ID: Intersex activist Max Beck standing in front of the American Academy of Pediatrics with a sign that says Silence=Death.
On October 26th, 1996, the first ever protest for intersex liberation in America took place when activists from Hermaphrodites With Attitude took to the streets to protest the American Academy of Pediatrics. Later memorialized as intersex awareness day, this important action was a milestone for the American intersex movement. Max Beck, one of the intersex activists from HWA, documented the entire protest and later published their recollection in the Intersex Awakening Issue of the Chrysalis Journal. The full piece is pasted under the cut.
"But we’re here today to say we’re back, we’re no longer lost, and we’d like to offer some feedback. We’re here to say that the treatment paradigm for “managing” intersexuals is in desperate, urgent need of re-examination. We’re back to say that early surgical intervention leads to more than “just” physical scars and sexual dysfunction. We’re back to say that the lack of education and counseling for intersexuals, our families and the community at large does not lead to a blissful, healthy, well-adjusted ignorance. Rather, it too often leads to a life-threatening shroud of silence, secrecy, and self-hatred.
I’m here representing over one hundred fifty intersexals throughout North America. One hundred fifty intersexuals are saying: Please! Listen! You doctors, you pediatric endocrinologists and urologists treating intersexuals, you nurses interacting with intersexuals and their families, listen to us! We understand intersexuality, not because we have studied the medical literature — although many of us have — not because we have performed surgeries, but because we have been grappling with intersexuality every day of our lives. We’re here to say that those who would have us believe that intersexuality is rare, cloud the issue by breaking us and separating us into narrow etiological categories which have little meaning in terms of our actual, lived experience.
We’re here so that other intersexuals can find us — for many of us, finding others like ourselves has been a lifealtering, even life-saving, experience. We’re here to reach parents before their intersex child is born. We’re here to elicit the help of other sympathetic professionals. We can take a stand as openly intersex adults without being crushed by shame! And we did!"
Hermaphrodites With Attitude Take to the Streets: By Max Beck, 1997
In late October of 1996, Hermaphrodites with Attitude took to the streets, in the first public demonstration by intersexuals in modern history. On a glorious fall day, the like of which you can only find in New England, under a crackling, cloudless sky, twenty-odd protesters joined forces to picket the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatricians in Boston. Deeply aware of the historical and personal significance of the action, and — correctly — surmising that a notebook diary would not be practical on such a whirlwind, windy week-end, I took a small hand-held tape recorder with me. What follows are excerpts from the resulting transcript.
October 24, 1996 2:45 PM, Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport
The trip has only just begun and I am already exhausted. Hot. Starving. Fifteen minutes until take-off. Every businessman boarding the plane looks like a pediatric endocrinologist, Boston-bound. Silly thought, testimony to what? My anxiety? My fear? My giddy anticipation? If these bespectacled, suit-and-tie sporting men were pediatricians, would they be flying coach on Continental, with a layover in Newark? I’m headed for Boston, for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP). Tens of thousands of pediatricians. I’m not a pediatrician, though, nor am I a nurse; in fact, I barely managed to complete my B.A. I’m a manager of a technical laboratory. We don’t work with children, and the AAP certainly didn't invite me, so why am I going?
With the plane taxiing toward take-off, this is a lousy time to reassess. I’m going. I’m going because I am intersexed. I’m going because the doctors and nurses who treated me as an infant and a child and an adolescent, and those who continue to treat intersexed infants and children today, consider me “lost to follow-up.” I was lost— that’s part of the problem. Now, I’m back.
9:02 PM: Boston’s North End
I’m comfortably ensconced in Alice’s warehouse condo in Boston’s North End, a renovated warehouse with a view of the city skyline, ceilings easily twenty feet high, exposed beams and brick, gorgeous tile floor. As I speak, my hostess is preparing an absolutely phenomenal meal. The aroma of roasted peppers permeates the entire space. Tomorrow, the work begins; my project this evening is to unwind and enjoy this wonderful meal. Easier said than done. I’m feeling excited, enervated, I feel very alive, something I don’t feel very often, I feel very present and aware. It could be my exhaustion, it could be the Chardonnay. But I think, rather, that the excitement is anticipation about what we are about to do. Being here, finally being prepared to raise a voice, to be heard, to be seen, a vocal, out, proud hermaphrodite who is standing up to say, “Let’s rethink this, this isn’t working, we’ve been hurt, stop what you’re doing, listen to us!” I’m really looking forward to meeting Morgan at the airport in the morning; it’s always amazing to make eye contact with someone else who has been there.
October 25, 7:38 AM Boston Commons
En route to my encounter with the AAP, walking the approximately two miles from my hostess’ domicile to the Marriott Hotel at Copley Square, I pause in the Boston Commons to enjoy a park bench, to sip my Starbuck’s decaf, and to watch a group of senior citizens performing Japanese swordsmanship on top of the hill beneath a monument to some forgotten general. The city is cool this morning, but clear, and it promises to be a beautiful weekend. That’s good: we won’t be rained out. I’ve got a stack of about ninety ISNA brochures in the bag at my side, crammed in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. If I want these pamphlets to get inside, I’ve got to get to the site of the Nurses’ Panel at the Marriott before they close the doors. Then it’s back out to the airport, to pick up Morgan. My feet are already killing me.
October 26, 9:15 AM: North End
Morgan and I are sitting at our hostess’ breakfast table, pulling our thoughts together. In a few minutes, we’ll have to leave to pick up Riki at the airport. The logistics of pulling together an action are mind-boggling. There’s no describing the thrill, though, of all that work, all those phone calls, all those miles. Riding a clattering subway on a Saturday morning, seated beside another living, breathing, laughing, swearing intersexual, hugging near-strangers at unfamiliar airports, then riding back, together, defiant, determined, organized, to the heart of so much of our pain, so much of our anger, so much of our need. We gathered in front of the huge Hynes Auditorium, pamphlets and leaflets in hand, and met the AAP attendees as they left the convention center for lunch. The next hour-and-a-half was a blur, as we positioned ourselves in strategic locations before the Hynes, held signs and “Hermaphrodites with Attitude” banner aloft, distributed our literature, engaged AAP members and passers-by in conversation and debate, spoke to microphones, to cameras. In all that time, I recorded only one fragment of a breathless sentence.
Saturday, 12:20 PM Outside the Hynes
We’ve got all the exits covered, and it’s an incredible, incredibly empowering experience. I remember the words I spoke to the TV camera, if only because I had scribbled a rough outline on the airplane, pirating mightily from Cheryl’s press release. And because the moment was so salient, so real. Me, Max, bespectacled, with blisters on my feet and chapped lips, speaking out to untold numbers of invisible viewers (and a few bewildered pediatricians behind me.)
"When an intersex child is born, parents and caregivers are faced with what seems to be a terrible dilemma: here is an infant who does not fit what our society deems normal. Immediate medical intervention seems indicated, in order to spare the parents and the child the inevitable stigmatization associated with being different. Yet the infant is not facing a medical emergency; intersexuality is rarely if ever life-threatening. Rather, the psychosocial crisis of the parents and caregivers is medicalized.
Intersexuality is assumed to be a birth defect which can be corrected, outgrown and forgotten. The experiences of members of the intersex support groups indicate that intersexuality cannot be fixed; an intersex infant grows up to be an intersex adult. This hasn’t been explored, because intersex patients are almost invariably “lost to follow-up.” The abstract of a talk that will be given at this very conference by a doctor who treats intersex infants concedes that “the psychological issues surrounding genital reconstruction are inadequately understood.”
Part of the problem is that we were lost to follow-up, and there were reasons for that. But we’re here today to say we’re back, we’re no longer lost, and we’d like to offer some feedback. We’re here to say that the treatment paradigm for “managing” intersexuals is in desperate, urgent need of re-examination. We’re back to say that early surgical intervention leads to more than “just” physical scars and sexual dysfunction. We’re back to say that the lack of education and counseling for intersexuals, our families and the community at large does not lead to a blissful, healthy, well-adjusted ignorance. Rather, it too often leads to a life-threatening shroud of silence, secrecy, and self-hatred. I’m here representing over one hundred fifty intersexals throughout North America.
One hundred fifty intersexuals are saying: Please! Listen! You doctors, you pediatric endocrinologists and urologists treating intersexuals, you nurses interacting with intersexuals and their families, listen to us! We understand intersexuality, not because we have studied the medical literature — although many of us have — not because we have performed surgeries, but because we have been grappling with intersexuality every day of our lives. We’re here to say that those who would have us believe that intersexuality is rare, cloud the issue by breaking us and separating us into narrow etiological categories which have little meaning in terms of our actual, lived experience. We’re here so that other intersexuals can find us — for many of us, finding others like ourselves has been a lifealtering, even life-saving, experience. We’re here to reach parents before their intersex child is born. We’re here to elicit the help of other sympathetic professionals. We can take a stand as openly intersex adults without being crushed by shame! And we did!
7:20 PM: Boston’s North End
Goddess, this is so sweet, so liberating! I was so reluctant a week ago, having my Jesus-in-Gethsemane experience, reluctant to accept — not an onus or responsibility but — to accept who I am. And here’s where the hard work really begins. I’m exhausted when I think of the road before us. But then, it’s nothing like the road behind us.
The "Muslim Brotherhood plan for the Destruction of the United States" is succeeding more quickly and brilliantly than even the Islamists from the Middle East could have imagined. The plan is 33 years old, so they are only 1/3rd the way into their plan and they've already achieved a dramatic amount of t of destruction and chaos. Look at the pro Hamas (pro Islamic terrorist) demonstrations across the country, and in hundreds of universities. Look at the division and normalized hate against the United States, against the Jews and against Israel.
Bernie Sanders has signaled his intention not to attend AIPAC
Once again, Sanders is not being upfront. He has never attended AIPAC, even though it involves a diversity of opinion on the Israel-palestinian issue
He did however, attend last year’s Islamic Society of North America (Isna) convention, an anti-Israel hate group in which there is no diversity of opinion, and which is a platform for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Israeli and Jewish rights.
Like Linda Sarsour warning against “humanizing” Jewish Israelis (a year before Bernie attended the same conference).
Content warning: intersex genital mutilation, homophobia, transphobia, medical abuse, surgery, suicide, cancer, outdated medical terminology
An excerpt is below, read the entire piece at the link above.
"That changed in 1993, when feminist biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling published articles in The Sciences and The New York Times exposing the basic fact that intersex exists. In response, Cheryl Chase wrote a letter to The Sciences announcing the founding of the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). She founded the group because of her own attempts to recover her history of sex-reassignment in infancy and medically-induced shame, and because of the disinterest of most of her former care providers in what had happened to her. Soon Chase had brought together dozens of people with intersex.
Though ISNA began as a support group, it quickly turned into an advocacy group because its members realized that they had suffered from similar problems. Like many of the early ISNA members, Chase drew on her political consciousness as a lesbian woman to recognize the degree to which intersex had been unnecessarily socially and medically pathologized. With the successes of the women’s health movement and the queer rights movements as a backdrop, people with intersex began agitating for openness and reform.
Early on, very few medical professionals recognized ISNA’s critiques as legitimate. Many responded that the standard of care was necessary, successful, and justified, even going so far as to actively defend lying to patients about their medical histories. Those at the top simply tried to ignore ISNA. As the leader of the newly formed intersex rights movement, Chase moved rapidly, sometimes able to engage in dialog, and having group protests when doctors would not listen. With her professional background in computer science, she was particularly adept at using the tools of the Internet to spread ISNA’s message. ISNA also supported the inquiries of researchers like Suzanne Kessler, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Alice Dreger, and the organization engaged in media outreach as much as possible.
By about 2001, it had become clear to all that the intersex rights movement was not going away. The claims of activists were illustrated in story after story of problematic intersex treatment, as well as in research that strongly suggested gender identity is not simply a matter of nurture. The fact that medical professionals were unable to produce an intersex patient satisfied with his/her childhood treatment negated the claims that the advocacy groups solely represented the experiences of a disgruntled minority.
Finally, many medical professionals began to respond to calls for outcome data, research, full disclosure of information, and revision of homophobic and sexist protocols. The intersex rights movement undoubtedly was helped in its success by surrounding trends in favor of LBGT (lesbian, bi, gay, transgender) rights, patients’ rights, and children’s rights.
Since 1993, due to increased public education, tens of millions of people have learned about intersex. Thanks to the internet, thousands of people with intersex have mets others like them, in spite of having been told by their doctors they would never be able to do that—their conditions were supposedly so rare.
ISNA members have gone from picket lines to having a seat at the table in medical conferences. We give grand rounds presentations, help with medical school curricular development, and receive emails from physicians asking for our advice on how to handle intersex cases. Our website is recognized as thedefinitive source for all things intersex, and for being a life-saving porthold for thousands of people desperate for answers and directions to “their tribe”. We have convinced hospitals around the world to examine their practices, to find out what has happened to former patients, and to be accountable for the sometimes-poor effects of good intentions.
Over a decade into the work of ISNA, medical professionals are less inclined to lie to patients and parents in intersex cases, are less likely to make openly homophobic or sexist remarks, and are more likely to admit uncertainty about the right course of action. A number of teams are engaged in active outcomes research, though opinions still differ about what outcomes should be sought; some think stable gender identity and heterosexuality are the objective; others suggest it should be lack of depression.) What type of care an individual or family will receive now varies dramatically; what happens to a child with intersex today appears to depend not only on where she or he is born, but who happens to be on call when she or he is born.
But we’re not done.
Even today, the goal of many leading teams treating intersex is still to make intersex disappear. Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, recommends Dexamethasone to women who may be carrying an XX child with CAH; these treatments do not alleviate CAH, it only makes the child’s clitoris appear smaller (and, clinicians hope, makes the child less likely to grow up lesbian). Abortion is routinely offered to women who are likely pregnant with children with intersex conditions, including Klinefelter’s Syndrome. Many surgeons maintain the paternalistic attitude that they should remove healthy testes from babies with AIS to “spare them the trauma later,” thereby denying these girls the opportunity to have a natural puberty and to come to know themselves, in a sexual way, free from surgical scars. Many endocrinologists press unnecessary—sometimes devestating—“normalizing” hormone treatments on patients who are otherwise healthy. Finally, doctors continue constructing vaginas in infants and young children, despite arguments by many medical professionals that early vaginoplasties fail too often and are unnecessary to begin with.
By contrast, as in the women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement, and the LGBT rights movements, the goal of intersex advocacy groups is to have people understand intersex conditions as human rights issues. ISNA maintains as its fundamental principle the principle also fundamental to the women’s health movement and the LBGT rights movements: that one’s genitals are primarily for one’s own use, not for the comfort of others."
🗣I👏🏽FINALLY👏🏽MET👏🏽MELANIE👏🏽She came up to us and said "OMG IS THAT LAYLAMRAMADAN AND HAYA PAPAYA?!" And then I got nervous and checked myself to make sure I was wearing a @hautehijab 😂 thank God I was lol #hhspotedclub #isna https://www.instagram.com/p/BnegQ7PhB60/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1d7d6gg9idefc
So-called "Black-On-Black crime" is a social construct created by the U.S. government inorder to mitigate her own injustices committed against Black people in America. They invented this concept to make Blacks see the White man's violations as minimal when compared to Black-On-Black violence. Consequently many have proven susceptible to this scheme and have actually become tools in the hands of an unseen hand. Let us examine this issue of "inter-communal violence" from the Qur'an. Internal Black violence is not something relegated to the Black community in America, nor did it originate in the urban areas of society. Every race, ethnic group, and culture of people on earth primarily exert violence against their own, since it is a natural reaction to the community of people amongst whom they dwell. Allah says in the Quran about the Children of Israel... “And remember We took your covenant (to this effect): Shed no blood amongst you, nor turn out your own people from your homes: and this you solemnly ratified, and to this you can bear witness” “After this it is you, the same people, who kill eachother , and banish a party amongst yourselves from their homes; assisting (their enemies) against them, in sin and hatred; and if they come to you as captives, you ransom them, though it was not lawful for you to banish them” (2:84-85) Obviously this destructive behavior of inter-communal violence amongst human beings is not some new phenomenon today, but rather a foreseeable, re-occurring human behavioral problem that Allah warned us against as exemplified by the Children of Israel. It is possible to seek solutions to intercommunal violence while at the same time taking the enemy of our people to task for their crimes against us. It is not intelligent to point out this alleged Black-On-Black crime as some of these pseudo (non-black) leaders in the Islamic community have done inorder to distract from the oppression of an outside enemy.
