Alice Dreger and Disorders of Sex Development

A brief warning to little people

2008-10-22T07:26:00.001-07:00

Commentary and opinion of Curtis E. Hinkle, Intersex activist

I noticed recently that Alice Dreger is planning on focusing on little people. Warning: beware.

Alice Dreger caused great damage to the intersex movement and let me give just a small example of how she threw oil on the fire.

While campaigning against early genital surgery, she became a staunch defender of Anne Lawrence who wrote the following journal article.

Lawrence, A. A. (2006). Clinical and theoretical parallels between desire for limb amputation and gender identity disorder. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35, 263-278. Full text: http://www.annelawrence.com/publications/amputation-GID.pdf

How can someone be opposed to surgery on children on the one hand and approve of surgery for people with a limb amputation fetish on the other hand? How can one deal with real gender identity issues in children who are surgically assigned to a sex without consent and at the same time maintain that the reason that people would want to change their gender assignment as an adult is a limb amputation fetish? Conflating these two issues is so repulsive to many intersex people that it only further drove wedges between marginalized communities – the intersex and trans movement – communities which actually have a lot in common if one does not include limb amputation fetishes as the motivation for rejecting one’s original gender assignment.

Then when she gave the following speech at the Kinsey Institute entitled “Parsing Intersex: No matter how you slice it”, many of us realized just how long she must have been palling around with Anne Lawrence.

So, little people, beware.

Footnote:

You may wish to read the following article by Alice Dreger:

Lavish Dwarf Entertainment

Alice Dreger's unethical treatment of the intersex movement

2008-09-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

By Curtis E. Hinkle

Background information

The intersex community has been severely duped and manipulated. The reason there was practically NO intersex participation in this DSD scandal that has been ongoing for quite a while now was because they most likely did not want any participation from people who might figure out what was going on and who was involved.

1) J Michael Bailey is a central figure in the Network on Psychosexual Differentiation at Penn State which resurrected the Disorder terminology in a psychosexual context. He spoke on different occasions at their meetings specifically on intersex and helped formulate their mission which includes the following:

“Develop or refine animal paradigms that model and help to explain the genetic, neuroendocrine, and social processes underlying both normal sex-typed behaviors and pathological behaviors observed in individuals with intersex conditions or gender-atypical behavior.”

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/aims.html

http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/members.html

2) Dreger and Chase then went about popularizing this terminology of disorders to the medical community outside the "psychology" and "psychiatric" community. We were told that medical doctors preferred the term "disorder". Well, they "prefer" it because that is what Dreger and Chase actually sold to them by publishing articles specifically on the reasons medical doctors should change to the term "disorder" as the preferred terminology long before most of us got wind of what they were doing.

3) Then Network members at Penn State and Northwestern "researchers" where Dreger and Bailey are located get all this funding that conflates the two issues - disorders of sex and disorders of psychosexual development.

4) Bailey is in BOTH groups and a CLOSE associate of Dreger and someone she has been defending. (Please note: I wrote "someone she has been defending", not that she was defending his ideas. However, she does defend a lot of his ideas also, many of which are quite repulsive to some intersex people - like surgical sex fetishes which is what Anne Lawrence appears to some of us to be into.)

Homosexual Eugenics by Bailey Dreger/Bailey Connections

Alice Dreger: Disorders of Sex Development, the history

Alice Dreger recently announced that she is resigning from the Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development (“The DSD Consortium”), and is trying to distance herself from the pathologizing terminology being used by that Consortium – as if she never had anything to do with it.

In a letter dated September 15, 2006 and addressed to "Dear handbook contributor", Dreger said:

"I am writing to let you know that I am resigning from the DSD Consortium and to make a few suggestions about avenues that might be pursued to further the work we did together. . ."

". . . Work on ways to ensure that the language of "disorders of sex development" does not result in negative experiences for people with DSDs and their families (Even while this language has allowed productive dialog, we have already seen that some affected individuals find this language to be stigmatizing and unnecessarily pathologizing). . ." – Alice Dreger

However, Ms. Dreger cannot rewrite history and escape her record as a major champion of the use of "disorders of sex development" (DSD) as the umbrella term for intersex variations.

Dreger is the editor-in-chief of the new ISNA handbooks which heavily promote that terminology, and it was to the contributors to those handbooks that she sent her recent letter:

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/clinical/index.html

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/parents/index.html

Dreger is even credited by ISNA as being the prime mover who brought those handbooks forward:

“Perhaps most importantly, Alice acted as project manager and editor-in-chief for the DSD Consortium’s clinical guidelines and parents’ handbook. These groundbreaking consensus documents would not have happened without her extraordinary talents and efforts. She is continuing her work as Project Coordinator for the DSD Consortium.” – ISNA Website
http://www.isna.org/about/dreger

Furthermore, Dreger’s job title at Northwestern University includes that very terminology:

Alice Dreger . . . serves as the project coordinator for publications of the Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development.
http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/dreger.html

Perhaps most significantly, Dreger, as a new hire at Northwestern University, was the principal author of a journal article that began the Consortium’s process of popularizing their terminology as a replacement for intersex, both within and outside the medical community:

“Changing the Nomenclature/Taxonomy for Intersex: A Scientific and Clinical Rationale”, Alice Dreger et al, Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism, 18. (729-733 (2005).
http://www.medhelp.org/ais/PDFs/Dreger-Nomenclature-2005.pdf

Dreger’s disorders paper promotes the use of the old-time medical phrase “disorders of sexual differentiation" (later changed to “development”) – using the straw man of “hermaphroditism” as if it were the word being replaced (instead of intersex being the word they wanted to replace):

In conclusion, we suggest the language of ‘hermaphroditism’ and ‘pseudohermaphroditism’ be abandoned. One possible alternative . . . is to use instead . . . the umbrella term “disorders of sexual differentiation”. Such an approach would have the salutary effects of improving patient and physician understanding and reducing the biases that are inherent in the use of the current language of ‘hermaphroditism’. – Dreger et al.

That old medical terminology had been adopted in 2003 in the mission statement of "The Network on Psychosexual Differentiation". It was that NICHD group of researchers, funded by NIH, who are behind the Northwestern/Penn State DSD Consortium that had hired Dreger:
http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/
http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/aims.html
http://www.intersexualite.org/English_OII/IAIA/IAIA_index.html

As lead author of the “disorders paper” and as a spokesperson for the Consortium, Dreger became a staunch defender of that terminology, even as the early backlash developed (although using somewhat obscure logic in her defenses), as seen in a March 2006 ISNA blog entry:

We realize, of course, that any terminology including the word “disorder” can be construed as pejorative. We’d also like to emphasize that we use the abbreviated form of DSD whenever possible. Explaining why this is important, Alice Dreger writes, “we find that, when accompanied by an explanation of what we mean, DSD isn’t terribly stigmatizing. And an important point: the acronym DSD is very useful—and thus, the acronym should be favored over the spelled-out term— because as an abbreviation we don’t focus on ‘disorder’.” We explain what we mean, and then use the term “DSDs.” Thus, we recognize that this is not a perfect term, but we hope ISNA’s supporters and allies will understand that it’s helping us enact real change in medical care. – ISNA Website
http://www.isna.org/node/1028

Note: That entry has recently been removed from the ISNA blog page.

To counter the escalating backlash, Dreger and ISNA ramped up their efforts to promote the terminology on behalf of the DSD Consortium during 2006 – including helping with widespread dissemination of a so-called “medical consensus statement” published on May 4, 2006 and again in August 2006. However, contrary to all appearances, that “consensus” involved many medical DSD supporters but had almost no intersex representation.

“Consensus statement on management of intersex disorders”, by I A Hughes, et al; Archives of Disease in Childhood ac98319 Module 2 5/4/06:
http://www.medhelp.org/ais/PDFs/Chicago-Consensus-Statement-06.pdf

“Summary of Consensus Statement on Intersex Disorders and Their Management”, Christopher P. Houk, et al; PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 2 August 2006, pp. 753-757
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/extract/118/2/753

“DSDs and the Chicago Consensus Meeting/Statement”, AISSG-UK
http://www.medhelp.org/ais/15_ANNOUNCE.HTM#16%20Aug%202006

The terminology was then positioned for major national exposure, in a glowing article about Cheryl Chase in the New York Times on September 24, 2006:
"What if It’s (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?"

However, those efforts have clearly failed, because of the huge backlash that has developed in the intersex community against such terminology – and as prominent researchers such as Prof. Milton Diamond made eloquent pleas for the use of less pathologizing language:

“Variations of Sex Development Instead of Disorders of Sex Development”,
Milton Diamond, ADC-Online, 27 July 2006.
http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/91/7/554#2460

Just one month before she announced her resignation, and now under obvious pressure, Dreger posted an entry in her blog entitled “My Identity/Politics”, in which she said:

“Do I sometimes take crap from people in identity rights movements (like the intersex rights movement) for being a supposed interloper? Sure, sometimes. But most people figure out that it’s a good thing to have someone capable helping out.” – Alice Dreger, 14 August 2006
http://www.alicedreger.com/identity_politics.html

By then many intersex people were asking themselves: “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

And now, in the midst of an unstoppable backlash, Dreger has suddenly announced that she is resigning from the DSD Consortium – and goes on to criticize others for using the very terminology she has so widely promoted.

Here we have yet another interloper (her own word) who intrudes into the lives of intersex people and does great harm against us, without getting to know us in large numbers and consulting us, and without giving us a real voice through her writings. Then, when the going gets rough and the harm she’d been doing is exposed, she is now simply walking away - leaving it to others to clean up the mess she created.

For follow-up: Click here

Let's not be ambiguous

2008-09-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

By Curtis E. Hinkle

We in OII do not wish to get involved in a debate over terminology with Alice Dreger and we hope we have not been ambiguous about this. Yes, we don't agree with the new terminology but that is not how we in OII wish to have this debate framed. It is about much more than terminology and by focusing only on the "name" that is being used for "intersex", we trivialise the debate. We, therefore, want to be clear and unambiguous about why we are in such fundamental disagreement with Alice Dreger and why we disapprove of what she has done to the intersex community.

We are concerned about the following and it has little to do with terminology.

This is what Alice Dreger has done:

1- DSD is now a genetic defect. (Intersex was not and she encouraged the medical community to replace intersex with DSD because it is more "precise". Yes, it is and we are the targets of that precision.

2- More and more DSD's will become detectable in utero and screened out of the population because the genetic name (based on the cause) will make this possible.

3) She is defending a eugenics proponent. Download his homosexual eugenics paper here.

4) DSD makes it totally legal and ethical to perform all types of normalisation procedures on children because legally a DISORDER can be treated without consent of the child - it is a genetic disorder and disability now, thanks to Alice Dreger.

If Dreger were using the word "intersex"to refer to the items above, we would oppose the term "intersex" in that case.

Alice Dreger seems more concerned about pro-choice rights than our rights. This unfortunately can result in not just the choice to have a baby but the choice of which babies are worth having at all based on genetic defects. This is eugenics and not just the right to choose because some groups as more valuable than other groups and modern methods are used to screen them out of the population. We in OII are going to resist this. We look forward to a real debate and to real freedom of speech. Would it not be reasonable to let intersex people speak about these issues instead of a woman who is not intersex, Alice Dreger, who is more interested in abortion rights than our rights?

Dreger and DSD - The redefining of intersex as a genetic birth defect

2008-09-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

The Bailey/Dreger Team
by Curtis E. Hinkle

Alice Dreger seems more concerned about pro-choice rights than intersex rights. Conflating the right of a woman to choose with intersex as a genetic birth defect can result in not just the choice to have a baby but the choice of which babies are worth having at all. This can eventually become a form of eugenics because some groups are considered as more valuable than other groups and modern methods are used to screen them out of the population. We in OII are going to resist this. We look forward to a real debate and to real freedom of speech. Would it not be reasonable to let intersex people speak about these issues instead of a woman who is not intersex, Alice Dreger, who is more interested in abortion rights than our rights?

To briefly understand Dreger's close association with DSD as a birth defect:

There are three main figures involved. Dreger is central to each. They are: Dr. Eric Vilain, J Michael Bailey and Dreger herself. Vilain is in the Penn State group (Network on Psychosexual Differentiation) and a board member of ISNA (the Intersex Society of North America). Bailey is in the Penn State group with Vilain and at Northwestern University with Alice Dreger. Dreger is very closely connected with ISNA and Northwestern University where Bailey is and has devoted a large part of her recent career in defending Bailey.

Bailey works and has worked very closely with Dr. Eric Vilain who just recently in a June Scientific American article took credit for coming up with the term "Disorders of Sexual Development" (His choice of words).

He states very clearly what the focus is on:

"Ultimately individuals who are intersex will each have their diagnosis with a GENETIC name."

From the Scientific American article:

Q. "At a recent international meeting to discuss management of people with genital and gonadal abnormalities, you successfully pushed for a change in nomenclature. Instead of using terms such as "hermaphrodite" or even "intersex," you recommended that the field use specific diagnoses under the term, "disorders of sex development." Why did you and other geneticists feel a nomenclature change was necessary?

A. For the past 15 to 16 years now, there really has been an explosion in the genetic knowledge of sex determination. And the question being, how can we translate this genetic knowledge into clinical practice? So we said maybe we should have a fresh approach to this.

The initial agenda was to have a nomenclature that was robust but flexible enough to incorporate new genetic knowledge. Then we realized there were other problems that were in fact not really genetic, but that genetics could actually answer them. Ultimately individuals who are intersex will each have their diagnosis with a genetic name. It's not going to be some big, all-encompassing category, like "male hermaphrodites." And that's much more scientific, it's much more individualized, if you will. It's much more medical.

Source:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=D8BFAF20-E7F2-99DF-3CBD7BFCF4203F4B

Bailey was one of the original presenters when this terminology was first ressurected at the Penn State group which is researching psychosexual differentiation in intersex and gender variant people. The whole disorder concept with Eric Vilain and Bailey and others was resurrected in this network funded by the NICHD. This group which is funded by United States taxpayers has now made most all of their documents password protected.

"Develop or refine animal paradigms that model and help to explain the genetic, neuroendocrine, and social processes underlying both normal sex-typed behaviors and pathological behaviors observed in individuals with intersex conditions or gender-atypical behavior."
http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/aims.html
http://nichdnet.psych.psu.edu/members.html

Right now CAH and XXY and other intersex variations are on brith defect registries and they are there precisely because the genetic screening can find them. The Consensus statement makes it very clear that the intent of the new DSD model is to determine the GENETIC origins of all these conditions just as Vilain has stated clearly in his recent interview with the Scientific American. The DSD Guidelines and Consensus Statement are firmly planted in the genetic and eugenic model of intersex as a birth defect.

NOMENCLATURE AND DEFINITIONS (From the Consensus)

Advances in identification of molecular genetic causes of abnormal sex with heightened awareness of ethical issues and patient advocacy concerns necessitate a reexamination of nomenclature.1 Terms such as "intersex," "pseudohermaphroditism," "hermaphroditism," "sex reversal," and gender-based diagnostic labels are particularly controversial. These terms are perceived as potentially pejorative by patients and can be confusing to practitioners and parents alike. We propose the term "disorders of sex development" (DSD), as defined by congenital conditions in which development of chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomic sex is atypical. The proposed changes in terminology are summarized in Table 1. A modern lexicon is needed to integrate progress in MOLECULAR GENETIC aspects of sex development. Because outcome data in individuals with DSD are limited, it is essential to use precision when applying definitions and diagnostic labels.3,4 It is also appropriate to use terminology that is sensitive to the concerns of patients. The ideal nomenclature should be sufficiently flexible to incorporate new information yet robust enough to maintain a consistent framework. Terms should be descriptive and reflect GENETIC ETIOLOGY when available and accommodate the spectrum of phenotypic variation. Clinicians and scientists must value the nomenclature's use, and it must be understandable to patients and their families. An example of how the proposed nomenclature could be applied in a classification of DSD is shown in Table 2.

Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders
PEDIATRICS Volume 118, Number 2, August 2006
http://www.intersex-tr.org/documents/Consensus%20statement%20on%20management%20of%20intersex%20disorders.pdf

Fact Checking Alice Dreger

2008-05-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

A fact check to the fact checker
by Curtis E. Hinkle

Response to: http://alicedreger.com/informed_dissent.html
(Italics are quotes from Alice Dreger's blog)

Well, I see Alice Dreger is up to her usual: distorting the facts and creating a smokescreen so that those with power who are not being held accountable for their unethical behavior appear to be justified in further victimizing marginalized communities. As usual, she is telling us what to do and being deceptive as she talks down to us – vintage Dreger – while deflecting the attention away from those who are harming people and making it look like those harmed are the real problem.

I’ve been watching the same sort of thing happen over the debate regarding Zucker and the DSM. Lots of errors about basic facts.

She should know about errors about basic facts. Her recent article in defense of J. Michael Bailey was full of errors. Click here

Some of these errors have been noted in an open letter from Marshall Forstein, M.D., of Harvard Medical School. Forstein pointed out that in his letter that, contrary to claims made in petitions and frantic emails, “sexual orientation is NOT even an issue for the DSM committee to consider.”

Once again. This appears accurate but it is not factually correct to accuse those of us who are discussing SEXUAL ORIENTATION as having our facts wrong. We are discussing sexual orientation, and she understands why because she wrote an article about this same topic herself defending J. Michael Bailey, because the people named to the DSM committee are discussing homosexuality. That is the issue and it is deceptive to put this on her blog and mischaracterize why we are discussing sexual orientation. The problem is not with the intersex or trans community. It is with Blanchard, Zucker, and Dreger. They have been writing papers and elaborating theories which conflate sexual orientation with transsexuality. So, let’s be accurate and check our facts, Alice Dreger. We are talking about this because they, the proposed members of the DSM committee write many articles about homosexuality and see it as one of only two causes of transsexuality.

And the DSM “is a guide to diagnosis and NOT to treatment.”

Once again, we know that. It is inaccurate to act as if we do not. The fact that one or two people might not know that is not necessarily the case for most of us. Why didn’t Dreger write to the people who don’t know this if she really wants to help out instead of making all of us look like uniformed troublemakers? Well, she has an agenda – to protect Zucker, Blanchard and Bailey. That’s why.

The tone of Forstein’s letter reminded me of my own tone as I lectured my well-meaning neighbors on my porch yesterday. Basically: “Geez, people! You don’t have the most basic facts right! How do you expect to gain and keep allies if you can’t get the facts straight?!”

Once again, she paints all of us with one stroke (pretending that she is addressing her neighbors but this is not written to her neighbors, is it?). This is outright propaganda. Many of us are quite informed, articulate people capable of exposing the facts. She would be well advised to get informed and stop generalizing about a whole community.

The errors Forstein chronicled are important, but arguably not as important as the erroneous claims that Zucker does “conversion therapy,” i.e., that he tries to change children’s sexual orientation from gay to straight, and that he thinks a patient turning out to be transsexual represents a “bad outcome.”

Fact check. I thought that Alice Dreger had read J. Michael Bailey’s book. In his “Queen” book, Bailey wrote:

“….Zucker believes that most boys who play with girls’ things often enough to earn a diagnosis of GID would become girls if they could. Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome.” (Page 31 in book)

“Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual. His experience has convinced him that if a boy with GID becomes an adolescent with GID, the chances that he will become an adult with GID and seek a sex change are much higher. And he thinks the kind of therapy he practices helps reduce this risk” (Page 30 in book)

“…Zucker’s therapy seems kinder and more consistent, and thus more likely to be effective. Zucker believes that it is, although he is the first to ackowledge that no scientific studies currently support the effectiveness of what he does.” (Page 34 in book).

Now. One final fact check. Here is why Zucker and Blanchard are talking about homosexuality. Let’s get that fact straight. And therefore we who are opposed to their being part of the DSM committee are discussing this same topic because:

The DSM is concerned with diagnoses, not treatments per se. We know that, Alice Dreger. However, that is why people that are ideologically motivated with very little, if any, empirical data to support their theories (and Bailey himself admitted that) should not be placed in charge of the definitions or diagnoses. Here is the problem. Drucker will have input into the DIAGNOSES, not the treatments but the treatments are not the issue for Zucker and many of these people that have been influenced by him. In my opinion, they want NO TREATMENTS. I am convinced that the motivation is to tie the hands of those who would desire to provide treatments and they might be able to do that by controlling the definitions, i.e. the diagnoses. In other words, if the members of this committee, some of which I know have been influenced by the views of Zucker which are that gender identity, as opposed to gender role, is extremely malleable, even more malleable than sexual orientation, then reassignment may eventually become almost impossible, if not outright impossible in the years to come.

The theory that Blanchard et al. are expounding has two key elements which will have enormous impact on redefining transsexuality in such a way that

1) it is NOT really a GENDER identity disorder at all and
2) with ONLY TWO categories possible for all people with "gender confusion" which appears to be the word that is becoming more and more common.

Now, if GID is not about gender but SEX, and there are only two diagnoses, one of which is based on HOMOSEXUALITY, what treatments can be ethically justified by therapists if homosexuality is NOT also reintroduced as a TREATABLE disorder? If you include autogynephilia, then you have to include homosexuality because the theory that Blanchard and others are propagating posits that there must also be "trans" people motivated by homosexual orientation (and ONLY those two categories). This erases intersex and trans experience and the essential definitions that we often use to give meaning to our own sense of being – our own definitions of ourselves and if we are not allowed to define ourselves within the system to the best of our ability, then I don't see anyway to improve our well-being within that system – only further marginalization and stigma.

If Zucker is treating homosexuality in childhood and he admits that these boys grow up to be homosexuals and according to Bailey he is treating them in the hopes of preventing transsexuality, then why not treat homosexuality in adulthood to prevent transsexuality? That is why we are discussing this issue.

Professionals? It is time to act – PROFESSIONALLY

Writing to a whole community instead of addressing the people whose behavior Alice Dreger and others associated with her are denouncing is not professional. When I write about Dreger, for example, I don't generalize and characterize her behavior, writings and ideology as characteristic of the whole intersex community. Why does she include me and thousands of others who have nothing to do with the non-factual allegations she is writing about?

This is political spin. This is part of the ongoing assault against the intersex and trans communities. I and hundreds of others in the IS and Trans communities have NEVER written anything similar to this deceptive blog entry by Alice Dreger.

The documentation about Alice Dreger that I have published is based on verifiable sources, not generalizations, not innuendo, not rumors, which is more characteristic of her writings lately.

I have not claimed anything to be true about these people that I cannot back up with reliable sources. It would be advisable that she and other "experts" defending Zucker and Blanchard make the same effort when speaking about us in generalized terms. Don't include me in those generalizations without informed opinions that are reality-based, not agenda-driven spin. It is very offensive to include my work in these generalizations about the trans and intersex communities.

I would never write a blog that gave the impression that all mental health professionals were acting the same way as Zucker, Dreger and Blanchard are because I know otherwise.

What advice like this does is discredit all the well researched articles that many of us in the trans and intersex communities have written about this topic.

It is time that some of the professionals act responsibly (notably those in charge of the APA and those who are enabling Zucker and Blanchard) and inform themselves and stop giving advice until they do know the facts. It is time to demand accountability of those who provide care and who speak as ethicists about our care. The professionals in this debate have much more responsibility. Part of being a professional is that one takes the time to inform oneself of the facts. Many of us have. These factual articles are published. Read them.

The Chatty Cathy Approach to Intersex Activism

2008-04-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

by Curtis E. Hinkle

When I was a child, my sister had a doll that was rather popular for a while. It was called “Chatty Cathy.” This particular doll interested me because it could talk. However, you had to pull a string on her back to start the conversation. Pulling strings to get someone to talk who otherwise was just a dummy who really had nothing to say made a lot of sense to me. It meant that people who had almost nothing to say except a limited repertoire of stupid and often illogical ideas would speak about those ideas at the moment and in the context which was most beneficial to the person pulling the string. Their freedom of speech was not really taken from them because you could rationalize that really what you were doing was spurring debate, initiating dialog and encouraging them to express themselves.

If only the DSD activists and specialists could be more like Chatty Cathy! Well, in a sense they are. One big difference. Unethical and tyrannical methods have been used to suppress OII’s freedom of speech. Tracing it to the exact individuals involved is still a challenge. We can only trace it to the place of origin and ISP’s. It has been going on for a long time now. But the Chatty Cathy Syndrome has still been rather effective. Yes, they indeed do suffer from CCS.

Since its beginning, OII and many people with OII and its website have been systematically defamed, hacked, and blacklisted while DSD activists publish tomes and have articles published in the New York Times and other national media outlets about their freedom of speech being seriously threatened. But those of us in OII cannot even get a short letter to the editor published. So, whose freedom of speech is really in peril?

Instead of simply giving up out of frustration and giving in to their abuse of power, I felt there was one approach that should be consistently and methodically developed and used against them – “helping” them say what they really mean in front of the whole world because it was clear that what they really had to say had to be exposed so that those affected could have real discussions about their control over intersex and trans issues.

This method involved huge risks because they have the power, the degrees and academic authority. By intentionally provoking them with sarcasm, histrionic analyses and carefully chosen tropes (such as eugenics, among others), they have been making one political mistake after another and more people are starting to see what their real message is. Yes, it probably did appear (and still does appear to many people) that OII is radical, angry and irrational. That is a risk that was worth taking because the other solutions would have never been effective because it meant accepting the victimization, the suppression of our right to speak.

I started this technique many years ago in an online support group that Dreger was monitoring even though she never posted. I had noticed that once she started controlling the content on ISNA’s blog many years ago that intersex issues were slowly disappearing from the site. I wrote a post entitled, “It’s about gender, stupid”. The post was not directed to anyone in particular. It was just a general discussion about how gender, especially gender norms, often have disastrous consequences on the everyday lives of intersex people. Not long after that post, maybe a week later, this is what appeared on the home page of ISNA’s website.
“Intersex is not about gender.”

I started checking around to find out who wrote that and it appears it was Alice Dreger herself. I also found out that she was writing almost all the content on ISNA’s site for a long time. If you notice, now that she is not with ISNA, the site has published almost nothing new.

There is NOT one mention that I can find on ISNA’s website about the Christiane Völling case in Germany. That case is probably one of the most important anti-surgery cases litigated. How could ISNA not be interested in this case? With their huge medical staff, why would they not offer open and positive support? The way the case has been handled, I fear that it might not succeed in the end. But the situation could have been different had there been more open discussion about this by those who are on the medical board of ISNA. Not a word anywhere that I can find.

Instead of speaking about such an important topic, what has Alice been doing? She has been publishing one blog entry after another on her personal blog in response to OII’s criticisms. She has been writing tomes denouncing the “feminine essence narrative” and actively defending Bailey, Lawrence and Triea. These people have nothing of scientific value to defend. There simply is no science behind what they are publishing. It is political spin and gender policing.

Why the silence about Christiane Völling’s case in Germany?

Her lawsuit is an anti-surgery case that was widely publicized in Europe with articles appearing in many languages throughout the world. There was almost nothing in English except what I translated.The reason for the silence among English-speaking experts is very simple. This is about a "feminine essence narrative." Christiane Völling was assigned MALE and her female reproductive anatomy was removed without her consent. She has proof of this and presented it in court. She won, but the surgeon is now appealing and the letters from the court still address her as "Herr Völling".Christiane knows that she is a woman despite her assignment as male. That is the reason there is NO support from Dreger and other DSD activists of this intersex woman who has been subjected to a life of suffering.

I have so many people to thank for having helped OII, some who are not directly associated with OII but who have been open to real discussion of intersex issues. I feel very positive about the future because real science based on data from the real world, not the narcissistic rants of political correctness or bigotry (which often form marriages of convenience), will ultimately prevail.

So, if you find that some of OII’s articles are “over the top” at times, remember that we have had no other way to get our message out but by provoking the people who are suppressing our freedom of speech to show their true intentions.

Therefore, in conclusion, I would like to stress OII has been a champion of DSD activism in the sense that we have been actively involved in “Defending the Speech of Dummies”.

Alice Dreger: The violent gender police of intersex and trans identities

2008-03-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

by Curtis E. Hinkle

It is obvious from reading Alice Dreger's recent articles both in the Johns Hopkins publication she edited and her article in defense of J Michael Bailey that she is working to undermine what she calls the "feminine essence narrative". In other words, she is against using gender identity as a valid construct for explaining why transsexuals reject their assigned sex.

However, this same "ethicist" insists on using this same gender identity construct as a justification for violently erasing intersex children's own identities and rightful place in society.

In the DSD Guidelines which she authored, she writes: "And when we talk about a person's "gender identity," we are talking about that person's inner feeling of being a boy, girl, man, or woman." She also writes: "And, when we do use the phrase "he or she," we do not mean to suggest that your child does not have a clear gender."

If an intersex child has a clear gender identity and many do, how could that possibly be any different from a “feminine or masculine essence narrative”? If someone is not “clearly” male or female as in the case of an intersexed child, then is it not illogical to assume that their gender identity can be clear without it also being a “narrative” of what that child essentially FEELS?

She insists that intersexed children must be assigned a GENDER identity (a sex often cannot be assigned because the sex is not categorizable as clearly male or female) and she further insists that this is to be done as early as possible without any input from the child. In essence, Alice Dreger is in favor of imposing a “feminine essence narrative” on many intersex children without any essential input from the children themselves.

However, in the case of transsexuals, she has closely aligned herself with a school of thought which debunks the very idea of a “feminine essence narrative” and which theorizes that the reasons that motivate transsexuals to reject their sex assignment are not based on their gender identity or “feminine essence narrative” but for sexual reasons.

This is the violent and very dangerous logic of Alice Dreger who is not being ethical in her medical views about gender identity.

If an adult states that they know what their identity is, then they can be labeled as liars because that is exactly what the Bailey transsexual taxonomy states: that most MTF transsexuals are lying about their motivations for rejecting their sex assignment and that the real reasons are sexual orientation issues and paraphilias and NOT their "feminine essence narrative" or "gender identity".

However, these same specialists are insisting that a person who cannot speak for themselves (intersexed infants) should have a "gender identity" or "feminine essence narrative" imposed on them (in other cases a "masculine essence narrative".)

This is unethical. It is violent and sanctioning this hoax only further mutilates the whole intersex movement and renders it obsolete and irrelevant.

This abusive gender policing is both unethical and dangerous.

The following are quotes of Alice Dreger’s recent writings. The first are from her statements about intersex children from the DSD Guidelines followed by statements about transsexuals from her article in defense of J. Michael Bailey.

“After we have back the information we are collecting, we will talk with you more specifically about choosing a gender assignment. We suggest you choose the gender assignment your baby is most likely to identify with as your baby grows up and becomes his or her own person. We can’t guarantee we’ll get it right.”

DSD Guidelines

Chapter 4 SCRIPTS FOR TALKING WITH PARENTS

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/clinical/scripts.html

“Thus, initial gender assignment (boy or girl) is made by the parents after the parents have been fully informed about the results of tests and what is known about gender identity development in patients with similar conditions. Because the parents will be the primary care givers for the child, and because they are the legal decision-makers for the child, it is critical that their sense of the situation be taken seriously and that they actively participate in the initial gender assignment.”

DSD Guidelines

Chapter 3 BACKGROUND AND ELABORATION

GENDER ASSIGNMENT

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/clinical/background.html

“On rare occasions, a child with a DSD may approach puberty without having clearly expressed a gender identity. Consider, for example, a child with histologically normal testes, 46,XY, and partial virilization who is being raised as a girl but who is approaching puberty without a clearly expressed gender identity.”

DSD Guidelines

Chapter 3 BACKGROUND AND ELABORATION

GENDER ASSIGNMENT

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/clinical/background.html

“The truth is, even though scientists have attempted to find out why people end up with the gender identities and sexual orientations they do, the origins of gender identity and sexual orientation remain somewhat of a mystery for all of us.”

DSD Guidelines

KEY BACKGROUND POINTS

http://www.dsdguidelines.org/htdocs/parents/background_points.html

“TMWWBQ’s title and cover explicitly contrasted with those books on transgenderism which adhered to the “woman trapped in a man’s body” narrative of transgender identity, or what I will call hereafter the “feminine essence” narrative.

Page 14

Interestingly, a close reading of Bailey’s book reveals the author’s persistent skepticism about many scientists’ and clinicians’ conception of gender identity, and an especially strong skepticism about the idea of an innate gender identity: “‘Gender identity’ [in the psychological literature] refers to the subjective internal feeling that one is male or female” (p. 22). But, Bailey insists, “most of us rarely, if ever, think about our gender identities” (p. 22).

Page 15

“Ultimately Bailey concludes that “scientists have not fully appreciated how complicated a trait gender identity likely is, or how little we know about it. One expert told me, bluntly: ‘Gender identity is defined as “the inner sense of oneself as male or female.” What the hell does that mean?’” (p. 50) It makes more sense to him that children naturally exhibit “feminine” and “masculine” behaviors and interests, and that those are then categorized as feminine and masculine in such a way that children get the idea that they count as girlish or boyish.”

Page 15

“So his doubt about the commonly held concept of a core gender identity is one reason Bailey remains dubious about claims by transsexuals that they change sex because they have always had a core gender identity that conflicted with their anatomical sex.”

Page 15

Alice Dreger: The unethical ethicist?

2008-02-29T05:09:00.000-08:00

By Curtis E. Hinkle

Alice Dreger, the DSD activist, who bills herself as a bioethicist has over the past few years become mired by one ethical scandal after another. Just to mention a few of her scandals, let me start with what will be one of the major setbacks in intersex history. It was Alice Dreger who was one of the prime movers of the shift from “intersex” to DSD, “disorders of sex development”. She did this by consulting with doctors and determining what worked for them and consulted the intersex community after the change had been made. Quite unethical for an ethicist because there is practically no support for this replacement of the term “intersex” with “disorders of sex development” and the ensuing Consensus Statement (1) which approved this change of terminology which elaborated a set of protocols that are a major setback for intersex people with surgery being recommended between two and six months of age. (2) This was a scandal of historical proportions.

After controlling intersex activism for over a decade and leaving it in shambles, she decided to move on to transgender activism. And already she is becoming the same divisive “activist” in the transgender movement that she was in the intersex movement. She has begun by taking sides with the gatekeepers of the trans movement, just as she placed herself with the gatekeepers of the intersex community and then left us with a more pathological terminology and set of protocols based on intersex being a genetic defect. (3)

As she started her trans activism, many of us in the intersex movement saw the same pattern slowly emerge that had been her hallmark within the intersex movement – siding with proponents of a highly problematic, pathological definition of transsexualism and attacking any opponents who resisted the academic and discursive control she was usurping over their own right to self definition and in determining their own sociopolitical agenda without having to contend with another interloper who had no experiential understanding of trans issues.

All of a sudden she picked a fight with Andrea James and tried to prevent Ms. James from being allowed to speak at the university where Alice Dreger works and alleged she was afraid of Andrea James. It was quite odd that the organization which invited Ms. James to speak at Northwestern University where Dreger works was evidently not frightened by Andrea James. Dreger decided to use the Bush foreign policy model of a pre-emptive strike against anyone who might possibly be viewed as a threat and published “The blog I write in fear” (4) in which she brought up an unfortunate event that had happened a few years ago between her colleague J Michael Bailey and Andrea James. She alleged she was frightened of Andrea and that she should not be allowed to speak at the University. This is the strawman that has been used for years now to silence any discussion of the unethical behavior that Bailey and Dreger have been involved in. Instead of dealing with the facts of their own behavior, anyone who dares discuss the facts is automatically smeared with ad hominem attacks linking them to the serious mistake that Andrea James made a few years ago. Dreger even did this to me when I openly questioned her DSD model as a replacement for intersex. (5) Instead of dealing with what she was doing, Dreger sent out an e-mail alleging that I had teamed up with Andrea James, someone I didn’t know at the time, and warned intersex people that if they were not vigilant, the intersex movement would be destroyed. Well, that was already a fait accompli and it was Dreger who was instrumental in its destruction. Many of us are trying to rebuild and move on.

We later found out why Dreger was alleging she was so afraid of Andrea James. She was working at the same University as J Michael Bailey and she was writing an article in defense of his unethical behavior and she was going to include Andrea James in that article. It certainly would be good fodder for the article if she could have provoked Andrea to get more dirt on her to include in her upcoming “exposé” of the “facts” to suit her employer, Northwestern University.

Dreger then published a 60-page tome in defense of her colleague, J Michael Bailey and in that article she once again threw ethics out the window and simply gives Bailey another platform to justify having sex with research subjects: “there is nothing intrinsically wrong or forbidden about having sex with a research subject[….] Some of my colleagues have had sex with their research subjects, because it is not unusual to ask one’s romantic partner to be a subject” (Bailey, 2005).” Rather disturbing ethical standards that Dreger is disseminating in this tome in defense of her colleague. (6)

Finally, someone is challenging Dreger on her ethics and many of us in the intersex community feel it is high time. Robin Mathy has filed ethics complaints with the American Psychological Association against Dreger and Bailey. One of the allegations in the complaint centers on Dreger and Bailey having both expressed that having sex with a research subject is not inherently wrong. Robin Mathy has also filed a complaint with the Illinois Board of Examiners of Psychology against Bailey for allegedly misrepresenting himself as a psychologist. (7)

It does appear that Robin Mathy has a lot of facts to substantiate these allegations along with many others. Ethics? Alice Dreger’s ethics seem to be focused on what is best for her career and gaining access to more power, not helping the powerless which she now has a history of dismissing, silencing and abusing.

Notes:
(1) Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders
http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/118/2/e488
(2) This is a quote from the Same group that gave us the Consensus Statement on DSD's.
Consensus Statement on 21-Hydroxylase Deficiency from The Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society and The European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Joint LWPES/ESPE CAH Working Group
Surgery is recommended at age 2-6 months:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Once a decision has been made to raise a newborn as female, surgery for those with virilized genitalia caused by CAH is recommended when the patient has a high proximal junction between the vagina and urethra (12, 13). Surgery on infants with ambiguous genitalia requires a high degree of expertise and should only be performed in centers with significant experience. Based on recent clinical experience, the recommended time for surgery is at age 2–6 months; although, at present, this is not universal practice. It is important to note that surgery at this stage is technically easier than at later stages."
You can download the complete Consensus Statement on CAH at:
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/reprint/87/9/4048
(3) Alice Dreger: Disorders of Sex Development
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html
(4) “The Blog I Write in Fear”. May 13, 2006.
http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear.html
(5) Email from Alice Dreger to some intersex activists
http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html#anchor_26
(6) “In his online self-defense piece, “Academic McCarthyism,” published in October 2005, Bailey countered with this: “her ‘complaint’ is not true. The alleged event never happened. If I ever needed to do so, I could prove this, but there is no reason why I should” (Bailey, 2005). Bailey’s reasoning for why he should not have to prove he didn’t have sex with Juanita was twofold: first, he “insist[ed] that Juanita was not a research subject” when she claimed they had sex; second, “there is nothing intrinsically wrong or forbidden about having sex with a research subject[….] Some of my colleagues have had sex with their research subjects, because it is not unusual to ask one’s romantic partner to be a subject” (Bailey, 2005).”
Dreger, Alice. 2007. The Controversy Surrounding The Man Who Would Be Queen: A
Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age. p. 43
(7) Debate resumes on methods of psych professor's research by Michael Gsovski
Issue date: 2/27/08http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=c6222fa5-96dd-47ee-b912-c58a9874fbdf

Alice Dreger, have you no shame?

2007-11-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader,

Alice Dreger recently posted a page in her blog that now reads:

Why "Disorders of Sex Development"? (On Language and Life)

http://www.alicedreger.com/dsd.html

The original title of that speech which she gave at the Kinsey Institute was:

"No Matter How You Slice It? Parsing Intersex"

The official announcement follows:

Nov. 12, 12 p.m.-1:15 p.m., Kinsey Institute Conference Room, Morrison Hall 2nd Floor, Bloomington -- Alice Dreger, Ph.D., associate professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University, will present "No Matter How You Slice It? Parsing Intersex." Is "intersex" a biological description or a political identity? A pathology, a variation, a human rights issue? And who belongs in and out of the category? This lecture will consider the many ways "intersex" has been constructed and deconstructed -- historically, medically, politically -- and will end with a suggestion of what makes the most sense today. For more information, contact jbass@indiana.edu.

Many people contacted the host of Dreger’s lecture and expressed their concerns about the lack of sensitivity in such a title being presented at the Kinsey Institute.

It is very interesting that ever since Alice Dreger started defending J Michael Bailey and writing long, inaccurate articles claiming that poor Bailey has been terribly mistreated and his life "ruined" by transsexuals, it seems that she has started following Bailey’s script herself by purveying the most absolutely offensive kinds of images (remember the cover and title of Bailey’s book) in order to generate controversy and attention. (See: Why would anyone defend this man?)

The Organisation Intersex International received many e-mails from intersex people from all over the United States and Canada about this title. All of them expressed their hurt and disgust that anyone would even think of such a title, especially after all the controversy that Dreger’s DSD Consortium had generated. The use of the title "No matter how you slice it" is unbelievably offensive to most of us. It’s one thing to attack a gender minority with DSD terminology. It’s quite another to rub it in by using vengeful titles for seminar talks.

Modeling herself on Bailey: Generating controversy and attacking critics

Many of us are now convinced that Dreger is positioning herself as the “J Michael Bailey of Intersex.” Whether that is true or not, she is off to a good start. She is out there stirring up even more controversy about DSD by using inflammatory titles for her talks, and will undoubtedly lash back at those who criticize her obscene titles.

Even those outside the intersex community are starting to understand how Dreger reacts to the slightest criticism, something many of us have had to contend with for quite a while now.

In a particularly flagrant case, Dreger recently attacked a transgender graduate student who criticized transphobia in academe:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Dreger/ASB%20paper/NWSA%20panel/Academic_Attack_Against_Transwoman_by_Alice_Dreger.html

Letter to WPATH Board of Directors about Dreger's attack on graduate student:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/WPATH/E-mails/Alice_Dreger%27s_attack_on_trans_grad_student_9-27-07.html

See also the following essay by Elise Hendrick: “Alice Dreger Destroys Academic Freedom in Order to Save It”

http://lifeaftergonzales.blogspot.com/2007/09/with-defenders-like-this.html

Responding to this new pattern of attack:

Let’s parse Dreger’s lecture. It’s time that intersex people do some of the parsing for a change. It is about intersex people, isn’t it? All the parsing that has been going on, that is?

Dreger knows full-well what she's doing when she uses language like that. It's a deliberately creepy hint about the "slicing up of genitals" by Dreger's expert medical colleagues after they decide who is to be assigned male and who is to be assigned female. The abstract then goes on to assign Dreger the power to decide about just about everything: who's in and who's out, who's real and who's an ideologue, etc., even though she's become an anathema to the intersex community for her insistence on pathologizing terminology.

Let’s start at the beginning, and work our way through Dreger’s talk:

The challenging thing about talking about the history and politics of the term “intersex” is that the term is a moving target. That is to say, it’s meaning seems to change even as we talk about it. – Alice Dreger

Target: why is it being targeted and who is targeting it? It appears that Dreger has made a slip and given the reader the whole purpose of her intersex/DSD activism – targeting intersex people and their rightful place as adults who should also have a say in what happens to us and to intersex children.

How you define intersex depends on how you define males and females. The category of intersex, like the category of male and female, has been (and will continue to be) constructed in different ways at different times and places. Nature is messy, even though we try to create neat categories from nature’s mess. – Alice Dreger

Messy. Nature’s mess: Another slip. So, we need experts like Dreger to help clean up Nature’s mess by making it clear that intersex people are “disordered” (maybe the messiest group) while those who can fit more easily in the male and female categories are “ordered”.

Reading between the lines, this appears to be a long apologia by Dreger of why she chose to champion DSD and why it was a great idea. She must be getting a lot of pushback from various quarters (even beyond the intersex community) for having done that. Thus she's now come out to explain it all, via yet another revisionist history.

Some observations:

After beating around the bush with all sorts of extraneous stuff, Dreger gets down to what she's really trying to do: Dreger makes it clear that she was the key person who "decided" that DSD was the right thing to do for the good of the intersex community. If nothing else, Dreger still wants to claim full credit as the decision-maker.

However, she goes on to make it appear that her DSD decision was seen as being good by almost all others, as if everyone immediately saw her "wisdom". Nowhere does she mention the extreme lengths she went to to promote DSD and push it down everyone's throats. Nor does she mention that when encountering pushback from the intersex community, she made personal attacks on critics as being a tiny minority of fringe identity ideologues, etc. - in a manner very reminiscent of Bailey's behavior.

Unfortunately for Dreger, criticism of DSD will not go away. Milton Diamond's essay in particular is steadily gaining traction and must be really grating on Dreger now - as then evidenced in the following re her Kinsey talk:

A couple of people at my Kinsey talk pressed me about the terminology and asked me to work more on trying to find a new, better term. What about, for example, "variations of sex development," as some have suggested? Honestly, I don't see that term flying in the medical system; I've asked about it, and it doesn't go anywhere. Part of the reasonable fear among medical professionals is over-de-pathologizing sex anomalies. . .

In a paper just published in a special issue I edited with Paul Vasey, historian Elizabeth Reis proposes "divergence of sex development" as an alternative. I think this is a good idea in general, and I hope that the big players will consider this term as an option.

But in general, I'm not interested in spending more time on nomenclature for sex anomalies and sex variations. Nomenclature is, at some level, a problem of luxury. Given a choice between spending energy on trying to get the perfect term or trying to save perfectly healthy clitoral tissue from well-meaning pediatric surgeons, I'll go for the later. – Alice Dreger

That certainly appears self-centered and dismissive of those actually directly concerned. It is as if intersex people who are over 18 years of age have no right to address any of these issues concerning intersex children. Unlike Dreger, there are issues about this topic that we do understand. Intersex adults were once intersex children.

Dreger spends an entire year or more of her life in a mean-spirited effort to push DSD down the throats of the intersex community. And now, when people even outside that community are beginning to question the wisdom of her “nomenclature victory", she replies with “...I'm not interested in spending more time on nomenclature for sex anomalies and sex variations. Nomenclature is, at some level, a problem of luxury."

"No Matter How You Slice It? Parsing Intersex": The Dark Side of Dreger's DSD Activism

That title reveals an insidiously hateful side of Dreger’s character: For someone who prides herself in being ever so clever with words, she had to know how hurtful that title would be to intersex people (especially those who've been "sliced" physically and emotionally by the system Dreger represents, and who don't appreciate being referred to as "it" either).

What reason could she have had to use such an awful title? Now I'm not one to attribute motives without hard evidence, but some folks might suspect Dreger of being in a rage against intersex people for having "turned the world against her", or some other such imagined injury. Folks might also suspect Dreger of designing that title to ensure that few or no intersex people would attend her talks (given the difficulty in maintaining one's emotions in the face of such despicable taunts).

So there we have it: Dreger out there trying to ensure that she gets credit as the decision-maker who gave the world "DSD", then dismissing any suggestions that the nomenclature should be changed as a "luxury" not worth wasting precious time on. Furthermore, when doing this Dreger presses home her academic power to define, defame and dismiss intersex people, in talks entitled "No Matter How You Slice It? Parsing Intersex".

For more information about Alice Dreger and DSD:

http://www.intersexualite.org/AliceDreger.html

http://www.intersexualite.org/DSD.html

by Curtis E. Hinkle

Circus Freaks and Alice Dreger’s Hermaphrodite Show

2007-09-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

Alice Dreger, one of the most well-known intersex activists (who is not intersexed) will be giving a lecture relating to Disorders of Sex Development (the term she has advised doctors and professionals to call us). This lecture will be part of:

Kresge Art Museum's "Circus: The Art of the 'Strange & Curious' " exhibit. The exhibit will end with a showing of the film “Freaks”.

See http://www.intersexualite.org/Circus_freaks.pdf

I have just a few questions:
1)How would women feel if the most well-known feminist was a man?
2)How would women feel if this man totally dismissed their experiences as irrelevant and was working to not only label them as inferior but genetically defective (which is what Dreger’s DSD terminology and guidelines are about)?
3)How would women feel if this famous “feminist” who was a man went about calling women pejorative names without asking them how they felt about those insulting labels?
4)How would women feel if this same feminist man was giving a lecture on feminism at an exhibit of explicit pornographic art objectifying women from an historical perspective?
5)How would women feel if this exhibit ended with a showing of “Deep Throat”?

Would women denounce this? I am certain that many would. And as an intersexed person, I am denouncing this upcoming lecture of Dreger's.

I can see some valid points in Dreger's lecture but having a non-intersexed person who will be calling me offensive names surrounded by pictures of circus freaks is not what I call intersex activism.

by Curtis E. Hinkle

Talking About What Matters?

2007-09-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

A response to Alice Dreger
by Curtis E. Hinkle

I am writing this response publicly because I write this in fear of further distortions and retaliation from the self-appointed Mother of the intersex community in the United States, Alice Dreger. She recently wrote a blog in which she once again tells us in the intersex community what is best for us, something which has been typical of her activism for years: “The Mommy Knows Best” syndrome of intersex activism. The title of her blog entry is “Talking about What Matters”

(http://www.alicedreger.com/dsd.html).

In this blog entry and others she has recently written, the message is clear:

We, the intersexed, do not matter.

I think it is time to tell Ms. Dreger just how offensive her activism is to many intersexed people from all over the world and it has indeed been VERY offensive to many of us for the following reasons:

1) She has a history of silencing people and denying them access to being heard if they do not conform to HER ideas on sex and gender.

2) She works closely with people who have eugenic ideas concerning children who are not born “normal”. She actively defends them as serious scientists and condemns those who oppose their pseudoscience as the ones who are radical. She has been actively defending J. Michael Bailey, well-known for supporting selective abortion for homosexual fetuses and who is now involved in intersex research along with Alice Dreger. [See footnote (a)]

3) She has consistently refused to give any visibility to Intergender issues and has written that Intergender does not in essence exist. In her world only males and females have a "real" gender identity. All others need help from her experts from the Consortium of DSD, (Disorders of Sexual Development) to know what gender they “should” be. In essence, she advocates forcing gender assignments on the intersexed. [See footnote (b)]

4) She is one of the main architects of one of the most universally offensive paradigm shifts in intersex protocols in recent history. It is she who wrote the article that recommended that the term "intersex" be replaced by "Disorders of Sex Development" and she did this without consulting almost anyone in the intersex community. It is almost impossible to find any support for such pejorative terminology among actual intersexed people.

[See footnote (c)]

5) She has consistently been in favor of pathologizing any rejection of one’s original sex assignment and has written many times over the years that transsexuality is a mental illness.

6) She is now recommending that a person with a sexual fetish for feminizing surgeries, Anne Lawrence, be invited as a speaker. People in the intersex movement adamantly oppose Anne Lawrence and others who have surgical fetishes being involved in intersex. Lawrence is now on an influential APA committee for intersex. Not only is this offensive to many intersexed people who suffered genital surgery as infants in order to “normalize” their appearance but Ms. Lawrence is in no way connected to actual intersexed people. [See footnote (d)]

7) She misrepresents the objections of intersexed individuals to the denial and erasure of our experience of ourselves by accusing us of promoting establishment of a third gender. What we have been advocating in OII is allowing the intersexed child self-definition and self-determination of their bodies and identities. Intersexed people and our allies from all over the world have voiced our objection to the physical violence against our bodies and the psychological violence against our lives imposed by a medical paradigm that was not patient centered. She has mistranslated this to mean that we want to be raised as a third gender and that mistranslation furthers a violent image of us as freakish and marginalized.

Ms. Dreger does not in fact talk about things that really matter to the intersexed. The following list illustrates some of the things she has misused her position of power to impose on the intersexed. These were done without knowledge of or input from actual intersexed people themselves. We object!

1) Supporting the eugenics movement and conflating intersex with a birth defect.

2) Perpetuating the binary identity movements of male and female only.

3) Telling doctors to change the terminology from "intersex" to "Disorders of Sex Development".

4) Actively supporting a well-known sex fetish and one of its main apologists, Anne Lawrence and thereby conflating issues involving people who get sexually excited at the idea of feminizing surgeries and children who undergo these same surgeries without consent.

Not only do all the above issues not matter, they actually undermine intersex visibility and progress. Intersex is not about identifying as a male or female which is something that applies to the whole human population. Intersex is not about birth defects to most of us and it is certainly not a disorder to most of us. And please, no sex fetishists for feminizing surgeries need apply to “help” us. Intersexed people, by and large are ardently working toward an end to genital surgeries which have been historically forced upon us without informed consent. I would recommend that Dreger start talking about what matters: actual intersex issues as articulated by intersexed people and that she stop supporting eugenics, sex fetishes, imposing binary male/female identities on all people and calling the whole intersex community disordered.

Footnotes

(a) To read about Dregers’ defense of J Michael Bailey and his support of homosexual eugenics see: DSD: Homophobia and Transphobia exposed
(b) To read Dregers’ view that Intergender does not exist:
Quote from Dreger: Second, and much more importantly, we are trying to make the world a safe place for intersex kids, and we don’t think labeling them with a gender category that in essence doesn’t exist would help them.
Source: http://www.isna.org/faq/third-gender
By the way, I am not aware of anyone in the intersex community who is advocating raising children as third gender. What we have been advocating in OII is allowing the child to self-define. However, many intersexed people all over the world would disagree that Intergender does not in essence exist and actually consider that perspective a form of violent erasure of our existence. – Curtis E. Hinkle
(c) To read about Dregers’ responsibility in changing the very label intersex people are to be called, read: Alice Dreger: Disorders of Sex Development
(d) To read about Dregers’ support of Anne Lawrence, who promotes the rights of those with a sex fetish for feminizing surgeries see: http://www.alicedreger.com/in_fear.html
Quote from Dreger's blog: P.S. Several readers have asked me who I would recommend if they were interested in inviting a transgender activist/advocate to their campus to speak. I recommend clinician and scholar Anne Lawrence, M.D., Ph.D. whose work has focused on improving healthcare for transgender women like herself;

The Rhetorical castration of the Intersex community

2006-12-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

An analysis of Alice Dreger’s Rhetoric of Power as applied to the DSD controversy

First of all, it is very hurtful and in fact traumatizing to many of us in the intersex community to have an intersex activist who is not intersexed to tell us repeatedly that we are powerless. This is what Alice Dreger has now been telling us for several days. For many of us, this is part of the very damaging and stigmatizing messages we have received since early childhood. Our only hope for any sense of control over who we were and what was to be done with our bodies and our very sense of self was to retreat, to withdraw, hoping that by becoming invisible we could avoid further harm. Our families helped us in most cases by actually reinforcing the conspiracy of lies about who we were and only made the shame and powerlessness we felt as children seem justified. We were often so shameful that we could not speak about it. We could not dare say what we were. We were just beginning to move beyond this paralyzing shame.

Once again, we are in a similar situation. We are being told that intersex is NOT something that any child should have as a label and those in power, those that Dreger convinced by her own articles and activism to stop calling us intersex, are going to deny us this one small crumb of human decency – a name that we were beginning to feel proud of as we slowly worked through our shame and trauma. And it has been very alarming and chilling to witness the open castration of the intersex community in Dreger’s rhetoric of power in which she reminds us of our proper place – powerless victims of those who know how to speak about us, who know how to manage us and who will once again “assist” us as we go back into our shells, brutally scarred once again from the current struggle to have some place in society and some voice, and hide, hoping we can heal from this last major attempt to castrate all remnants of intersex voices.

This is not acceptable. Alice Dreger’s rhetoric is NOT empowering. It is meant to make us feel powerless, to convince us that we are. This is not acceptable. It is in fact cruel to treat a marginalized and very damaged group of people in this way when she knows we are bleeding from this last operation performed by her and ISNA that stabbed into the very heart of our slowly emerging identity and sense of being a small part of humanity. It is as if we have once again been excised from public view, that our very fragile sense of community was crushed into total submission – the eternal eunuchs.

Another technique used by Dreger is to repeat and define the categories of people who do have power in the debate and by doing so, we are excluded from the debate about OUR lives, our identites, our BODIES. We have been told over and over by Alice Dreger that those with real power are:

PARENTS AND DOCTORS

NOT THE INTERSEX COMMUNITY

She has made it clear that she is a mother many times. She knows that many of us can never have children. We do not begrudge her the happiness that she has in being a parent but in addressing us and telling us that we need to speak to those in power which she defines as doctors and parents, it is very cruel to remind us at the same time that she is a mother. It is a dual edged-sword this parental power rhetoric. It disempowers us by placing us in a category that most of us could never be in and then she reminds us that she is in that powerful category.

Reminding us that doctors have power and most of us know that her husband is a doctor is also a two-edged sword. Equating power with doctors is something that is traumatically painful to many of us who remember the power they did exert over us and the very pain this abuse of power inflicted on our bodies and our souls.

We have been castrated publicly. This is cruel. We should reclaim our power and take the scalpels of privilege and stand proud and say NO.

We do have power and we will speak openly and proudly.

Quotes from recent messages from Alice Dreger to the Intersex Community:

"As a historian, I have to wonder whether a lot of the intense discussions among intersex adults is happening because it is something they can do. ... When you’re sitting on a closed-loop listserv, arguing with insiders who have not so much power, think about whether your time is better spent engaging those with power. Think about writing to doctors and telling them what happened to you and what you wish had happened to you. Think about providing positive, constructive support and education through the diagnosis-specific groups and through your community’s religious institutions, schools, and other non-profit organizations."

Talking about What Matters - Alice Dreger

"As I talked about in my recent blog on the terminology ..., I would really like to see people try to direct their writing, speaking, and thinking energies towards engagement with those with real power. That is not Curtis Hinkle, or for that matter most other intersex activists, including me. That is the doctors and the parents who need our help understanding how to make things better and better. That's why I spend the vast majority of my energy doing that kind of engagement and I encourage you to do the same, even as people whack at you (or your friends and allies) and try to distract you from your real work that I know you do so incredibly well--peer-support work, human rights work, educational work, medical reform work.:

E-mail sent to some intersex activists by Alice Dreger, October 1, 2006

by Curtis E. Hinkle