Physicians are convinced that the condition for peace with oneself lies in the existence of a normative body, and believe at the root that every individual naturally wants his or her body within normality. The problem is that they decide instead of the individual.” Janik is the word of Bastien-Charlebois. He was touched by a body that does not fall within the normative definition: it has an intersexual body1. It has undergone the reading of medicine and the path this implies: the operation to introduce it in the traditional sexual definition of women. It is considered “mediocre” because his mother took the battle in favor of avoiding the operation; at 17 years old she made her decision on her own, “folded under the pressure of society and medicine”. Born in the 1970s, he learned 31 years of intersex body, becoming aware at a conference of activist Curtis Hinkle, creator of the structure called Intersex International Organization OII. Since then, the University of Montreal has been developing an activism in favor of the end of unauthorized surgical and hormonal interventions. He says that the consent of the person to whom the intervention is intended should be “free and informed”: all information received and administered without pressure on the person himself.

The United Nations (UN) defines intersexuality as: “Intersex people are those created with sexual characters (genitalia, gonads or chromosomes) that do not correspond to the traditional definition of male and female bodies.” The term designates a broad set of natural variations that can be observed during birth or adolescence, although some chromosomal variations have no external sign. Since 2005, variations in intersexuality have been called “Disorders of Sexual Development” or DSD. According to official data, the intersex represents 1.7% of the newly created, seventeen out of a thousand.

To a lesser or greater extent, more or less closely, we all know the weight of gender and gender construction. Ours is organized in binarism: men on one side, women on the other, with rigid gender and sex traits associated with each of them. Regarding sex, the chromosomes follow the distribution – XY for men; XX for women – the own genital organs correspond to both parts – penis for men, testes, prostate, seminal vesicle, epididymis and Cowper gland, while for women, alua, vagina, uterus, cows of uterus and sperophils. This definition includes “secondary sexual characters” produced by the hormonal medium and of great weight in the sexual and traditional gender definition. Well, intersex is the body that denies this system that classifies sex into two groups. They do not feel women or men – some yes, but this can also happen in those who are not intersex – but instead turn the dichotomous division of men and women upside down, mixing biological and morphological characteristics.

It may be the case that a person has a regulated female appearance when generating it, but keeping in contact with the testicles. Abnormal sexual organs are estimated to occur in one of 4,500 generations (Hughes and al., 2006) and are minorities of intersex variations: One in 500 intersex people according to the European structure OII. Another can be classified as male, with the XY chromosome, but her body, with androgen resistance, will apparently have normalized components of the woman “androgen insensitivity syndrome”, according to ISNA data, in addition to 1/13,000. The identified woman can produce more androgens than usual and develop the characters associated with men or that the size of the clitoris is greater than usual –“Adrenal hyperplasia” over the creation of 1/13,000. It can appear with a smaller penis or without testicles than the norm, because in the end it has at least one x more XY chromosomes –“Clinefelter syndrome”, according to sources, 1/500 or 1/1,000). There are over 30 typologies in intersex. “Our bodies are outliers and inadequate for medicine,” says Bastien-Charlebois, because according to this authority a clitoris can be too large and a penis can be too ttip again.

Following medical deontology, the physician should guide the person at risk. Thus, if some variations endanger the person's life, intervention is necessary. The truth is that – and here is the issue – they put in the same bag pathological and healthy cases: they are all “disorders” that must be resolved, so that they are situated in the binary division of men and women. Since the 1970s, surgical and hormonal treatments have become more widespread. Today, they continue to be processed, although more doctors than at the beginning may give the opportunity not to intervene.

Advocates say that treatments have been improved, that operative techniques are not initiating. This is not belied by Bastien-Charlebois: “Yes, techniques have been improved. It can say that they 'mutilate better', but they continue to mutilate. This is not a question: we want the person to have a free and informed consent.” They just want their bodies to finish their pathology because they are healthy, because only some variations are risky, so it is important to look at the variation in detail to know what it has at its base: health or aesthetics. Because, once started, many people suffer prolonged surgical and hormonal interventions, either because the body changes over time or because complications appear. It can be the only operation in the newborn, with little psychological or physical effects, and less bad. But that is not the case for everyone – we have two testimonies on our hands, and if we look for them there are many on the Internet. The study by Amy Rosenwohl-Mack, an US researcher in 2020, revealed the following: Among the 198 intersex adults, one of the most representative samples to date, 43% have “poor or regular” physical health, 53% have “poor or regular” mental health, and 32% have attempted suicide. There are, unfortunately, few figures on the part of doctors.

It is difficult to access the data, but thanks to the determination of Bastien-Charlebois it has been known, for example, that in Québec – 8.5 million inhabitants – which since 2015 have performed more than 1,380 genital organ surgeries for fourteen years in the Pétic ones, of which 838 are under two years of age. In 73% of these 838 it is for the arrangement of hypospadiase, that is, to place the extraction hole at the tip of the penis “as standing urination” (it is not a joke, it is the reason given to parents). There is also an aesthetic reason in the 35 operations aimed at tapping the size of the lips
around the camisa.En most peoples continue to derive interventions without health reasons. In essence, the French State was criticized in 2016 by the UN Committee against Torture, and denounced in 2018 for the Spanish State’s attitude to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, “violating human rights”, for conducting “harmful practices” without consensus.

Declaration by Malta

The Malta Declaration signed in 2013 is of great importance in this matter. The 30 representative structures of intersex people pointed out the following: “We want to show aloud that intersex people are real and that we are in all regions and countries of the world. It is necessary to support intersex people so that they are the ones who guide the legal, political and social changes that affect them. At Intersexuon we reaffirm the principles of the First and Second International Forum to end discrimination against intersex people and to guarantee the right to corporal integrity, physical autonomy and the right to self-determination.”

In this sense, the question is asked about the “depathologization” of variations in sexual characteristics, for example, the disqualification of diseases by the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2019, the WHO renews its classification as “a problem”, reaffirming the requirement of “normalizing” sex. Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, denounces that these operations can be “cruel and affordable treatment” if they are not medically justified. The European Union Agency for Human Rights and the European Parliament are along the same lines: “We recommend banning operations without the free and informed consent of intersex people.” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch structures also consider them “human rights violations”.

The result of Intersex activism is the issuance of these views. The movement is only 30 years old and is expanding year after year, making the reality visible. Another political objective is to put an end to envisibilization and to break tobacco.

In 1993, Cheryl Chase formed the first American association called ISNA Intersex Society of North America, The Five Sexes, published in The Sciences by the feminist biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling: Why male and female are not enough. “I go further by saying that sex is a continuum adaptable to infinity, which overcomes the coercion imposed by categories,” in the words of Fausto-Sterling. It was a very important contribution, with a great impact on the world of science. Before we join the story of this struggle, let's look, albeit briefly, at medicine's stance on intersex bodies.

“Abnormal bodies”

“Hermaphrodite”, “intersexual” and now “sexual development disorders”. Different words have been used to designate these bodies. It should be noted that until the twentieth century they were not in the hands of doctors and that the legal system determined sex. “It is not that medicine takes on intersex people as a result of a socio-historical process.” In the early twentieth century, medical authority gained strength, with modernization. She assumed the role of identifying the sex of the newborn, especially with the transfer of creations from midwives to hospitals. The control of intersex bodies began with the challenge of characterizing the definition of “real sex”, male or female. Firstly, they placed the condition on the invitations, but soon they realized that it was not clear, let us say, in the case of obotestis with the characteristics of both. In the internal secretions, a term used to call hormones, the fire was put in place, because some doctors insisted that they had to wait for adolescence. “It caused the frustration of some doctors because there was a great diversity in practices, with contradictory cases. They were not comfortable with leaving the interval uncertain, they said that intersex children should be ordered as soon as possible.”

The famous Lawson Wilkins of the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine made it clear that interventions should be carried out as soon as possible. John Money, thesis writer at neighboring Harvard University, was taken under his arm and fixed in 1955 to the position that continues to influence: identity is plastic, “neutral psychosexual” is the newborn, but one must focus a gender immediately and rigorously. Intersexuality is the “anomaly to repair” as soon as possible – according to Money before eighteen months and up to two years. How? If we look at the phallus and it's quite large for vaginal penetration, then we assign male, if not female, gender. Straight heterosexual and heteronormalized view. This systematized intervention in the 1970s is known as the Hopkins Paradigm.

Years 1990 First cracks

The revelation of the experiences of David Reimer, a child who passed by the hand of Money, caused a terrible earthquake in 1997. In 1965, the twin newborns Reimer were to be circumscribed by a number of health problems, accidentally damaged David. He brought the problem to Money and made it clear to his parents that with a broken penis he could not be a man. Having to be a woman, she underwent surgery at 22 months, was named Brenda and began to educate herself as a woman, increasing hormone therapy in adolescence. Under the name of “John/Joan Case”, Money continued to report on David’s case, as it was an interesting case to prove his theory: “sexual correction” could also be directed in “normal” bodies. However, David's life was not the one that Money extolled: traumas, depressions, not feeling the woman, the warning to the parents would commit suicide if I saw Money again. At the age of fifteen, her parents trusted her story. From there, men were identified and surgical and hormonal interventions were initiated to return to the base body. In 1997, she told her theirs to the famous sexologist Milton Diamond, who gave her consent and opened the truth. As Nature Made Him, edited by John Collapse: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (“From Nature: The Child Who Received the Education of a Girl”) tells in detail how Money did not take into account the experiences and misunderstandings of Reime. Because among the doctors who caused the earthquake, even among the population, this reality was known for the first time. David Reimer commits suicide at the age of 38.

Intersex people started organizing at the same time. From pride and determination. Although at first they believed it was possible to talk to doctors, they soon realized that they were “very violent” with them and that they followed their experiences “deaf”.

All this led to the weakening of the Hopkins Paradigm since the 2000s. The Consortium Model gained strength: In 2005, at the International Congress of Associations of Pediatric Endocrinologists held in Chicago, the new intervention model was launched. Its objective was to review the protocol, develop relations between patients and doctors and facilitate a more personalized follow-up of intersex people. In 2016, a study published by the scientific media Journal of Pediatric Urology published that there were no changes in practices. The DSD Consortium group, which brought together doctors, university students, ISNA members and parents’ associations, opted to replace “intersexuality” with the term “sexual development disorder” in order to officially combat stigmatizations. The variations are divided into three groups: 46,XX – although it has some confusion, they are women –, 46,XY – although it has some confusion, they are men – and other “anomalies”. It caused a major crisis within the ISNA and was dissolved in 2008. The pathological name and rejection of the word “intersexuality” were not welcomed.

The OII Intersex International Organisation, created in 2003, seriously criticised the change. Bastien-Charlebois also sees an evil game in the 2005 change: “They say it’s a way to fight stigmatization, but it was one more step to retain power in their hands. They continue with the idea that there is a ‘real sex’: there is a real woman or a man, in our case with ‘confusions’. They wanted to break the solidarity between us, making them believe that we have different experiences. Our political identity is built in the shared experience of the annulment of our bodies, and the movement brings together different variations”.

Time elapses and they are not guaranteed free and informed consent. Because medicine is an authority with tremendous power and they know that with an “inertia situation” they will hardly manage to reverse the situation. That's why they want allies in society. That is why they relate to structures for human rights. The amendment will go through the legislative procedure: “We have a lot of awareness-raising work because lawmakers are opposed to the medical authority. But this is the way, because the obligors are not going to change the practices.”

It's not easy to love one's own intersex body

Calling yourself intersex or intersex is not an easy step. In many testimonies it can be seen that they learn late as intersex by the process of elimination of these bodies and by taboo about it (in the case of the two interviewees, one learned at age 31 and the other at age 38). These are the operations and/or hormone therapy that started when they were Ttipi-ttipi; they are variations called with some unknown scientific words; it is often something silenced in the relationship with parents, and they are usually rejected if they request a medical report. If you become aware, not everyone is associated with militancy, because traumas, the feeling of touching the abnormal body and discomfort can be too great. When linked to activism, Bastien-Charlebois points out another obstacle: the difficulties to access medical literature, to read, to understand and to digest. Digestion of pathological vocabulary, economic barriers and “emotionally very violent” is not easy.

However, more and more people are involved, especially in the new generations. The Internet has made the way. Activism brings them a lot. “It’s very valuable because we get out of isolation, because we can think for a long time that we are the only ones in the world. Sharing the experience is rich and being understood implies a lot, it is relaxing. We put words on us, and that's a lot, because we've been long overshadowed by the authority concepts that prevail upon us. Of course, it can also be toxic, because some are destroyed by trauma and this makes relationships difficult – it is complex, it serves us to depathologize, but at the same time it shows us the range of violence experienced and that can be hard.”

Intersex identity is part of the LGBT community, because what they suffer is “the result of heteronorma.” In addition, among intersex people there are gays, lesbians and transas. However, Bastien-Charlebois points out that the tendency to listen among the different groups is too low and underlines the need to advance respecting the individual. Bastien-Charlebois considers it essential not to impose political identities, which is noted in the way each word is carefully chosen. For this, they are dedicated to the nuance of intersex and intersex, focusing with the former on sexual variation, with the latter on political identity. For example, collectively, they do not claim a third gender because it may cause the distancing of some intersexuals. But they're also not defenders of gender binarism, for the same reason. Although some behave in non-binary identity, many identify themselves as men or women: 75% of intersexuals questioned in a 2016 Australian study are found in gender binarism.

We will learn more thanks to the interview below. Intimate and political united, because he explained to us in the first person.