News_Updates

French activist denounces eugenics and non-consensual medical treatments

Dannie Reynal, OII-France, will be giving a presentation this evening, June 2, 2007, in Strasbourg. Here is the outline of the presentation (translated by Curtis E. Hinkle):

A. Current Treatment of intersexed children

The intersexed, almost totally invisible within the general population, have undergone sexual mutilating surgeries in early childhood since Ambroise Paré. These surgeries are the sole decision of a doctor without the parents' consent and this is the case in a country which criminalises female circumcision as primitive and barbaric. These infant surgeries and other medical interventions are performed with the pretext of ensuring that all children can be made into a boy or girl so as to have a legal identity as one or the other.

B. Causes of intersex

The causes of intersex can be natural, chemical or environmental.

C. Consequences of current medical protocols

The results are often manifested by a chaotic development of one's personal identity reinforced by the permanent discomfort resulting from the arbitrary assignment to just one sex and, in other cases, our nonconforming characteristics lead us to suicide, drug addiction and instability.

D. Eugenics

For some years now we are the victims of medical eugenics with doctors killing us unscrupulously when any anomaly which does not fit the male/female binary construct of sex is detected using modern prenatal screening techniques and this is done even though we are totally physiologically viable.

D. Our demands

We demand that all therapeutic abortions of the intersexed stop NOW. We demand that all genital mutilations of the intersexed stop NOW. We demand recognition of our existence and of our differences. We demand the right to hormone blockers in puberty so as to give us the right to choose our own sex and gender with our own consent and with access to hormone replacement therapy and other medical intervention that we, after informed consent, deem appropriate.

Contact information: OII-France, Dannie Reynal: dannie-lou@wanadoo.fr

OII-France website: http://www.intersexualite.org/Europe-Index.html

OII-France blog: http://oii-france.blogspot.com/

F*** Off Eugenides! Short, Sharp and to the point!

It’s what I would love to say to a certain author’s face right now.

Oprah Winfrey, the queen of Daytime Television has recently selected a book called “Middlesex” as a top title in her reading list. Oh! How nice. No, really, it shows how much these daytime TV hosts really care. (I need convincing of that).

In case anyone has read this book and are under any illusions about people with 5 alpha “Feeling different from all the other girls at school and wanting to play with meccano sets” How about the real thing with descriptions of what actually happened?

You see the problem with 5 alpha reductase-2 deficiency is that everyone has come to believe they are born girls, but grow up to be men. This is urban myth.

While Eugenides tends to irk me often, this feels particularly nasty because Oprah Winfrey’s website has the usual “Comment on this book” page with the usual “This is so good, this book” and “Gawd damns the pervart geneytic deyfective”. So we have the modern equivalent of Vespasian’s baying mob all whipped up into a frenzy then.

You see, this is the problem when your health becomes Day Time TV Coliseum fodder. You are judged and condemned on the basis of a piece of inaccurate fiction. I have reached the point where there is no longer any point disputing Eugenides’ book because no matter how much you try to educate people about health issues like mine, people will believe what they want to believe, and Winfrey has just provided a huge outlet for this misinformation.

You may ask yourself what is the core problem with Middlesex? Well, it is called “using stereotypes to further sanitized causes”. Does Middlesex describe the experience of being intersexed, through the eyes of “Cal”. The answer is that in some cases it may but it does not describe mine, as someone with the condition mentioned. Actually Middlesex tells the world that I want to be a man to begin with. Actually this is untrue; I was raised as a male. (If walking around with a lot of scar tissue attached to your bladder, a botched mess that some tentatively called a “penis” surgically stuck to you and being beaten senseless qualifies as being “male”). Problem number two, “Cal” was raised as a girl, and wanted the “rough and tumble” of boyhood.

This is the problem with Eugenides, the reality could not be more different from what he describes. Perhaps Eugenides will claim it was the fleshing out of a clinical model with human face and human story. But then I would argue that this was his biggest mistake, he did not talk to anyone with 5 alpha. But the end result is that he has made it so that 5 alpha always follows the same pattern in the popular imagination. Not helpful if you have this condition and have developed a pathological hatred of being defined as “male” because of what they did to you as a child.

I am not joking or being sarcastic when I say that Thomas Harris would probably have depicted my childhood more accurately. I am not saying this applies to everyone with 5 alpha, I am saying that Eugenides reads to me like socially sanitized propaganda, with undertones of “Reclaimed manhood” based on the media coverage of cases like the Riemer case. But I take it personally because it is as good as saying to me that being experimented on as a child, and worse, what they intended was the right thing, all wrapped in this sugary narrative about someone called “Cal”. It is the fact that “Cal” was not clearly based on anyone with 5 alpha that makes it personal.

Yes I do feel like saying **** off Eugenides, **** off for washing my life down the toilet. And **** off for making the world believe that I am supposed to be something I am not.

Would Operah televise me doing that to his face I wonder?

The above commentary reflects the personal opinions of a person who is affected by this intersex variation, Sophie Siedlberg.

What is in a name?

We have heard from several sources that the use of 'disorder' has come down from those with power

Those with power represent the medical establishment

We have heard that that those without power have no say in the selection of 'DSD' as a description

Those without power represent intersex people

In a matter of some importance, those without power appear to have little say in the dialog with those with power

What does this tell us about the relationship between those without power and those with power?

It suggests that those with power will do as they wish, regardless of the wishes of those without power

There is an expression: 'speaking truth to power'

Many intersex people have spoken about the truths of their lives but the ears of those with power appear deaf to the pleas of those without power

How can we believe that those with power will treat intersex people any differently in the future?

How can we trust what is suggested in consensus statements or hoped for in consortium guides, when in something as important as how intersex variations are described, people are simply ignored?

DSD symbolises how the future will be for intersex people

DSD is the sign of the relationship of power

Commentary by Michelle O'Brien, OII Board Member from the UK. Michelle O'Brien is a researcher specialising in the socio-cultural aspects of the medicalisation of gender.

Exposing the Truth: combating DSD propaganda

Press Release: OII, June 10, 2007

One of the misleading statements that is being circulated by DSD activists and that is directed at OII, even though many of those who are propagating it are probably unaware that it was originally put out against OII, is the following:

The term "DSD" is opposed by some intersex people who view intersex as an identity or a third sex.

OII challenges this assertion and maintains that this misprepesentation of intersex activists' views is typical of what we have seen for quite a while now on many DSD-oriented sites.

Here are the facts:

OII has made press releases and has official positions which actually make it clear that we do not accept intersex as part of any identity movement. Quite the contrary. OII does not view intersex as an identity but as a description of the bodies of those people who are born of atypical sex and having characteristics which makes it difficult to categorise the individual as clearly male or female based on the often arbitrary standards in effect in most countries to determine what is "normal" for male and female.

OII is not campaigning in favour of intersex as an identity or in favour of a third sex. OII is campaigning for the basic human right of the individual to DEFINE ONESELF and to self-identify. This is very different. The problem with viewing intersex as an identity movement is quite simple. We don't have one identity common to all of us. What we have in common are bodies that do not fit the binary norms for male or female. The individuals with intersexed bodies have a myriad of different identities. What OII is opposed to is the legal imposition of an identity without consultation with the individual concerned and the medical abuse which often is part of this process to forcefully put us in the legally imposed category.

We would suggest that it is the DSD activists and the doctors who are controlling these activists who define intersex as part of an identity movement and it is quite clear that they are sanctioning only TWO identities: Man or Woman. Not only are they sanctioning this man/woman identity movement and the sexism, misogyny and heterosexism which motivate it, they are using inhumane and sometimes barbaric medical normalisation procedures to legally impose these two identities on children without their consent.

OII would prefer that the natural diversity within the human population be respected and that the DSD activists stop colluding with those in power over us to impose gender identities on us without consultation with us.

More importantly, OII challenges the very sexism and heterosexism implicit in these legal categories and why legally imposing male/female identities on all people is necessary.

Why do people have to be legally defined by their reproductive anatomy? What function does it serve? These are important questions concerning human rights and we challenge society in our demand to have control over our bodies and our identities. This is a basic human right.

The Middle Way

Although I have lived as a Christian for many years now, I have always been drawn to the teachings of the Buddha. As someone who lived a life of excess during my late teens and early twenties, when I entered a religious community and began to explore asceticism in some small attentions to discipline, I was struck by how very wise Lord Buddha had been in commending the ‘Middle Way’ between ascesis and indulgence. I knew that Lord Jesus had seemed to tread a very similar path, as he negotiated a narrow path between living under the Law and license. For many years, I found that holding these two great systems of thought in tension very hard - on the one hand the Way of Christ, and the other the Way of the Buddha. In my practice I was Anglican Christian, but in my thinking I was influenced by Mahayana and Zen Buddhism. Thus, for me the saying 'If you see the Buddha on the road, then kill him' was translated into 'if you see the Christ on the path, then crucify him'. This is because what we see as the Buddha, or Christ, will not be the truth. This is a perspective that permeates many different approaches to spirituality, such as Sufism, one of the disciplines that influenced me greatly when I was in my early teens. When I left the religious community, aware that I was not really cut out for a life in brown habits, I tried to follow this middle way - sometimes veering to one side, then the other, negotiating that tightrope between the Law and license. I also realized that these two great systems of religion did not have to be reconciled in my own mind in order to co-exist - like holding an apple in one hand, and orange in the other, they simply were what they were, and could easily sit side by side. Crossing an apple with an orange would probably produce something quite inedible - but as an apple and orange, the two sit well together in a bowl, can be used in fruit salad, or eaten one at a time. It was not for me to try and reconcile these things, just to let them be, and let them be in me. This brought me a great sense of relief, because there was no struggle in me between these two systems. In a similar way, treading that middle way, between law and license, between ascesis and indulgence, this also lifted a huge burden from me - I no longer had to 'get it right', simply walk a path, and if I lost my footing somewhere along the way, I would see signs that showed me I was going the wrong way, and would find my way back to the path.

So, now I come on to this new 'Middle Way' I find myself walking. Some years ago, having fought against my inner drive to change sex for many years, I found that this problem - call it gender dysphoria if you wish - had become so enormous in my consciousness that I found it increasingly hard to function. My work suffered, my relationships suffered, my health suffered. I knew that there was so much to do, so many good things that needed to be done, and the time available to do them was limited, and this 'thing' to do with my gender seemed like a big boulder in the way of my path. So, I did the only thing I could then see might resolve this situation. I set about changing my gender. Within a very short time, through snippets of information (off-hand comments, small bits of detail) let slip by doctors, I began to unravel things about my own past that shocked me to the core. I discovered that I had not been the person I had always thought I had been. As I took the time to learn more, the things I learned tore through my life, and I was like a piece of fabric torn in two. Had my father not badgered me in a way that made me more tough, had the things I discovered about myself not made me more tough, had my four years in analysis not helped me to assimilate disturbing information, had my time practicing religious discipline not helped me to find a centre in times of distress, I am not sure I would have survived all this. So, this new knowledge helped assure me that I was making progress, and I changed my life by being as a woman. What I found remarkable was that I tended to get treated in much the same way as I had always been treated - only it made more sense that people were relating to me in the way that they did as a woman.

A short time passed, and I realized that I was not a woman, only living as one, and I would never be a woman. In the same way, I could not be a man, and had never been a man. The gender I chose became purely that, a choice. I found myself living as a woman, so decided to stay this way because I had no idea how I could be anything else.

Over the next few years, I found the two models of gender increasingly difficult to understand - because on the whole people are just not as clear cut as that. I look at people out on the street, and I sometimes cannot be sure of 25% of them that they are clearly men or women - and often it is only what they wear that acts as a sign that they are one gender rather than another. I have found over the past year, I find it increasingly difficult to make those efforts to give out these signs that denote female over male in my own appearance. I get called one thing by one person and another by the next. I do not bother correcting them, because in a way they are right.

So, this is a calling, a vocation if you like, to walk this new 'Middle Way'. This is a ‘Middle Way’ for our time. A path between the two statutory genders, another way, a narrow way, and one that is like entering a crack in the universe from which come knowledge and power. But, as happens when any realization is reached, this is nothing to do with “how I have become"; this has to do with the way I am. This is how it has always been for me, physically, mentally, emotionally, in so many different ways; only now I understand this. This is how it is for me, and finding myself in this place is like a religious calling, for this is it; this is how it was meant to be. This is the middle way between gender, like the two-spirit way before, and it can sit comfortably within any spiritual path or discipline, if we just think of things like apples and oranges rather than right or wrong, true or false. Holding one in each hand, the male and the female, like the apple and the orange, and let them be, and walking a path that draws strength from them both, instead of just the one. Not a third gender, but walking a path between the two genders, fully aware that gender is just an illusion, a social construction, Maya to be overcome on the path to Moksha.

Ricardo Darín and his vision about "XXY"

Ricardo Darín is the leading actor in the award-winning film at the Cannes Film Festival which tells the story of an adolescent hermaphrodite.

The actor Ricardo Darín plays the lead in "XXY", the first film of Lucía Puenzo, which received an award at the Cannes Film Festial, and in which he co-stars with Valeria Bertucelli, Carolina Peleritti, Germán Palaces and the young actors Inés Efron and Martín Piroyanski.

The film tells the story of an adolescent hermaphrodite (Efron) who is growing into a complicated and more masculine adult, whose mother (Bertucelli) wants to remain female, while the father (Darín) prefers to let her manage her own destiny.

"What interested me about 'XXY' - winner of a prize in Cannes - was the freedom of choice that is proposes; people know very little about the number of individuals who are born intersexed and who were subjected to surgical interventions in childhood to make them one sex or the other", the actor stated to Télam in a press conference.

According to Darín, who also made his directing debut with "La señal", later filmed by Eduardo Mignogna, "what this movie presents is the humanity of an individual who has the right to exercise control over their sex and sexuality even though this might go against the wishes of the parents."

"There are aspects of tension and conflict in the story, which cause the family to flee from Buenos Aires and relocate in Piriápolis, Uruguay, to find a more peaceful existence elsewhere, and where the girl would be safer from the harassment of relatives", he explained.

Regarding his growing esteem from critics in Spain, Darín lives up to his reputation there and remembers that the first time that he was "recognized as a actor and not as a leading man was in 1982, when he acted in "Nosotros y los miedos".

"But of course, the years pass and one improves with a little knowledge and intelligence, he pointed out; don’t forget that I do not have any academic training. What I learned was thanks to the experience and generosity of more veteran actors.

For the complete interview in Spanish: Click here

Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'

Is there an intersex connection here?

I wonder if the intersex research that is being funded by Federal Agencies such as the NICHD has been involved in helping promote this idea of a gay bomb. Sherri Berenbaum, one of the leading intersex researchers and J Michael Bailey have an ongoing project just for studying hormones and other possible factors as the cause of sexual orientation and they are using intersex subjects for this research. Another well-known intersex researcher funded by the federal government and who is in the same NICHD funded group along with Berenbaum and Bailey, Eric Vilain, is also using intersex subjects to try to determine the cause of homosexuality and gender identity. It does make one wonder what their research aims really are. However, one thing we don’t have to wonder about is their pre-occupation with intersex research subjects. They are using us to determine the cause of every other “disorder” (their word, not mine) of sex development. The man who is assisting the famous intersex researchers who are using us to determine the causes of homosexuality wrote the following article which was published in a very serious academic journal in the United States. It is an article justifying the eugenic elimination of gay foetuses from the gene pool once we know what causes people to be gay.

Read it here: Parental Selection of Children’s Sexual Orientation

To read the news article on the Gay Bomb: Click here

These researchers are the ones who were instrumental in changing the very word we use to describe ourselves, "intersex" and make it a "disorder of sex development." (1) Those of us directly affected by this terminology and the medical and legal consequences which will result from such a change were not consulted. We were simply informed that this was better for us. With "friends like these", maybe we need to research "homophobic bombs". I wonder if these researchers would be funded if they were looking for the causes of homophobia and how to end it?

Commentary by Curtis E. Hinkle, OII-USA board member

(1) Eric Vilain takes credit for changing the terminology from intersex to DSD. This is a quote from a recently published article in Scientific Armerican.

"At the 2005 Intersex Consensus Meeting in Chicago, he stood before a group of 50 geneticists, surgeons, psychologists and other

specialists and argued that terms such as "hermaphrodite," male or female "pseudohermaphrodite" and "intersex" were vague and hurtful. Instead of focusing on a newborn's confusing mix of genitals and gonads, he urged his colleagues to let the explosion of new genetic findings point toward a more scientific approach. Rather than using "hermaphrodite," for instance, he recommended referring to a "disorder of sexual development" (DSD) and applying the more precise term of "ovatesticular DSD."

Although the attendees eventually concurred, not everyone likes the new terminology. Some who prefer "intersex" feel that a "disorder" is demeaning. Milton Diamond, who studies sex identity at the University of Hawaii, complains that it stigmatizes people who have nothing wrong with their bodies."

Source: Going beyond X and Y

Great film about ambiguity

(Translated from the Spanish by Curtis E. Hinkle)

Thursday, June 14, 2007 | Published by Edición impresa

Great film about ambiguity| LANACION.com

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/entretenimientos/nota.asp?nota_id=917085

XXY (Argentina-Spain/2007). Director: Lucía Puenzo. With Ricardo Darín, Valeria Bertuccelli, Inés Efrón, Germán Palacios, Carolina Peleritti, Martín Piroyansky and others. Script: Lucía Puenzo, based on a short story by Sergio Bizzio. Photography: Natasha Braier. Music: Andrés Goldestein and Daniel Tarrab. Presented by Distribution Company. In Spanish. Duration: 87 minutes. Rating: Age 16 and over.

Our opinion: Very good.

Every human being in its path to maturity starts to awaken to their sexuality, the dilemmas and the happiness of love. This is the crucial moment in the life of Alex, a 15-year old teenager who is hiding a secret and trying to find her identity as a result of her problematic existence which has made her an undefined being who is ambiguous and forced into a corner of her house in a calm sea resort where she lives, marginalised from society, with her parents.

Alex - excellent performance by Inés Efrón - tries to come out from her ostracism when a married couple arrives in their idyllic locale accompanied by Alvaro, their son, who begins to hang out with the teenage girl who, after operations and treatments, was still unable to define her sex. Kraken, her father, is a biologist who wants no doctor to approach his daughter, because he is certain that no surgery is capable of creating a normal appearing body. Upon each arrival of the married couple in the resort town, the relationship between Alex and Alvaro becomes more and more intimate. She continues to express her pain from not being able to find her own identity, while Alvaro tries to help her with his soothing words and his tear-filled face.

The director Lucía Puenzo has succeeded in this, her first feature film, to paint a very warm and affectionate picture of human beings confronted with a cruel reality, in which both the parents of Alex as well as the couple visiting them resort to few words and understated gestures in this microcosm charcterised by anxiety and distress, where Alex spends her days accompanied by someone - Alvaro who doubts his sexuality - who is willing to open up a path that had been closed previously because of shame and loneliness.

The story which is told in this film starts with the particular and private concerns of an individual and places them in a universal context, because the dilemma of choosing what to do with one’s body and the impossibility of making decisions about one's body is something that concerns all humanity. In this film the characters are portrayed with great depth which firmly establishes the complex issues surrounding intersex without neglecting love and sex as part of it. As a result, the director has succeeded in making a film that possesses great warmth and depth which also is of great worth because of the problems dealt with as well as how these problems are portrayed. Using her camera to trace the trajectory of the protagonists in scrupulous detail, Lucía Puenzo also showed great skill in her choice of cast members of enormous talent. Not only Ricardo Darín but also Valeria Bertucelli, Germán Palacios along side the impeccable work of Martín Piroyansky, were able to give this story credibility. The photography and music are other elements that give the plot of this film enormous emotional depth and introduces us to a new director who, without doubt, will have future opportunities to express these themes on the big screen, themes which deal with humankind and intimacy, where love and sex are combined powerfully enough to interest the new Argentine cinema which, as in this film, speaks to the heart and soul.

Bill that would offer legal and social recognition to individuals who do not identify as male or female currently being drafted

Submitted by Christie Elan-Cane

"Following a recent meeting with Simon Hughes MP I am pleased to announce work has begun on drawing up the draft content of a Presentation Bill that would offer legal and social recognition to individuals who do not identify as male or female within the United Kingdom. The Presentation Bill will argue for a non gender-specific option to be included alongside existing male and female gendered options on legal and official documentation in the UK.

Those who do not identify as male or female are forced to conceal the true identity in order to function within the gendered social construct and are thus denied an identity and denied the basic human dignity of legitimate existence. Excluded from the gender system, to be openly non-gendered means exclusion from protection through rights and privileges taken for granted by most citizens within the UK and the wider democratic world. To be non-gendered is to have no voice as gendered society does not recognise the non-gendered identity as legitimate. To be non-gendered is to suffer oppression through ignorance and routine discrimination from the majority who benefit from their place within the gendered social system.

It has been proposed that the Bill will cover a fairly broad format and that the proposed introduction of a non gender-specific option on documentation could be used by individuals who do not regard themselves as male or female. This would include the non-gendered identity but will not exclude other identities that currently have no social definition. The proposed Bill will not be seeking the removal of male/female options and neither will the Bill use language that could be construed as controversial (as we need to present a case that will convince rather than scare people off!).

It is hoped the Bill will be published for consultation in the autumn of this year. No final decision has been reached concerning short or long title for the Bill.

The Office for National Statistics have concluded the initial stage of public consultation for the 2011 Census. It is however not too late to make representation to the second stage of the consultation process. I have suggested to the policy group within ONS that a third option of non-gender specific (an umbrella option that can include non-gendered identity and all identities that are not male or female) is added to the required field concerning gender. I understand this second stage of consultation will continue for some time and is still receiving written representation from interested parties. I found the attitude of ONS surprisingly progressive and open to discussion on the issue.

It has taken a very long time to get to this stage and I hope sincerely that I can provide more regular progress updates in the future. My mailing list is small and I'd cautiously like to expand it. If you know of someone who is affected by this issue or an interested organisation, please ask them to write to me and request to be added to the list."

Trangenderism: Are you concerned about confusing transgender issues and intersex in Intersex kids?

For those in the intersex community who are concerned about confusing intersex with transgenderism in intersex kids, OII would refer you to our official position which is located at:

http://www.intersexualite.org/English-Offical-Position.html

You will read:

“Therefore, we are campaigning in favour of changing the current medical paradigm concerning surgical intervention and against the diagnosis of gender dysphoria in intersex individuals who feel they were assigned the wrong sex. OII affirms that the true sex of the child is determined by their own inner psychological perceptions and that the right of the individual intersex person to affirm her/his own sex without medical or governmental interference should be a basic human right. “

From its beginnings, OII has been adamantly opposed to any confusion between infants born with intersexed bodies and the current pathologization of their gender identities, which places them under the transgender umbrellas by diagnosing them as having a gender identity disorder.

If you are opposed to this, we invite you to contact the intersex organizations and intersex activists who are in favour of such pathologies of intersex children. They are

The Intersex Society of North America

Intersex Initiative

Alice Dreger and the DSD Guidelines which she wrote.

These organisations are in favor of confusing the issues of intersex with gender identity and if the intersex child rejects the original sex assignment, they are in favor of placing that child under the transgender umbrella. In the United States, this has serious consequences related directly to the health of the child.

The treatments often necessary for treating what these organizations call a DSD are very similar to transsexual treatments and historically one cannot divorce the modern technology involved to “treat” intersex infants from the treatments that were designed for “treating” transsexualism. The important distinction is that for intersex children these transsexualising treatments are undertaken without informed consent from the child being treated.

2) The DSD Guidelines and ISNA and the Intersex Initiative approve of assigning a sex as early as possible to an intersex child. Once the sex is assigned, hormones and other treatments are often necessary to normalize the body of the intersex child. Once these treatments have begun, it is almost impossible for the child to switch to hormones or other normalization treatments that would be specific to the sex opposite the one assigned and this is true even if the child is labeled as having a gender identity disorder. Such children will have to wait until they are adults in most jurisdictions if they are ever to have a chance to correct the original theft of their identities. Many will never have the money required to do this. Others will disappear because of suicide and other violence they are subjected to within their own environment.

OII is firmly opposed to any linking of intersex infants with trangenderism and has firmly opposed any diagnosis of GID or gender dysphoria of intersex infants.

Unfortunately, OII is not staffed by medical professionals who will listen to us. We are made of up intersexed people primarily who are the victims of the medical profession.

We hope that eventually our issues will be heard and that intersex children will be provided the best health care possible with medical staff who will listen to the real concerns of the child and honor and respect that child’s right to determine their own identity.

Sincerely,

Curtis E. Hinkle

Founder, OII

Pseudoscience and the attempt to put an end to the evolution of humankind

Bailey, Vilain and the disordered model of intersex in the DSD Guidelines

Commentary by Sophie Siedlberg, Spokeswoman for OII in the United Kingdom

I have been thinking a little about this. The human (Societal) predisposition to categorize and judge on the basis of physicality as is currently happening in the United States in Bailey, Vailain and Berenbaum, advocates of the DSD model of intersex and who are using intersex subjects in their quest to discover the causes of sexual orientation and gender identity.

I think the future of this way of thinking is deservedly under threat. Notice how loud the Bailey-ite types screech about how they were "right all along" when in truth their "Science" does not work. They talk about evolution but there is one bit (the bit that evolutionary psychologists are so blind to when it is staring them in the face, and supposedly in their field of expertise). And that is the need of all biological systems to adapt.

I think that is going to creep up on the likes of Bailey and bite them. The science of reproduction is at best a joke. It is clumsy; it has traditionally attracted a lot of "Dr Sex" types who seem to think in terms of sexual reproduction. What scares the "Dr Sex" types the most is the way evolution may be going. OK, what happens if humanity outgrows sex and it becomes nothing more than what a lot of Falwell fundies are ranting and raving about: little more than a form of entertainment rather than the sole means of reproduction? Reproductive medicine does allow for things like Parthenogenesis or so called "Virgin births" where "men become unnecessary". (Actually that is not strictly true. They still use male gametes.)

But the "Dr Sex" types are doing us all a big favour by keeping these types of biological science strictly in the realm of "ordered" and "disordered" humans, with everyone being male, female and the rest of us afflicted with a DSD (Disorder of Sex Development). They are keeping that science in the Stone Age. It is as if they will continue running on DOS while everyone else will be using Suse Linux.

Let's look at computers (I am Nano ready, very much so :) In around ten years time we will be seeing not ever faster tin box computers (Moore's law prohibits this) nor will we see tin box quantum computers (Again Moore's law still applies to some extent, as does the greater need for high temperature superconductors). It will be biological computing.

Now how will this manifest? Well reproduction (As in evolution proper, read Joan Rouhgarden) will take many forms, as the emphasis (Which is what makes humans unique) continues to follow the path of enhancing the mind. Sex and grunting in caves with Bailey will become obsolete. And guess what? What the Dr. Sex types fear the most about us intersex folks is that when we show any sign of intelligence, self awareness or ability, we come to represent that which the Dr Sex types fear the most: the path of evolution (As above) that makes them look like they are still clubbing each other with stones and bones.

You see, we look like the future when machine becomes biological and biological no longer needs sex.

In a way, we represent what may well be another step in human evolution to these people. What will humanity look like in ten thousand years time? Hyper intelligent and asexual? (The image they hate the most). OK, that may be the extreme but if the emphasis is thinking your way to continued existence rather than rutting and sex, then the Dr. Sex types (Like Bailey) look like the evolutionary dead ends.

We would not need to judge on the basis of beauty and ugly, aesthetics would be a matter of choice rather than enforced status. What makes this most interesting is that given such a series of events leading to such an outcome would not result in some utopia or brave new world. But evolution just flowing along and still making eugenicists looks stupid.

The other day I was challenged to be optimistic. Well, here is my optimism. Society always claims to be seeking to create a totally egalitarian, non prejudiced version of itself. "We don't beat up on gays anymore" and "We are not racist" but your Dr. Sex types will never bring that about because the "improvement of the species" involves the very things society claims to abhor. But the enhancing of intelligence being a primary goal, not forced by eugenics or anything like that, but driven by curiosity and the fulfillment of it by technology (Such as moving into bio computing). Look at what most religions aspire to. It is always the "higher state" the "something else" be it heaven or enlightenment. It seems that this aspiration continues quietly as machine becomes biological and biological becomes bored with sex and binaries (Base 4 will be the in thing :). Then that (Also hardwired, more profoundly than sex as it happens) aspiration will come to fruition.

I am not saying there will be some utopia or whatever. But I think that in the cold light of looking at how humanity is evolving, it will be the Baileys and Dr. Sex types with their eugenics will look stupid. And die out.

You see, they claim that people are only responding to base instincts and that it is base instincts that govern who we are. In a way they are right, but the one instinct they ignore is the instinct to evolve. In humans the awareness of it once drove eugenics, but humanity has moved on from that. Natural selection is not a question of what genes survive and what genes do not. It is a question of adaptation and striving to adapt more universally.

Remove the genetic material that is a reference library on how to do this (As eugenics tried to do) and you actually create what is disordered in an evolutionary sense. Bailey bumps off the gays and Bailey wipes out a well established population control. Bailey fails to mention that "Gender and sex variant" people in truth have higher levels of intelligence.

Which is interesting, because that is where evolution is going, and when reproduction as it is now becomes obsolete. (Binary reproduction is but one of many modes of reproduction even now). Who looks like the evolutionary next step?

Not Bailey chasing after the pretty ones that's for sure. Or his hetero-lebensborn lack-breds if he ever tries it. Nature will bite back.