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The new edition of TIME magazine has an article about the intersex controversy featuring ISNA board members Debbie Hartman and Thea Hillman as well as several other intersex activists. Mostly good, sympathetic content. See below for our letter to the editor in response:
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February 23, 2004
Dear Editor,
Thank you for the coverage of the controversy over surgical sex assignment on intersex children. I especially appreciate the fact that your article clearly separated the issue of gender assignment (social determination to raise the child as a boy or a girl) versus the surgical sex assignment, and clarified that it is the latter that is being challenged.
That said, it should be made clearer that ensuring "that the surgically fashioned gender fits the child's subjective sense of self" is not enough to justify what is essentially a cosmetic (that is, medically unnecessary) surgery on one's intimate area. Such surgeries should only be performed with the patient's full informed consent. One's self-identification as a boy or a girl should never be automatically considered a legal consent to the medical procedures intended to match his or her anatomy to that gender.
Emi Koyama
Director, Intersex Initiative
http://www.intersexinitiative.org
Posted by Emi on Feb 23, 2004