing binary male/female identities on all people and calling the whole intersex community disordered.

Footnotes

(a) To read about Dregers’ defense of J Michael Bailey and his support of homosexual eugenics see:

DSD: Homophobia and Transphobia exposed

(b) To read Dregers’ view that Intergender does not exist:

Quote from Dreger: Second, and much more importantly, we are trying to make the world a safe place for intersex kids, and we don’t think labeling them with a gender category that in essence doesn’t exist

would help them.

Source: http://www.isna.org/faq/third-gender

By the way, I am not aware of anyone in the intersex community who is advocating raising children as third gender. What we have been advocating in OII is allowing the child to self-define. However, many intersexed people all over the world would disagree that Intergender does not in essence exist and actually consider that perspective a form of violent erasure of our existence. – Curtis E. Hinkle

Alice Dreger: Disorders of Sex Development

(d) To read about Dregers’ support of Anne Lawrence, who promotes the rights of those with a sex fetish for feminizing surgeries see:

http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear.html

Quote from Dreger's blog: P.S. Several readers have asked me who I would recommend if they were interested in inviting a transgender activist/advocate to their campus to speak. I recommend clinician and scholar Anne Lawrence, M.D., Ph.D. whose work has focused on improving healthcare for transgender

women like herself;

Alice Dreger: DSD - Silencing intersex voices - United Kingdom

The Genuine Question

By Sophia Siedlberg

Spokeswoman for OII in the United Kingdom

Followed by commentary from Michelle O'Brian, OII-UK

Again at the time of my writing this, another furious row has broken out between different people and again it centers around the terminology of “DSD” and I am at a loss as to what to say. I am not particularly interested in why one Alice Dreger resigned. What I am interested in is one statement from a half open letter published by Alice Dreger that does raise a few points I feel really need to be addressed. I suspect strongly if this particular point was addressed then much of this acrimony would end rather quickly.

Alice Dreger stated:

“I would really like to see people direct their writing, speaking and thinking energies towards engagement with those with real power, Not Curtis Hinkle or for that matter most other intersex activists including me, That is Doctors and the parents who need our help understanding how to make things better and better.”

I sort of agree with this statement (except for the snipe at Curtis Hinkle). But in that statement is something I find quite unsettling. “People with power” seems to equate with parents and doctors. Which suggests in some way that activists (However angry or however calm) are considered as lower down some social pecking order, as compared to someone with medical qualifications (Doctor) or who has the ability to reproduce (Parent).

And no, I am not going to be commenting on claims that Alice Dreger is some “interloper” having both the qualifications mentioned. She worked where she worked and did what she did. And there have been questions about how someone in her position can speak for people who they are not. That is how these debates go, that's life.

Well, while everyone has been running around like headless chickens slinging mud at each other, I have had to confront the issue of a child who is in almost identical circumstances to myself 40 years ago. And when I was a child there was this mantra in the UK healthcare system (NHS) which went something like this:

“Treat the parents; control the child”.

From what I am reading, it would seem that statement still stands. I do not really have issues with parents; I had for years gone around with a chip on my shoulder about parents. That is a long story. But I have learned since getting rid of the chip on my shoulder that parents often get mixed messages from the medical profession. They are then left with choices (By the medical profession) that are difficult to say the least. And this is where the truth of that statement lies. “Treat the parents; control the child”. When I was a child, I often heard how my parents were so unfortunate to have such a “Problem” for a child and that they really needed compassionate help (Which basically made my parents worse) and I found myself under the surgeon’s knife so many times I may as well have lived in Hospital. Each and every single cut was designed to alleviate “My Parents’ suffering”. The reality was the doctors of the day were feeding them with some pretty unpleasant, scary stories if they (Not the doctors themselves you will notice) made any mistakes in this process of the child being controlled.

I have to ask myself what psychology was at work there and what did it mean. To be perfectly honest I felt like a living pestilence that had to be controlled by pest control, and I was not a particularly ill behaved child. It was my anatomy that was the cause of such upset.

This is what the chilling term “Sociomedical emergency” refers to. If I have any issues with the content (Not the terminology that’s another matter) of the DSD guidelines it is this common perception that “Parents and doctors have a bigger steak in these issues”. I find this a bit difficult to reconcile with the stark fact that my experience has been that it is my body, my life and my very existence that has been effected by all this and it is me who ended up living with the consequences no one else. The doctor carried on with their careers. My parents just rejected and then forgot me. I was left as a surgically damaged human being facing life that was just an endless nightmare.

While the consortium have obviously gone to great lengths to avoid this ever happening again, I suspect that without taking note of that one core point about “Treat the parents; control the child”, the consortium guidelines run the risk of being rendered utterly meaningless. As for the terminology, again there was this comment I read “Parents and doctors prefer disorders of sexual development - patients do not like this terminology”. I have heard this used to justify the terminology. This illustrates to me that the thinking is still

“Treat the parents; control the child”.

I think the current very angry exchanges would not be happening if the protagonists didn’t try to drive wedges between parents and children resulting in children growing up feeling as I do. Angry.

How about changing the underlying assumptions, the underlying medical assumptions that parents are merely breeding stock that need assistance to produce perfect babies? The underlying parental assumptions that children with an intersex condition/DSD have to be made to fit at all costs because the doctors say so and the doctors are always right. And the underlying assumptions I had to get away from, that parents want too much perfection and doctors are always willing to oblige at a financial price to them and at a serious cost to the likes of myself.

I think if everyone got rid of their prejudices then the real prejudices (Of society towards the child) can be confronted. Society is cruel and superficial and society is truly that which has to really confront these issues. I do not want to be teaching parents and doctors, nor do I want to be trying to influence other activists. I do not really want to see these people squabbling. I want those with the “real power” to reconsider what future they are presenting to a child with a condition like mine. Confront that and the doctors, parents and activists will perhaps find fewer reasons to be disagreeing.

Well I have said my piece, in the (perhaps vain) hope that all this politicking and screaming will stop. I am thinking right now of a child who has the same condition as me and who is pretty much facing the sort of things I did. It is up to you people now, yes all of you, as to whether or not that child grows up with a better chance in life than I had. I want that child to have a good life and never want to see her suffer what I did. Well it is up to you now, all of you. All you organizations, support groups doctors, parents, activists Will that child have a fair chance in life?

Sophie Siedlberg

-----------------------------------------------

The following is from Michelle O'Brien, OII-UK

Just a line here from someone in OII-UK to show support for all you are doing in North America.

Initially I found the blog article you referred to seemed patronising. However, on reflection, I feel that it is actually quite arrogant. As you say, it seems that we (intersex people – OII?) have managed to exercise some power in all of this, and rocked the boat of the DSD activists. The irony in relation to the Dreger blog is that I can almost imagine the conversations amongst the medics ten years ago in relation to ISNA, and other groups, using very similar language about them

What I find deeply disturbing about Dreger’s comments is that it may well betray something of her own attitudes about intersex people. She seems to view (some) intersex people from a disabling perspective, just as transsexuals appear to be framed derogatively in similar discourse. Her language verges on demeaning us: in what she writes, she is actually de-meaning us. That is, she is stripping away our meanings, and substituting her meanings for ours; replacing ours with her ‘superior’ historical perspective. I have seen this technique applied by feminist philosophers and intersex spokespeople to de-mean transsexuals – denying their own memories, histories and narratives in favour of their own ideological perspectives. This is an authoritarian technique which seeks to suppress discussion by asserting that there is one ‘objective’ view, accessible only to an enlightened elite; those that are opposed ideologically and marginalised in practice are posited as incapable of being ‘objective’. This is deeply ironic coming from an intellectual tradition that has placed value on the notions of ‘subjectivity’, reflexivity, and historical narrativit

What Dreger goes on to say re-emphasises her own perspective that we are simply insignificant in her eyes. Clearly we care – so when she asks ‘who cares?’, implying nobody cares, she is saying we are nothing. No doubt from the perspective of the ivory towers of academe, our views are of no value. Our irrelevance, to her or to those who have taken it upon themselves to decide things about DSD terminology, is clear by virtue of the fact that we were never consulted. However the error of not consulting will not be erased by dismissing the debate as simply about language. Suppose I said that “Alice Dreger is an academic who built her career on intersex, then set about introducing a set of guidelines shackled to terminology which many intersex people found demeaning”; it would be disingenuous of me to then turn round having reduced her to this caricature and say it was only a matter of language.

It is no surprise to us that our own views have been so summarily disregarded, because we have often been on the receiving end of that sort of thing. However, for someone who reckons to speak out on these issues in the way she does, in support of intersex people, it is an abominable attitude. To also seek to deny such people any voice is outrageous. I say this because she is active in groups which actively exclude academics who have intersex &/or other relevant histories – such as J Michael Bailey’s group on these issues hosted on the NWU listserv.

Bailey is well known for what he has published about autogynephilia, yet the work he is involved in is clearly working from the position that prenatal androgen exposure (or lack of) has an effect on psycho-sexual differentiation. Papers referred to by Sherri Berenbaum suggest that there is an influence pre-natally that overrides atypical genital configurations. People working with transsexuals, such as Richard Green (a Money protégé, co-signate on the Hughes paper on DSD), when speaking at conferences show their own leanings towards pre-natal influences on gender identity formation.

In the work of these people, with whom Dreger is engaged either formally or informally through discussions on DSD and the NWU listserver, something which is clearly accepted as having pre-natal biological origins is treated as if it is an adult paraphilia and mental disorder. Those who are investigating the pre-natal stuff, know that this stuff is not malleable in adulthood, and is no more paraphilic than sexual orientation or physical atypicality. It is scurrilous that it is still treated this way, and it is even moreso when people who have clear signs of intersex are dismissed as falling into the category of mental disorder simply by virtue that they have found it virtually impossible to accept their original sex-assignment. Even where genital anomalies have been evident, gender identity variance from assigned sex is not acknowledged as being due to any pre-natal factors in individual cases, because the research shows that there is no statistical correlation – even though the experts agree that there is a pre-natal factor in psycho-sexual differentiation, and there is among some groups a much higher incidence of change from assignment than in the rest of the populatio

It is poor science when the medical-scientific establishment working in a field is in total denial about its own findings, and excludes people from their sample who might be seen to falsify their findings. What they are doing is working back from the assumption that a behaviour is pathological – rather than ‘normal sex-type’ – to the biological mechanisms which set this up, and then seek to use psychiatric measures to rectify that which cannot be rectified; the more simple perspective would be to see that these mechanisms are what happens, and de-pathologise the outcomes, rather than play god with people’s lives. This is the process that Dreger has been consorting with – however nice and charming those people may actually be, it is the system that is perpetuated, and by default that she has signed up to.

In some ways I feel sorry for her, to have worked so hard for something, but overlooked a glaring flaw at the foundation of the edifice (the language of disorder in the context of an entrenched phobia of sex, gender and sexuality variance). I have no sympathy for someone so intelligent and articulate falling into such a trap, as she simply should have known better. Let us hope that people learn through this that intersex people are not sheep to be led by the nose where those who know best will lead them.

Keep handing her the shovel Curtis she seems quite good at digging all by herself...

Michelle O’Brien, OII-UK

Alice Dreger: DSD - Silencing intersex voices - France / Belgium / Luxemburg

Messages of solidarity from OII-France, and OII-Belgium & Luxemburg

We in France are deeply concerned about the DSD guidelines and the very terminology. First of all, no Francophone intersex voices were allowed input despite the fact that we wished to have some voice.

We find it alarming that we have consistently been silenced by the US intersex movement which at the same time has had big articles published in our French magazines about them and further making it more difficult for us to speak about intersex in our own country.

These guidelines have serious consequences outside the United States and since intersex organisations from the United States find it perfectly acceptable to take centre stage in France, we also find it disturbing that we were never consulted about any of these guidelines or terminology.

We fully support OII-USA and its efforts to expose the fundamental objections that we have in France to this US-based Consortium which is exporting this to other countries without input from those of us trying to have a voice in our own countries.

Mes amitiés,

Vincent Guillot

Spokesperson for OII – Francophone Europe

Blog: http://oii-france.blogspot.com/

Message from Camille: (orginal French follows)

"As an intersexed person who was "treated" in childhood without consent, I wish to extend my total support and solidarity with my intersexed brothers and sisters in the organization OII-USA in the struggle against the new "DSD consortium" which was elaborated without consulting with the intersex community and which uses terms which are stigmatizing, shameful and which serve as a vehicle for preserving normalization therapies which sacrifice the integrity of intersexed children in order to calm the anxieties of the parents and which work to maintain the binary sex system and the sexism of that system.

Camille Lamarre, France

PS:(Huge kisses of solidarity!)

"En tant qu'intersexué-e "traité-e" dans l'enfance sans mon consentement éclairé, je souhaite apporter mon soutien et ma solidarité totale avec mes frères et soeurs intersexes de l'organisation OII-USA dans leur combat contre le nouveau "DSD consortium" qui a été élaboré sans tenir compte de la communauté intersexe et dont le qualificatif de DSD est stigmatisant, infamant et qui vise à maintenir les thérapeutiques de normalisation , sacrifiant les intérêts et l'intégrité des enfants intersexes au profit de la tranquilité des parents et du maintien d'un système sexuel binaire et sexiste."

Camille Lamarre, France

PS:(grosses bises solidaires!)

Message of solidarity from OII-Belgium and Luxemburg

We are not “disorders” !

A North American organization, the "Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development" intends to impose the terminology "Disorders of sex development" in Europe, just as it is presently doing in the United States. This new terminology is to replace the term "intersex" which is more broadly used and this decision has been made without any consultation or agreement from the individuals or associations that represent them.

Those of us who were born with bodies and/or who have genders which are not typically male or female in Belgium and Luxemburg, demand the right to self-determination concerning our sex and gender assignments at birth and we join the Organisation Intersex International – USA in refusing any pathological labels whatsoever.

Furthermore, those of us in Belgium and Luxemburg who are not typically male or female by current standards, demand the right to self-determination and respect for our choice concerning sex assignments and we demand respect from the medical community and other associated health-care providers and we demand the right to health care that all human beings should have access to.

Edith Nagant

OII Belgium and Luxemburg - OII Europe

(Organisation Internationale des Intersexes)

http://oii-europe.blogspot.com/ http://www.intersexualite.org/Europe/-index.html

Réseau InterGenre-InterSexe

rsoigis@yahoo.fr

http://www.intersexualite.org/F-intergenre.html

Who we talk to

By Sophia Siedlberg

OII-Spokeswoman for the United Kingdom

I decided some time ago to take a little time out after a number of arguments among various people had caused some annoyance. Having done this and returned to the subject with a clearer frame of mind, I think the issue of Alice Dreger’s involvement with the DSD consortium and the ensuing controversy do reveal something I find very disturbing.

In an email to numerous activists Dreger said:

This is the theme that keeps coming back to me. “Those with power” is a rather Machiavellian phrase when you think about it. I pointed out in an earlier article that this reference to parents and doctors being depicted as if they were “the real victims” and “those that redeem” is quite offensive. Personally I have spent something like ten years engaging doctors, parents and various other parties on intersex issues, trying to get some dignity for people with intersex conditions.

And generally the experience has not been too negative; there are good and bad everywhere, good doctors and bad doctors, good parents and bad parents. (Mine fell squarely in the latter category, which is why I have no qualms about stating this).

I came to the conclusion that parents do tend to be bullied by some doctors, and certainly by the medical profession as a whole, into making a “fast decision” about their child’s future. (I know many wonderful people who are parents and who question the doctors).

However in the U.S. there seems to be this idea of presenting parenthood as sacred. And parents as “people with power”. (I suspect that is more a political statement than a statement of fact).

Having said that I do wonder why Alice Dreger likes to play on the fact that she is a parent herself (though of a non-intersexed child). To those without “power” but whose lives are subject to the whim of those who actually do have “power”, Dreger sounds a little like she is saying: “Oh! Look at me. I am sacred”. It is perhaps the reason why Andrea James was so visceral in her attacks on Alice Dreger. I find the “Oh, look at me!” a little distasteful quite frankly. I bitterly regret being infertile. (And this is a significant issue for many intersexed people). Surely gaining a PhD in bioethics would have informed Alice Dreger that talking about reproductive status (and her qualifications if you add “norm-born privilege”) is not unlike a waif-like supermodel talking down to women with serious thyroid problems and serious weight issues and a nonexistent self esteem.

The fury on the part of some people does not surprise me in the least. The same applies to Bailey though I get the feeling with Bailey the antagonism is planned and deliberate. Controversy makes money.

Looking through Alice Dreger’s blog, it does sort of read like a very privileged woman dealing with her pet subjects. I suspect Alice Dreger will be uncomfortable with my saying this. But the thing is, I live with an intersex condition; I do not enjoy the privileges society has given her and I do feel very strongly that my life is subject to the whim of people like her in certain areas.

The word “interloper” can apply here for sure. I have no personal grievance against Alice Dreger, and have stated publicly I have no intention of attacking the woman, nor did I agree with some of the things she was subjected to. But I feel abused by the system she has come to represent. I do feel that being designated with the term “Sex disorder” and then having my issues being convoluted with psychosexual issues are not only abusive but downright unethical.

She says in her article about identity politics:

The problem is that people do not feel “helped out”. They feel abused. The word “interloper” is a reaction to feeling abused. The question Alice should be asking herself is why these people feel abused. Well, I feel abused when some woman who has had many opportunities given to her because she is a woman and not intersexed, goes around discussing the issues of intersex people while firmly establishing the notion that intersex people are powerless? (And in some way, we are supposed to be it would appear).

As for questioning identities and motivations, one needs look no further than some of Alice Dreger’s close associates to experience that. Anyone who was surgically assigned one sex and decided that was wrong has been questioned, judged and in some cases hounded by someone Alice Dreger is associated with. I was judged for this myself for at least seven of the ten years I have been involved with intersex activism. All I ever wanted to do was try to bring an end to the many cosmetic surgeries that are carried out on non-consenting children so they would have some time to decide for themselves what they wanted to do with their lives.

OK, Alice Dreger is not personally responsible for all of that, but many have said “guilt by association” and she seems to have done little to counter those accusations.

As for manifesting character, I have stood by my principles for ten years and doggedly argued with “those in power” sometimes in anger, sometimes in a more reasoned discussion.

And I have consistently felt abused by people like Alice Dreger. And this is only because of the “Know your Place” attitude of many papers written by her and her associates, and the “Know your Place” attitude that comes across from her writings on her website.

I agree with Alice Dreger that there should be open and constructive dialogue, but I feel that it would not be on an equal basis. She has more intrinsic value than I do in the eyes of society because she was born with a full reproductive tract. She should be asking the question how she would have faired a century ago as a woman. Because then society valued people born with male reproductive organs. Women did not “make the grade” just as intersex people do not now.

Does this make Dreger bad? Or acting out of malice? I just think Alice Dreger is simply doing the “some are more equal than others” routine because of the institution of which she is a member.

And if Alice Dreger is reading this after reading all the very understandable fury aimed at her, perhaps she needs to take her own counsel when quoting Martin Luther King and judge me and people like me as human beings and not an issue or a subject or powerless activists who do not know their place.

This fundamental inequality needs to be addressed before people stop calling people like Alice Dreger “interlopers”. Because that inequality breeds resentment and anger. And I am sure Alice Dreger with her doctorate in bioethics is aware of this. And if in writing this I sound resentful, well I am big enough and honest enough to say: “Yes, I am resentful”.

To Alice Dreger I will say this:

I resent being called “Sex disorder”. I resent being told I am somehow less human than you are. I resent my life having been subjected to the whim of doctors and in the past to the whims of my own parents (who were not the best examples of parenthood). I resent having been kicked out of university here in the UK and having had my work plagiarized while people like you are almost immune to that.

Let’s have an equal playing field and then people will be able to talk. Until then, Alice, everyone is wasting their time. I do not consider myself to be a lesser human being than you because of an accident of birth. I am also Jewish and I know full well where the process of dehumanization leads. As a consequence I do not deal with eugenicists, for example. (Sorry, but that one is glaring even to me).

Whatever you say, Alice Dreger, it is the “people with power” bit that is both divisive and deadly. Think about it, this is supposed to be a two way process.

A Telling Pursuit of Normality: (So let’s talk then)

By Sophia Siedlberg

OII-Spokeswoman for the United Kingdom

Alice Dreger Writes in her Essay “When Medicine Goes Too Far in the Pursuit of Normality”:

I gained the impression that this was a slightly ironic comment on the usually negative medical stereotypes of people with intersex conditions, by citing womanhood as the “Disorder”. Sadly, the irony backfires because the difference between her (A “normal woman” and me “An intersex patient” would be that she could say this as a “normal woman” and it would be seen as a valid complaint against the stereotype. With me however it is not a valid complaint in the eyes of the medical profession.

While the essay is laudable in trying to convey this discrepancy, the true irony lies in the fact that while she goes on to describe the questionable nature of “corrective surgery” on intersex children and goes on in some depth about how there is little psychological follow up for such children (actually that is incorrect, there is psychological follow up: it is called “brainwashing”), she misses something.

You see there was a time when people with “double X syndrome”, as Dreger puts it, were treated with pathological contempt by the medical profession. Read the works of Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilmore and you soon see a description of what it was like to be on the receiving end of all this as a woman. In some cases invasive medical procedures were involved. Often the quackery consisted of some “surgical procedures”, various odd diets, treatment regimes and medications.

The thing is, this mistreatment of women in the not so distant past is thankfully regarded today as unethical, a violation of human rights and sexist. But the one thing that seems to be missing in Dreger’s discussion seems to be where she says: “Little psychological follow up”. The whole edifice of this crackpot gynecology was built on the assumption that women were a problem to be controlled and the mind was the place which needed the most treatment. I wonder why is Alice Dreger avoiding this fact.

Because the one stark comparison between the present day medical abuse of intersex people and the medical abuse of women in the past would be the psychological models, in effect based on stereotypes, involved in both. When Alice Dreger happens to be working with someone who suggests genetically screening and eliminating those with “gender atypical tendencies”, (that is cannot be controlled and forced to fit the stereotype), her lack of discussion on that particular comparison starts to make a lot of sense, something which I will elaborate on further in this essay.

Alice Dreger is, I am sure, well aware of the general tone of most medical textbooks discussing intersex conditions, even as late as the 1990’s, and some researchers she knows well even now, seem to be that “intersex people have learning difficulties, can be retarded or imbecilic”. Anyone who knows of the earlier medical abuse of women would see the striking similarity in tone between the psychological models based on stereotypes of intersex people now and women as late as the 1950’s.

She makes many valid points in her essay but falls one short. I think it is relevant because, while she appears to be suggesting that intersex people be left alone surgically and does not agree with the “normalization technologies”, she avoids the “psychological issues” part which is perhaps as damaging as the surgery in terms of abuse.

The DSD consortium recommends that people be raised a given “gender” (as if they were one or the other sex) and while this is in the absence of surgery at a very early age, I get the feeling that it is going to be “brainwashing in preparation for surgery later” which renders the whole exercise utterly pointless because the abuse is pretty much the same.

And this does boil down to that fundamental inequality between the “normal” and intersex folks. It is interesting to note the common observation made by Dreger and other experts which is that someone cannot raise a child as “third sex” or “gender neutral”. The reasons for this observation are telling. They are the same reasons which justify much of the early surgery. “We cannot have children who have atypical sexual anatomies”. And while I do not have proof to support one way or the other that children can be raised as gender neutral, I do wonder about the mental abuse involved in raising an intersex child according to a given sex.

I am going to use a very bad word now.

“Over-compensation.”

When someone has a child, (Alice knows since she is a parent), they generally establish what sex the child is and then proceed to raise that child accordingly. And look what happens if it goes wrong. Someone reaches puberty and says “Well I am gay, lesbian, transgendered or whatever”. The reaction is rather like those H.M. Bateman cartoons where some social protocol is broken and there is this exaggerated expression of shock and horror. What does that say?

Well, if a child is born with an intersex condition, sometimes the “raise as male or raise as female” takes on ultra stereotypical undertones. The child “must conform”. Doctors, (I do blame doctors more than parents. Oops! Did I say blame when mentioning the “powerful”?) do have this rather ugly habit of using social re-enforcement in overdrive with intersex children. They scare parents half to death with images of their child growing up to become this horrific monster that has multiple sets of genitals and will go into the sex industry as a “Transgaysbian” at the age of ten. This is what “socio-medical emergency” really means: Stereotype!

And I have to say this: if it involves “raise as male”, then overcompensation usually translates as “a threat to personal safety” often involving beatings and “toughening up” as the order of the day, and being beaten senseless because you dared to look at a butterfly which is sissy. This is apparently “male privilege” when applied to a little intersex “boy”.

If it involves “raise as female”, perhaps the best book to read is “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore. Hang on. Is that not something about a normal woman? The answer is yes. But how many women would put up with what she had to today? But if that child (note child not adult) does not conform, the old sexism rears its ugly head again.

Over-compenstion is not covered by the DSD Consortium; it is not even touched upon in Alice Dreger’s essay when getting a little close to the bone in terms of “normalization”.

To be constructive, I could suggest that ultra stereotypical over-compensated upbringing should be avoided in the case of intersex children now as well as the surgery (in theory) being banned. But as we have all noticed, Alice Dreger would be crossing the vested interests of her close associates at the Northwestern University who view “gender” issues as anathema, if she took that line.

In the context of the here and now, I find her “I have a genetic disorder, double X syndrome” a little insulting. She says in that essay she was “involved with the human genome project”. (Yes, like her name is attributed to whatever she may have done with regards to that, meaning her “double X syndrome” is today an enormous advantage compared to the intersexed. A double recessive syndrome, however, means you must not exist).

Now, if that little bit of irony from Alice Dreger makes me think a little, but still feeds my resentment as a “sociomedical emergency”, then there is something wrong because a child with my condition today is receiving the same vile treatment Charlotte Perkins Gilmore did.

The thing is, this mistreatment of women in the not so distant past is thankfully regarded today as unethical, a violation of human rights and sexist, so why is it regarded as OK on intersex people? And why, despite what Alice Dreger says, is she complicit with it by giving a number of unethical quacks who treat intersex kids this way today some credence?