#intersex awareness day 2023

[intersex-support]

It is October 26th, intersex awareness day! Intersex friends, today is for us. I'd like to share this quote from Sean Saifa Wall:

"By connecting with other intersex people, it literally saved my life, because we had the constant script that we are alone, that we are rare. I think intersex activism, and intersex justice actually lets people know that we are not alone” -Liberating All Bodies: Disability Justice and Intersex Justice in Conversation.

We are not alone. We are valuable, and our intersex identity is worth celebrating. Our community knowledge, care for each other, and solidarity is worth celebrating. Our intersex joy is worth celebrating.

When so many of us experience trauma, violence, and isolation, awareness days can bring all sorts of emotion to us. There is room for all of the messiness--whatever being intersex means to you is important, and you deserve the space to express yourself.

Feel free to add on this post and tell us how you're celebrating intersex awareness day today--whatever that looks like for you.

For anyone who wants to learn more about intersex, check out this post and our resources.

[sysirauta]

Envy is having a tea and is judging somebody's coffee consumption.

[coochiequeens]

All at once now ladies "But this never happens"

By Natasha Biase March 22, 2024

Spain’s Minister of Family, Youth, and Social Affairs in Madrid is raising alarm bells after locating multiple cases in which men convicted of domestic violence changed their legal gender identity. In a letter issued to the Minister of Equality, Ana Dávila-Ponce de León Municio detailed her concerns that the safety of female victims of violence was at risk due to Spain’s “progressive” approach towards gender identity.

In her letter, issued March 18, Minister Dávila-Ponce de León noted that she had become aware of six cases in the autonomous region of Madrid where men charged with violence against women had changed their legal gender identity — a process that was streamlined and made significantly easier following the enactment of Spain’s “Trans Law” in 2023.

In addition to updating their registered sex, three of the men made requests to stay in women’s shelters with the wives and children who had been escaping from them. So far, concerned staff at the shelters have blocked their access but may be violating the nation’s gender discrimination laws as a result.

The letter sent by Minister Dávila-Ponce de León to Minister Redondo Garcia.

But perhaps most disturbingly, an abuser changing his legal sex has a tremendous impact on the resources the victims are able to access. In one of the cases recently highlighted by El Mundo, a female victim of sexual assault was stripped of the special protection provided for victims of physical and sexual abuse because officials told her that her aggressor, who drugged and raped her in front of her young daughter, “was no longer registered as a man, but as a woman.”

In Spain, special gender-based violence charges exist, providing female victims of male violence specific protections and resolutions which can impact divorce or separation proceedings, custody, and other important factors. Victims of gender-based violence can also access special protections intended to ensure they are safe from their male abuser.

Because a female cannot be convicted of gender-based violence, male abusers who change their legal sex can avoid this charge and deny their female victims of those legal protections.

As previously reported by Reduxx, a man in Spain who abused his female partner for opposing his gender transition avoided charges of gender-based violence by legally changing his identification to “female” and adopting a woman’s name. As a result, his victim was unable to obtain a specific protection order for intimate partner violence which would typically result in the male abuser being removed from the home to minimize the financial impact to the woman at a time where they are most vulnerable.

Despite only one year passing since the Trans Law was enacted by Spanish parliament, making it easier for people to “self-identify” their gender on their legal documents, several cases have emerged involving men using the law to receive financial, social, or legal benefits. The phenomenon is now being referred to as “trans fraud.”

Earlier this month, Reduxx reported that dozens of male civil servants in one small Spanish community changed their gender identity reportedly just to get benefits allocated for females. Among them was Roberto Perdigones, a 35-year-old Army corporal, who boasted of changing his legal sex to “female” after deciding he identified as an “intersex bigender” person.

From that moment on, he began to enjoy the benefits: the day he got his new ID card, he showed up at the barracks with earrings, long hair and a beard, now able to disregard mandatory dress code regulations without repercussions.

But the benefits are not limited to aesthetic issues, with Perdigones also now qualifying for a mother’s pension as he is a “woman” with a child.

“By changing my sex, as I have been informed, my pension has gone up. Because women receive more in retirement pensions to compensate for the inequality. In addition, I get 15% more because I have a child,” he boasted.

“I even have a private room in the barracks, all to myself, with a private bathroom. Because, being a woman, I can’t be with the men, and I didn’t consider it appropriate to be with the biological women out of respect for them. I’ve had the room to myself since the sex change.”

Perdigones also intends to seek a promotion and will be utilizing the so-called “affirmative action measures” designed to increase female presence in the Armed Forces command.

As Perdigones is approaching the mandatory age of retirement for temporary soldiers, obtaining a permanent position would be beneficial for him. Perdigones will be applying as a “woman,” since the physical tests are less demanding and because certain positions are seeking more female representation.

[chubbycaucasianchristiancloseted]

According to this article Imane Khelif is intersex.

According to this article Imane Khelif is intersex. We have to be careful because a lot of anti-woman rights advocates, use intersex as a leaping off point for an argument about why men should be able to play and dominate in women sports. The chances of being intersex are 0.018% (pubmed see comments). There are roughly 11,000 athletes participating in the Paris Olympics, you would be lucky to find two. Intersex, “the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female” as defined by pubmed. People suffering from Gender Dysphoria and identify as Transgender make up 1-2% of the U.S. population, meaning you SHOULD find over 100 within the athletes.

These two conditions are drastically different. Khelif did not wake up one day and choose their gender. In these situations the doctors usually attempt to correct the birth deformity using surgery and meds. Assuming Khelif is aware of this condition they might be taking advantage of their XY chromosome. The Y chromosome does trigger male development. If you don’t think Khelif has a significant advantage in the sport, is Angela Carini just a wimp? Is this an equal and fair match?

According to this article the IOC bases the athlete’s gender and age on their passport nothing more. I needed more information than that to get my MD Driver’s license!

Direct Quotes

Despite outcries from anti-trans celebrities and politicians, the International Olympic Committee confirmed Imane Khelif is eligible to compete in women's boxing at the Paris Games.

Khelif went viral on social media after winning her opening bout Thursday against Italy's Angela Carini, who stopped fighting after 46 seconds. Khelif, along with Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting, were both disqualified from their championships in 2023 after the International Boxing Association said they failed gender eligibility testing, a move that the IOC has called a “sudden and arbitrary decision."

Khelif reportedly has differences of sexual development, known as DSDs, the organizations said in a Fact Sheet released Friday. Having DSD is not the same as being transgender.

In the face of backlash over Khelif's 2024 win, the IBA stood by its decision to disqualify the boxers over two "trustworthy" and "independent" tests, though they did not disclose what the tests were. The Washington Post reported IBA president claimed they were disqualified over finding XY chromosomes.

The IOC said the gender and age for the athletes is based on their passports.

In the last five years, 25 states have passed laws banning transgender students from participating in sports that match their gender identity, according to data compiled by MAP, despite research from the Human Rights Campaign showing transgender youth are a small part of the population and not all of them are interested in playing sports.

[llyfrenfys]

Mis Hanes LHDT+ 2023 : Gair y Dydd #5 -Rhyngryw

LGBT+ History Month 2023: Word of the day #5 - Intersex

Rhyngryw

(adj. Intersex)

Rhyngryw is a relatively new term in Welsh. It translates to 'between sex' and is a Welsh localisation of the English term Intersex (which only became popularised itself in English around the mid-to-late 90s).

The previous terms for Intersex in Welsh were, like in English, slurs (e.g. hermaphrodite) or archaic (e.g. bi-sexual). This post is about the history of Rhyngryw, but if you're interested in general Welsh Intersex terminology history I'd recommend reading my blog here.

The term Rhyngryw hasn't appeared in any Welsh dictionary before (that I'm aware of, my records go up to 2018). Therefore to discover the history of Rhyngryw, we must try a different approach.

The first term for intersex in Welsh which isn't a variation of deuryw or hermaffrodit is cymysgryw (literally 'mixed sex'), in Geiriadur Termau from 1973. However, it doesn't seem like this term caught on.

Using boolean commands in a Google search for "Rhyngryw" yields the Wicipedia page for Rhyngryw, created on the 13th September 2007. As of December 2007, the page looked like this:

It uses the term Rhyngrywioldeb (intersexuality). The title of the Wicipedia page wasn't changed until 2021 to Rhyngryw.

Despite the absence of a long history for Rhyngryw, we can estimate that around 2006-2008 the term may have originated. Webster's Welsh-English Thesaurus Dictionary in 2008 gave Anrywiol as a term to mean intersex. Anrywiol ordinarily means asexual, but it is possible that in 2006-2008, attempts were made to move away from older archaic or offensive terminology to a new term. It's possible anrywiol was one of those attempts, but rhyngryw, whenever it originated originally, won out in the end.

[lgbtawarenessproject]

Part... 10? Already?: Mexico

Hello! Happy Pride Month, lets talk about Mexico.

Homosexuality and Gay-Marriage

In 1871, sodomy was decriminalized in Mexico, following French influence. Then, in 2003; Mexico was creating their anti-discrimination laws, they included ‘sexual preferences’ as a part of their list of protected groups. LGBT+ rights were further protected and added to when in 2007 Mexico added same-sex unions. The unions were expanded upon in 2015, when the Mexico supreme court recognized gay-marriage. In 2022, Mexico fully recognized gay marriage when the last state legalized it.

Trans and Non-binary

Historically, southeast Mexico has had an additional gender belonging to the Zapotec/Oaxaca called Muxe, links to information regarding this can be found in the links below. From 2004-now, trans rights are being fought for in Mexico. In May of this year(2023), Mexico gave out its first non-binary passport to Ociel Baena. According to the article, these passports are available to every non-binary and gender non-conforming person in Mexico. In addition, you can choose to not have a gender marked on your passport.

Intersex

Mexico has wide and varied views on things, one of these things is what to do when you have an intersex child. According to an article by Intersex Day, an intersex awareness organization, some intersex people in Mexico will have genital surgeries as an infant and then take hormones afterwards, as happens in many countries. However, others will not. According to the article, the common experience is instead the growing up in a society that heavily believes in two gender binary. 

In 2017, Mexico’s Department of Health gathered several activists to discuss healthcare protocols for people outside of the binary ‘normals’. They discussed what should be in the protocol, and it was actually released later that year. If you want to read more about this, I have linked the article and several intersex organizations below.

Pride

Started in 1979, Mexico’s pride is one of the largest pride events in the world. The first pride was led by LGBT+ youths in the community, and attended by several big names. During the march, HIV/AIDS tests were provided to approximately 1,500 people by AHF Mexico. 

Homosexuality and Gay-Marriage sources: 1 2 3

Trans and Non-Binary: 1 2 3

Intersex: 1 2 3

Pride: 1

Part 1

Part 9<-->Part 11

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

OCTOBER Celebrity Birthdays & Events

October Birthdays

Libra Stars (Sept 23-Oct 22) 1: Sherri Saum, Hamamat, Michaela Coel, Jurnee Smollett, Priah Ferguson 2: Akira Akbar, Philomena Kwao 3: Tessa Thompson 4: Dana Davis, Ella Balinska, Ambrosia Kelley, Kali Hawk 5: Heather Headley, Kara Royster, Taylour Paige 6: Karimah Westbrook, Stefanee Martin, Rhyon Nicole Brown 7: Adriyan Rae, Amber Stevens West, Aweng Chuol, Grace Saif, Toni Braxton 8: Kylie Russell 10: Damaris Lewis, Enam Asiama 13: Tisha Campbell, Ashanti, Aude Legastelois, Vanessa Gyimah 15: Bethany Brown, Renee Jones 16. Symphony Sanders, Terri J. Vaughn 17: Sharon Leal, Angel Parker 18: Joy Bryant 19: Ciara Renée Harper 21: Nakia Burrise 22: Carmen Ejogo 

Scorpio Stars (Oct 23-Nov 21) 23: Amandla Stenberg, Duckie Thot 24: Monica Brown 25: Ciara 26: Florence Kasumba, Folake Olowofoyeku, Lucy St. Louis 28: Savannah Smith, Zurin Villanueva 29: Melba Moore, Tracee Ellis Ross, Gabrielle Union, Ashleica Edmond, Maria Sten 30: Charnele Brown, Eva Marcille, Nia Long, Rachel Hilson, Saniyya Sidney 31: Letitia Wright, Sydney Park

October Events

All Month Long: Hoodoo Heritage Month | LGBTQA+ History Month | National Bullying Prevention Month | Black History Month in the UK |

Week 1: Mental Illness Awareness Week

6: National Plus Size Appreciation Day, World Smile Day | 10: World Mental Health Day | 11: National Coming Out Day, Black Girl Day Off Day | 13: 2023, we had an October Friday the 13th | 14: Black Entrepreneurs Day | 15: National Cherish Day | 17: Black Poetry Day | 26 Intersex Awareness Day | 28: National Chocolate Day | 31: Halloween, (Halloween Season) Spooky Season | For the more faint of heart, there is a Family Friendly Spooky Season tag

Last Week: Asexual Awareness Week

Hoodoo Heritage Observations (October 31 - November 2):

* All Hallow’s Eve | * All Saints Day | * All Souls Day

[pashterlengkap]

Three leading intersex activists released memoirs in 2023

It’s been a big year for intersex visibility, thanks in part to the director Julie Cohen’s documentary Every Body, which spotlighted three intersex activists. LGBTQ Nation sibling site Into called the film “an intimate portrait of the vibrant, marginalized intersex individuals who have often been ignored in heteropatriarchal and queer society.” But Cohen’s film, which is now streaming on Peacock where an even wider audience can see it, certainly wasn’t the only portrait of intersex lives to arrive in 2023. The past few months alone have seen the publication of several books by major figures in the fight for intersex rights and visibility. Related: What does “Intersex” mean? InterACT, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the right to bodily autonomy for people born with intersex traits, recently recommended three new memoirs from activists Alicia Roth Weigel, Pidgeon Pagonis, and Esther Morris Leidolf. Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you: Subscribe to our Newsletter As interACT staffer Marissa Adams writes, “Not only do they expose the truths of what intersex people often experience, but each of these books gives readers a look into the unique lives of each author and their role in intersex advocacy.” HarperCollins The cover of “Inverse Cowgirl” Inverse Cowgirl As Abby Jo Morris wrote for LGBTQ Nation last month, writer, activist, and Human Rights Commissioner for the City of Austin, Texas, Weigel’s Inverse Cowgirl “tells her story of being born with both male and female biological characteristics. Like many intersex people, her story is one of shame, revelation, and eventual acceptance.” Weigel structures the essays in her book around her own tattoos, writing about her struggles with bipolar disorder and unlearning the dissociation she felt from he own body. As she told LGBTQ Nation, “I hope what my book can show is that we all have a lot more agency than we think or than the government wants to lead us to believe.” Amazon Publishing The cover of “Nobody Needs to Know” Nobody Needs to Know Pidgeon Pagonis has helped lead campaigns against surgical intervention on babies born with intersex traits around the country, including at New York Presbyterian Hospital and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. Last year, LGBTQ Nation included them among several high-profile intersex figures whose voices and stories are essential to understanding the intersex experience. Their recent memoir, Nobody Needs to Know, recounts that story of being raised as a girl and growing up being told their body wouldn’t develop like other girls’ because they had survived cancer. “I always knew there was something different about me, but I never had the language for what was different cause no one wanted to give me the truth,” they told NPR in August. The book’s very title is a defiant reference to the advice doctors gave Pagonis. “It’s tongue-in-cheek cause I’m telling everybody. I hope that my story can live in the book and can be shared…because I want to be a light at the end of the tunnel for other intersex people.” The cover of “Not Uncommon, Just Unheard Of” Not Uncommon, Just Unheard Of In her self-published 2023 memoir, retired carpenter, medical sociologist, and intersex activist Esther Leidolf writes about the on-the-job injury that led her to dig into “a mysterious medical situation from her past” and discover that she is part of the intersex community. As she explained in a recent video ahead of Intersex Awareness Day, Leidolf wrote the book in reaction to the effort by “fearful people” to “demonize and erase” intersex folks “by restricting our civil rights and changing our sex anatomy, often without consent.” “Not only do we spend the rest of our lives recovering from these interventions, but restricting autonomy on certain populations is just a sneaky way to restrict autonomy for everyone,” she said. “Once I learned how… http://dlvr.it/Sy09GK

[13thgenfilm]

As most of you know, queer talent and storytelling are a huge focus of my filmmaking work and the larger efforts of film company 13th Gen. In recent months, we've been working on a beautiful, powerful project that is the first film we've ever been involved with on the lives of Intersex people. While not likely ready to premiere until 2023, fairly soon we will launch the film's public presence and social media channels, so I invite you to stay close in the coming weeks. The film is poised to be gorgeous, important, and dare I say, even groundbreaking. 

I'm sure many folks out there have seen the acronym #LGBTQIA circulating without much commentary about the "I" (for intersex) and the "A" (for agender). As today -- October 26th -- is INTERSEX AWARENESS DAY, I wanted to take a moment to honor the lives and struggles of Intersex people everywhere. There are likely 150 million Intersex people on the planet, and countless folks across the globe experience discrimination, violence, and abuse on the basis of their sex characteristics. 

We need to include Intersex people in our work to advance the causes of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Full stop. We need to stand with activists and intersex human rights organizations in their efforts to combat stigma and misinformation. If you want to be an ally, please do some research and familiarize yourself with what it means to be Intersex. 

A great place to start is right here: https://bit.ly/3BgiT7E 💛💜🏳️‍🌈

-- Marc Smolowitz