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Dear Mr. President
By Sophia Siedlberg
5 November 2008
When on November 4, 2008 I woke up to see Barak Obama all over the media having just won the US presidential elections, I knew that history had been made. Everyone is saying that "History has been made". When he gave his speech in Chicago, the city that has given its name to the oppression I suffer today in 2008, I sort of hope that he confronts the bigotry Chicago represents to me.
America has an African American president and that means that the bigotry and arrogance that has defined America is now being challenged.
It is ironic that I had just written an article which included the account of an African American living in the Unites States in 1851. This was the account of Sojourner Truth describing her life and how she was treated no better than an animal. Today things have clearly moved on.
However:
In 2006 and 2007 a "Chicago Consensus Statement" was published, which in effect condemned people like me to live under the jackboot of bigotry, not race this time, but of "Gender". (I regard that as a euphemism that is used to imply my situation is my fault when in fact it is not). I am someone who was born intersexed, that is I was born biologically outside the two sex system. I am sure that President Obama will be aware of the history of eugenics, and the modern schools of thought that even today claim that the now President of the United states is "Less intelligent that whites". Well, one such school of thought is dubbed "The Clarke Northwestern" and the "Northwestern" bit refers to a university in Chicago. That self same school of thought regards me, an intersexed individual as "Less intelligent" and an "Evolutionary mistake".
What would I say to him were I to meet this man? Perhaps the following:
Hello, Mr. President. As you know, for centuries your people were treated as less than human, and now you have made it to the White House. You have brought about a change that few have ever dreamed possible. And I hope that you get two terms in office to complete this change. In Chicago, your city, there are people who have sought to inflict on me and people like me the sort of punitive and cruel oppression that your people faced for so many centuries. These people, in your city, would prefer that I was dead, or at best used as a prostitute. I am an intelligent human being not a "Disorder of Sex Development" and I am worth more than being seen as a potential prostitute or dead. I make no bones about this. It is a university in your city that has peddled the hatred and advocated the systematic abuse of people like me, and transsexual folks as well. They have hidden it behind "Medical guidelines" and "Liberal history".
As you stood on that podium in Grant Park, there were a small handful of people, in your City who would see people like me suffer. They consider what they are doing to be "Liberal", dressing eugenics up as "Freedom of choice" (Screening for fetuses who they can identify as Intersex, potentially transsexual or gay and advocating their abortion). I am not anti abortion or pro abortion. I am just a human being who wants to be regarded as human.
I congratulate you for winning. In fact I consider the fact that you are now the President on the United States to be an expression of America's change of attitude towards human rights. However, the Bush administration have for most of their time in office funded, via the National Institutes of Health, the cadre of academics who would (given the chance) see me and those like me suffer under the jackboot of oppression. (The Southern Poverty Law Center have more details on this cadre of academics).
I ask you, as you are an individual who has overcome prejudice and reached perhaps the highest office in the world, to consider what I have said. You now have the chance to confront prejudice and bigotry in many of its forms. Please take the time to have those in your city who would rather I was dead or sold into prostitution investigated.
