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Mahesh

05/11/24 10:08 AM IST

Intersex Awareness Week

In News
  • Intersex Awareness Day is observed annually on October 26 and many organisations celebrate the community and work to build general awareness around it through the week.
Intersex people
  • An intersex person is someone born with “sex characteristics” such as reproductive organs, hormonal patterns or sexual anatomy that “do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies,” .
  • The differences vary: for some, genitalia do not “match” their reproductive organs, others may have an “enlarged” clitoris or a “micropenis” and vagina, while others’ sex chromosomes are neither the “female” XX nor “male” XY.
  • The term “intersex” does not necessarily refer to gender identity, and certainly not to sexual orientation (who one is attracted towards).
  • This differentiates an intersex person from a transgender person — the former has to do with physical attributes, the latter with intense feelings of discomfort (“gender dysphoria”) with their sex characteristics. However, one can be intersex as well as transgender.
Challenges in India
  • Indian intersex people have long faced challenges in terms of how law, language and gender operate in society, with institutions largely taking a binary view on issues of sex and gender.
  • For instance, many intersex people are forced to have surgeries at a young age, with their parents hoping to “correct” their genitals, causing scarring, trauma and sterilisation.
  • They have also demanded recognition under the law and dealt with the denial of insurance policies, as only Male/Female/Transgender checkboxes are available on Aadhaar card applications.
Intersex Awareness day
  • On the day in 1996, security guards pushed activists Morgan Holmes and Max Beck out of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ annual conference.
  • They were trying to deliver a speech on “challenging (the Academy’s) still-prevailing opinion that cosmetic surgery to “fix” intersexed genitals was the best course of action,” but were met with “hostility”.
  • They were representing the now-defunct Intersex Society of North America (ISNA).
  • Soon, people gathered outside the venue in Boston, Massachusetts, including allies from other organisations.
  • They carried signs saying “Hermaphrodites with Attitude”. This was the first major public demonstration of intersex people in North America, 28 years ago.
  • Unlike the Stonewall riots — wherein police raided a popular New York inn for queer people and they fought back, resulting in an immediate watershed moment for queer rights activism — it would take until 2003 for the protest anniversary to be christened Intersex Awareness Day.
Intersex people in India
  • Activists and organisations have played a key role in the larger movement.
  • The Tamil Nadu government passed the 2019 order to ban genital-related operations on intersex children after a policy briefing jointly organised by Srishti Madurai, India’s first organisation to lead the country’s “genderqueer and intersex movement”, and Intersex Asia, Asia’s first forum for intersex activists and people.
  • Srishti Madurai was founded in 2011. Their efforts began with a 24/7 helpline for genderqueer people in three South Indian languages.
  • Their representatives were also invited in 2015 to “witness the passage” of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) presented by DMK MP Tiruchi Siva in the Rajya Sabha.
  • They “requested” MPs of both Houses to “present issues pertaining to intersex rights.” Next year, they officially launched a campaign to sensitise stakeholders and different religious leaders about intersex human rights, culminating in a petition to the National Human Rights Commission of India.
Source- Indian Express

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