Intersex Solidarity Day – An International Success
9 November 2008
As president of the Organisation Intersex International, I wish to thank all the organizations and individuals who helped make Intersex Solidarity Day such a success this year. OII is a grassroots organization which has as its mandate to let intersex people worldwide speak for themselves, not to speak for them. Therefore, there is no consensus, no dogmatic viewpoints concerning most issues and no one term that is used by OII to categorize or classify its membership.
This year I want to thank Hiker who celebrated Intersex Solidarity Day by making OII’s materials available in Chinese and launching the following OII website:
Having information in Chinese has been a priority of mine for many years because of the huge population around the world who speak Chinese as their native language. Now this is a reality, not just a dream.
A special thank you to our Flemish speaking supporters, particularly Tiresias from Belgium and members of Genres Pluriels, an association in Belgium. To celebrate Intersex Solidarity Day, they have published an article I wrote in Dutch, "Waarom de intergender gemeenschap zo belangrijk is voor interseksuelen" (Why the intergender community is so important to the intersex community). You can read the article in Flemish here. It is also avalailable in PDF here.
There were 3 articles published in Spanish and I wish to thank OII-Argentina for all they are doing to educate the Spanish speaking community about intersex issues. Our Spanish language site is the most visited site in the world for information on intersex issues along with our French language site which has been the main source for information about intersex for Francophones for several years now.
You can read the three articles by clicking on the following hyperlinks:
I wish to thank José Cabrera Pérez in Spain for celebrating Intersex Solidarity Day and for creating a very rich site in Spanish with a very diverse collection of articles on intersex and gender issues. You can access José’s website here.
André Lorek, founder of GendersInX and a board member of OII, made a video about intersex from a personal perspective. You can watch the video: Click here The video is also available in OII's Audiovisual library.
I am very thankful for activities organized by researcher and activist, Rodrigo Delgado Canaría, at the National University of Colombia. The events included films and disucussions about intersex issues. This was a project with participation from the Grupo Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Género y Sexualidad.
Tanguy Pinxteren from Belgium, co-founder of Genres Pluriels, gave a presentation on Belgian Public Radio about the life of Herculine Barbin on the program Bang Bang. We will have a link to the program soon so that French speaking members of OII can listen.
Joanne Proctor, founder of HBS-New Zealand, encouraged members and supporters to sign our online petition. We are very thankful for Joanne Proctor’s support for OII and her solidarity with the intersex community.
Paul K Lyons from the United Kingdom published a very interesting article about Herculine Barbin on his blog: The Diary Junction Blog which is devoted to posts on diaries in the news. You can read the whole article here:
A special thank you to Dra. Wal Torres who has published much information in Portuguese about Intersex Solidarity Day and encouraged people to sign our petition.
I am very touched and grateful for all the solidarity that people worldwide have expressed with those of us who were born outside the socially constructed norms of the two-sex system.
You too can sign our petition and show your solidarity.
In solidarity,
Curtis E. Hinkle
Founder, OII
