PRESS RELEASE

From: Joëlle-Circé Laramée, Canadian Spokeswoman of the Organisation Intersex International

 
Subject:                                                Intersex Solidarity Day
                                                              November 8
                                                  Herculine Barbin’s Birthday

Joëlle-Circé Laramée, Canadian spokeswoman for the Organisation Intersex International, would like to invite others to join OII-Canada each year by commemorating November 8 as Intersex Solidarity Day.  All human rights organizations, feminist allies, academics and gender specialists, as well as other groups and individuals interested in intersex human rights, are invited to show their solidarity by organizing workshops, lectures, discussions and other activities which deal with any or all of the following topics:
a)      the life of Herculine Barbin
b)      intersex genital mutilation
c)      the violence of the binary sex and gender system
d)      the sexism implicit within the binary construct of sex and gender

Please show your solidarity with the intersex community.  Intersex rights are humans rights.  Intersex issues are feminist issues.

If you plan an activity, please let us know so that we can list it on the organisation’s website.

You can write to us at:    curtishinkle@aol.com


Brief biographical note about Adélaïde Herculine Barbin

Adélaïde Herculine Barbin was born November 8, 1838 in Saint-Jean-d'Angély (Charente-Maritime) and officially registered as female.  She spent her childhood in an orphanage and later at the Ursilines convent of Chavagne.

Between 1856-1858 Herculine Barbin studied at Oléron’s Normal School and received her degree.  At 21 she became a school teacher and met Sara, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Avril, the headmistress of the school.  Gradually, the friendship between the two girls turned to love.  But, when acting on their feelings for each other, Sara realized that Herculine was not made like most girls.  Herculine was forced to resign from her job and after a medical examination required by the authorities who became involved in the matter, she was then forced to live as a man.  Herculine became Abel but when he returned to the village, Mrs. Avril refused to let him see Sara.  On a cold February day in 1868, Abel Barbin’s dead body was discovered, the victim of an apparent suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning from the small stove in his apartment.

Herculine Barbin, one of the most famous intersexed persons in history, makes us question whether we can live as we are with our difference.  Her life also forces us to question this world which has created standards which we are obliged to try to meet or otherwise face rejection.  The individual can exist only by assimilation into these norms and being like everyone else.  She lived a life of absolute fear.  The agony of seeing her terrible secret revealed.  The terror of having to pay for a mistake that she did not make and of the shame for being who she was.

Suffering, endless suffering.   He had to leave everyone he loved to plunge into the cold depths of isolation.  Her life is a great story of pure love, fatally destroyed by ignorance and intolerance.

~ Open letter to members of OII ~ 

OII = Diversity and Community

Dear Members,

I would like to share with you what a wonderfully rich community we are.  I hope that in the years to come, we can be a beacon of hope in a world torn apart by dichotomies, ethnic prejudice and sexist propaganda.

As members of the intersex/intergender/queer community, it is my hope that we can help people not only understand intersex and the extreme damage we have experienced by traumatic normalization of our sex, genders and desires, but also that we will help bring people of all communities together to help create a world in which our shared humanity is the central focus.

We must continue to resist erasure while affirming our right to human dignity.  Together we can help make a better world – a world which embraces our whole human family. 

OII has members with the following intersex variations:

  • Alpha-reductase 5
  • Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome
  • Born with no gonads
  • Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia
  • DES
  • Transsexualism
  • Turner’s
  • XXY

We have members which have lived as both official sexes, those which identity both within the binary and outside the binary.  We have many members living as women and many members living as men.

We have members from the following continents: Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America.

We have members who speak the following languages: English, French, German, Spanish, and Swedish.

We include communities which overlap with the intersex community: Two-Spirits, Queer feminists and Hijras.

We include people with many different religious backgrounds and those who reject all religious affiliation:  Atheists, Agnostics, Christians, Hindus, Moslesm, Jews, and Native-American spiritual traditions. 

We include many different sexual orientations:
  • Asexual,
  • Homosexual,
  • Heterosexual,
  • Bisexual,
  • Simply attracted to people
  • Those who refuse all such categorization of their sexual orientation

We include many different genders
  • Female
  • Male
  • Intergender
  • Queer
  • Two-Spirit
  • Hijra
  • Simply themselves

We include people who view their intersex as a condition and those who view their intersex as an identity and people who feel that it is both.

Now you can begin to see the diversity within just a small group of dedicated activists.  I appreciate each and every one of you.  Each of you is a special light in my heart, a beacon of human warmth and solidarity.

Let us work together to stop non-consensual normalisation and to embrace both our diversity and all that we share in common with all humanity.

With deep affection and gratitude to each and everyone of you,

Curtis
The Organisation Intersex International (OII) is devoted to systemic change to end the fear, shame, secrecy and stigma experienced by children and adults through the practice of non-consensual normalisation treatments for people born with atypical anatomy, and the arbitrary assignment of a particular gender without an informed consultation with the individual concerned.

We have learned from listening to intersex people and those who love intersex people that:

  • Intersex is for many a problem of stigma and trauma; for some gender assignment; for some health; for some combinations of all of these.

  • Parents’ desire for a perfect child must not be addressed by surgery on the child.

  • The desire for a healthy child is understandable, but we recommend that parents not be counselled to terminate pregnancies because of the possibility that a child may be born intersex.

  • Professional counselling and therapy may be beneficial to those trying to come to terms with their situation.

  • Complete disclosure is a right, and a necessity, if the individual is to make the best possible choices for their future.

  • Gender assignment should be arrived at through negotiation with the individual, in a process of free choice, which may include options not to commit to being either gender.

  • Surgeries should not be performed on individuals to reproduce social norms of gender and genital correctness.

  • Intersex is not the same issue as transsexuality, although the current medical approach to gender makes it so for some; discussions about transsexuality being a form of intersex are beyond the scope of this organisation, but we acknowledge that assigning transsexuals as disordered is equally as problematic as assigning intersex children and adults as disordered.

  • Intersex is not automatically a part of an LGB/T agenda, although we acknowledge that intersex people are sexual or non-sexual, gendered or atypically gendered, beings in   ways similar to other people, with human desires, wants and needs.  Many intersex people identify as heterosexual, others identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual.  Many intersex people are happy with their sex assignment, others reject that assignment and may or may not identify as transgendered or transsexual.

  • Intersex is not an issue which lends itself to a religious or any other ideological agenda, whether LGBT, feminism, transsexualism, fundamentalism, liberalism, Marxism; however, intersex individuals may or may not have spiritual or ideological beliefs, needs and aspirations in the same way as anybody else.  It is important that the spirituality inherent in each unique individual is respected and cherished, the insights that may come to those occupying a unique place in cultures listened to, and that doctrinal perspectives on sex and gender not be enforced on those for whom they are meaningless.

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Declaration of Fundamental Principles

1) Intersex is not a medical condition: intersex refers to those individuals born of intermediate sex between what is considered standard for male or female in our societies.

2) Contrary to what is often asserted, the various degrees of intersex are not innately an illness or deformity. They are simply variations of the human body similar to the length of the nose, the colour of eyes, etc.

3) We reject medical categories for the various degrees of intersex, which are in fact only different reference points on a natural continuum of anatomical and genetic variations.

4) We stress the whole person from infancy through adulthood and choose not to focus on an individual's genitalia. We are people, not genitals. As people, we have a right to our own genitalia and our own identity without interference, forced treatment or other coercion from legal and/or medical authorities.

5) The basic problems faced by the intersexed are socio-cultural in nature and not medical and are a result of the dogmatic fundamentalism inherent in the current binary construct of sex and gender. Some intersexed individuals are subjected to genital mutilation in childhood as a result of this totalitarian, sexist oppression. For this reason, we denounce all forms of sexism prevalent in our societies, which is principally directed against women, the intersexed, and other communities
which challenge sex and gender norms.

6) To promote visibility and the recognition of our existence as a normal and natural part of humanity will benefit not only the intersexed but all people oppressed by the sexism which prevails in our societies.
Our Mission

•  Campaign in favour of human rights for the intersexed.

•  Encourage an exchange of ideas and different perspectives about intersex from various groups and geographical regions.

•  Provide information concerning actual life experiences of people with intersex variations to medical personnel working with infants with atypical sex anatomy, to psychological experts, sexologists, sociologists and specialists in feminism.

•  To assist families and friends of intersexed individuals to understand intersexuality and to cope with the specific problems related to the role as a support person.