Human Rights 4 Hermaphrodites 2!

11th EMBL/EMBO Conference, November 6, 2010    --> Open Letter
  

In the first seven weeks in the womb, all of us were hermaphrodites, equipped with rudimentary ovaries and testicles, and 100% "ambiguous" genitals. Only thereafter "sexual development" kicks in an we begin to divide physically, usually (but not always) the XXs into girls and XYs into boys—and about 0.2% of us physically deloping into something of both or inbetween.

The term "Hermaphrodite" stems from Greek mythology, the tale of Hermaphroditos, reluctant son of Hermes and Aphrodite, and enamoured nymph Salmacis, two originally distinct persons forcibly rolled into one body because of unrequited love, a tragic male-female hybrid cursing the world to bear more of its kind.

Commonly used as a derogatory and offensive term, "Hermaphrodite" is recently being reclaimed with pride by individuals and advocacy groups alike. However, many prefer the terms "intersex" or "intersexed" (to avoid conflation with "heterosexual", "homosexual", "transsexual" etc.).

In medicine, "Hermaphroditism" was official nomenclature until after World War II, followed by "Intersex". The current medical term "Disorders of Sex Development DSD" is opposed by the vast majority of "patients"—they refuse to be considered and treated as "disordered". Proposals to exchange "Disorders" for "Differences" or "Variations" were ignored by the medical establishment.

Since the late 1950s, medical guidelines around the globe recommend "Hermaphrodites/Intersexed/DSD patients" to be surgically "corrected" preferably within the first 18 months of their lives. According to the classic surgeons' motto "It's easier to dig a hole than to build a pole", most of them are "made to girls", although in the meantime urologists increasingly indulge in the "challenge" of "masculinization".

Today, according to studies by the mutilators themselves, at least 90% of the population born with "indeterminate" or otherwise "unusual" physical "sex markers" were (and still are!) submitted to on average multiple medically unnecessary genital surgeries starting in early childhood, resulting in appallingly high risk of lifelong loss of genital sensation, physical pain and massive psychological traumata.

For two decades now, hermaphrodites are fighting against forced "corrective" genital surgery without informed consent, denouncing them as "Western Form of Genital Mutilation", and are demanding "Human Rights for Hermaphrodites, too!"

"3rd EuroDSD Symposium", May 21, 2011    --> Open Letter
 

With a prevalence of about 1:2000, "classic" Hermaphrodites – in the language of the doctors, "severe cases of Intersex or Disorders of Sex Development (DSD)" – are more frequent than people with cystic fibrosis or autism. Adding those who the doctors "only" diagnose with "genital malformations" (e.g. "Hypospadias"), the rate of children mutilated in western hospitals according to the surgeons themselves amounts to 1-2:1000.

None the less, by the end of the 20th century, after 50 years of systematic surgical and hormonal "corrections" and "repairs", as a species hermaphrodites are virtually extinct, both in real life and in public perception.

Starting the 1910s a.o. Eugen Steinach in Austria, prison surgeon Leo Stanley (San Quentin, USA), and in the 1930s Adolf Butenandt in Nazi-Germany conducted the basic research necessary for inducing "artificial puberty" and "controlled sex development" in humans by administering synthetic hormones, often in combination with castration (soon to become standard treatment for hermaphrodites).

Meanwhile at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore (USA), Hugh Hampton Young brought to perfection the experimental surgical techniques of making "ambiguous" genitals at least look more like "normal" ones. What these surgically and endocrinologically constructed, seemingly "unambiguous" genitals would FEEL like was no part in the equation. Up until the 1980s, amputation of "enlarged clitorises" (also called "Clitorectomy" or "Clitoral Excision") remained the most common practised genital surgery. No wonder, the doctors and scientists regularly complained about reluctant "patients", who often simply never returned after their first visit, same as parents with older children.

In 1950, again at Johns Hopkins, Lawson Wilkins eventually found a solution to overcome this reluctance: "Curing" the "patients" in their early infancy, since Wilkins had found the parents to be by far more easily persuaded right after birth. Staying at Johns Hopkins in 1950, Swiss endocrinologist Andrea von Prader introduced this practice in Europe after his return to Zurich in the same year, becoming a globally respected authority and driving force, creating the "Prader Scales" which are still globally used to assess wheter an "enlarged clitoris" should be surgically "corrected".

1951, enter John Money from New Zealand at Johns Hopkins. During his influential tenure that lasted until his demise in 2006, Money not only coined the term "gender" in its meanwhile predominant use. Following up on Wilkins' notion of systematic childhood surgeries established 1950, five years later Money et. al. proposed new guidelines called "Optimal Gender Policy" in 1955—the theoretical blueprint for the medical extermination of the "intersex patients" (as they were now called) by means of forced genital surgery/amputation and/or castration in early childhood, followed by lifelong forced hormone treatments, which  during the next decade was implemented allover the "civilised world".

Money's core "scientific proof" for his theories, published first in 1972, was derived from a degrading human "twin experiment" under his direct supervision. Contrary to Money's claims in publications, the experiment went awfully wrong with tragic consequences for both "subjects" and their relatives. Despite the truth emerging in 1997, Money was never held accountable, nor were his countless followers.

Wilkin's/Money's methods of choice are still commonly used today. They include:

• "corrective surgery", e.g. amputation of the penis/clitoris a.k.a. "clitoral reduction"; "penile recostruction"; "hypospadias repair"; etc.
• carving an artificial "neo-vagina" which has to be dilated permanently
• castration, followed by lifelong hormone "therapy"
• pre-natal hormone "therapy" (introduced in the late 1970s)
• concealing the truth from the "patients"

As the last requirement shows, all-encompassing deception is deemed an essential part of the "cure". In order to become  "ordinary" boys and girls, the "patients" must never know they were born different. To achive this, newborns have to be submitted to surgery in the first 18 months and never being told afterwards. The parents are lied to as well and critical information is often withheld from them.

If the gonads (testicles, ovaries, ovotestes) don't fit the assigned gender, doctors insist on castrations to be performed indiscriminately and quickly, threatening parents and "patients" alike with an alleged general "high cancer risk"—while medical surveys indicate relatively common forms in fact have low cancer risk, like e.g. CAIS at 0.9%–2% (in comparison, breast cancer 20%), and regular control would be far more beneficial than indiscriminate removal. (Loijenga et.al. 2007, 2008)

Money's framework to "dissolve" all hermaphrodites into seemingly "unambiguous" men and women was never clinically tried and tested, but became worldwide factual standard since the late 1950s, and remains so till today. (Don't accept any different claims by doctors without hard proof and independent monitoring.)

Despite a new change in nomenclature in 2005 from "Intersex" to the highly controversial "Disorders of Sex Development DSD", all the medical trade actually does is "advancing" the same old methods while adding some lip service. But contrary to their regular claims of "newly improved" techniques, studies maintain:

"The news is not good. Clitoral surgery, even when involving techniques less drastic than clitorectomy, compromises adult sexual functions. [...] vaginoplasty, particularly when performed in early childhood, leads to poor outcomes: it often needs to be repeated later in life, and it is fraught with complications." (Sytsma: Ethics and Intersex, 2006, p. xxiv >>> PDF)