San Francisco holds hearing on intersex issues

San Francisco holds hearing on intersex issues
by Patrick Letellier
PlanetOut Network

The San Francisco Human Rights Commission held a public hearing Thursday on the topic of intersexuality, making it the first governmental body in the nation to address the subject.


Intersex activists hailed the hearing as a groundbreaking event for human rights, and pointed to homophobia as one of the culprits driving the medical response to intersex people.


Broadly defined, intersexuality refers to anatomies that are in some way not considered "standard" because they have a combination of male and female sex characteristics. Girls born with large clitorises and boys with extremely small penises are considered intersex, as are infants with ambiguous genitals, or variations in their internal sex organs or chromosomes.


Experts estimate that between 1 in 150 and 1 in 2,000 infants are born with intersex anatomies. Many are subject to surgeries and other invasive treatments to alter or "normalize" their anatomies, and their conditions are often shrouded with secrecy.


Intersex activists at the hearing characterized the surgeries as unnecessary, and soundly criticized the medical system for perpetuating shame about what they say are naturally occurring variations in human anatomy.


"Behind these surgeries is a fear of homosexuality," said Marcus Arana, an investigator at the Human Rights Commission and one of the hearing's organizers. "There's this notion that girls with big clitorises will become lesbians and boys with small penises will be little, effeminate gay men, so these so-called surgical reconstructions are done," Arana told the PlanetOut Network.


David Cameron agrees. Cameron, 56, was born with a chromosomal variation known as Klinefelter syndrome. While males typically have XY chromosomes and females have XX, Cameron was born with XXY. Cameron has male genitals and in adolescence began to develop breasts. "I prefer to say that I'm not a man or a woman; I'm a blend, an androgyne," Cameron told the PlanetOut Network.


"I've been told that I'm a mutation" Cameron said. "But I'm a beautiful variation, and thank God I'm here."


Cameron, who is gay, said that homophobia is behind not just the medical response to intersexuality, but also the responses of many parents of intersex children and the support groups set up to help them. "I'm not seen as a real man because I'm queer, and many of these parents only want their kids to be heterosexual. They don't even want to hear the word 'intersex,'" Cameron said.


Others testified about unwanted surgeries and hormone treatments, sexual abuse by doctors and medical students, taunts and assaults by other children, and lives defined by loneliness and isolation.


"Only a few years ago I could never imagine there would be a public hearing on intersex issues," Peter Trinkl testified.


The SFHRC plans to issue a report on the hearings this fall.


Posted May 28, 2004