He reported that the SF HRC had received complaints that intersex people were being subjected to infant genital surgery for the purposes of sex assignment without proper consent. The hearing room at San Francisco City Hall was packed with intersex people and our allies.Īt the beginning of the hearing, Marcus Arana, a discrimination investigator with the Human Rights Commission, briefly laid out the reasons for the hearing. It was the first public hearing held on Intersex issues in the United States. On May 27, 2004, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission held a historic hearing on Intersex issues. It is reprinted here with their permission and is not governed by our general copyright policy. Submit your stories to Marcus Arana, SF Human Rights Commission, 25 Van Ness Avenue #800, San Francisco, California 94102-6033, or is a more detailed report from intersex activist and support organization Bodies Like Ours.

The Human Rights Commission is still accepting written testimonies for consideration until June 25, 2004. You can view the recording of the entire hearing online (with RealOne Player) from the website of SFGTV, the municipal government's cable channel. Other supporters, including parents of intersex individuals, scholars and medical professionals also gave testimonies demanding measures to preserve intersex human rights. Among speakers were intersex activists Thea Hillman, Betsy Driver, Hida Viloria, Blue, David Cameron, Peter Trinkl, and Suegee Tamar-Mattis, who shared their personal experiences.

On May 27, the Human Rights Commission of the City and County of San Francisco held the world's first official hearing on the human rights violations of people born with intersex conditions.

Next: U.S.Historic Intersex Human Rights Hearing in San Francisco.

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. Such surgeries should only be performed with the patient's full informed consent. 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. 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. Thank you for the coverage of the controversy over surgical sex assignment on intersex children.

See below for our letter to the editor in response: 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.

Intersex by Thea Hillman