STOP Genital Mutilation in Children's Clinics!

UNO Geneva, January 26, 2009 (Photo: Ärger)   --> CEDAW #43 Shadow Report

Doctors "playing God with childrens' sex"

It's a boy! It's a girl! But what happens when life doesn't fit in with greeting cards and the defining moment of childbirth becomes a bewildering puzzle?

Swiss intersex activist Daniela Truffer is spearheading a campaign to stop genital surgery and hormone treatment on children born with indeterminate sexual organs.

Truffer argues that affected individuals should be given the time to grow up and decide for themselves whether they wish to become male or female or remain in-between.

"Forced surgery can not be the answer," she said, quoting medical studies that reveal poor outcomes and show that most patients suffer a lifetime of frustration and regret.

"These surgeries are painful and irreversible and most likely to reduce or remove sexual feeling. Non-consented cosmetic surgeries violate the right to physical integrity and self-determination. It's a human rights issue," Truffer told swissinfo.ch.

A condition that is seen in one in 2,000 births, people born neither fully male nor female have been an acknowledged part of society since Antiquity. But over time they became an invisible minority, particularly since "corrective" surgical intervention became the norm in the 20th century.

>>> Continued: Campaign against corrective surgery on children born with indeterminate genitalia argues that children should be allowed to grow up untouched (swissinfo.ch) 

"3rd EuroDSD Symposium" Lübeck, May 21, 2011    --> Open Letter"
(Center: Garry L. Warne, Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne)

For 60 years now, the practice of cosmetic genital surgeries on little children with “atypical” genitals continues. In all these years and decades, the endocrinologists, surgeons and other clinicians responsible for these surgeries couldn’t be bothered to gather evidence for the alledged beneficience of these surgeries, or even to do consistent follow-ups or only disclose statistics, but continue to operate on mere anecdotal evidence.

For 20 years now, survivors of these surgeries oppose them publicly, and consistently criticise them as “immensely destructive of sexual sensation and of the sense of bodily integrity”. For 20 years now, the clinicians concerned refuse to listen, let alone acknowledge these grave concerns.

“There is a serious ethical problem here: risky surgeries are being performed as standard care and are not being adequately followed-up. Intersexuals are understandably tired of hearing that 'long-term follow-up data is needed' while the surgeries continued to occur.”

There are also many reports and statements by Human Rights Advocacy Groups (e.g. Terre des Femmes 2004, CEDAW 2009, Amnesty Germany and Amnesty Switzerland 2010) and publications by experts in these fields (e.g. Hanny Lightfoot-Klein 2003, Fana Asefaw 2005, Nancy Ehrenreich/Mark Barr 2005) clearly stating that non-consented cosmetic surgeries on children gravely violate human rights (particularly the Right to Physical Integrity) and who underline the similarities and parallels between these surgeries and the practice of female genital mutilations.

>>> Full Text: Open Letter of Concern to "3rd EuroDSD Symposium - From Gene to Gender" (Zwischengeschlecht.org) 

"STOP Genital Mutilation in Children's Clinics!" - St. Gallen, February 6, 2011

In 1950, the US-endocrinologist Lawson Wilkins introduced systematic cosmetic surgeries on children with "atypical genitals" at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Staying at Johns Hopkins at that time, the Swiss endocrinologist Andrea von Prader introduced this practice in Europe after his return to Zurich in the same year. In 1955, the infamous sexologist John Money at Johns Hopkins published a theory declaring early cosmetic surgeries as (pseudo) standard.

Since the late 1950s, medical guidelines around the globe have been recommending children born with "atypical genitals" a.k.a. "Hermaphrodites/Intersexed/DSD patients" to be surgically "corrected" preferably within the first 18 months of their lives. According to the classic surgeons' motto "It's easier to dig a hole than to build a pole", most of them are "made to girls", although in the meantime urologists increasingly indulge in the "challenge of masculinization".

Today, according to studies by the mutilators themselves, at least 90% of the population born with "indeterminate" or otherwise "unusual" physical "sex markers" were (and still are!) submitted to on average multiple medically unnecessary genital surgeries starting in early childhood, resulting in appallingly high risk of lifelong loss of genital sensation, physical pain and massive psychological traumata.

The cosmetic "treatments" include:

• "corrective surgery", e.g. amputation of the penis/clitoris a.k.a. "clitoral reduction"; "penile recostruction"; "hypospadias repair"; etc.
• carving an artificial "neo-vagina" which has to be dilated permanently
• castration, followed by lifelong hormone "therapy"
• pre-natal hormone "therapy" (introduced in the late 1970s)
• concealing the truth from the "patients"

What these systematic non-consented surgeries actually do FEEL like for the "patients", was never part of the equation, let alone their alleged "benefits" clinically tested. Adult "patients" were simply left behind by the hundreds of thousands.

Arguably, the continuing forced "medical treatments" of children with "atypical" genitals are one of the worst human rights violation perpetrated in the "developed countries" since the end of World War II.

>>> Full Text: Hermaphrodites in the "Developed World": Extermination by Surgery vs. Struggle for Human Rights - Victims of Modernity - 1950: From Experimentation to Extermination - A Human Rights Issue! 

Tiger Howard Devore: "Growing up in the Surgical Maelstrom"

I spent many years in surgery whose purpose was to make me pee at the end of my penis ['Hypospadias Repair']. I’ve had sixteen surgeries on my genitals, and they performed ten operations by age ten, pretty regularly once a year. If they had just left my urinary meatus [pee-hole] where it was, at the base of my penis right by the scrotum, I could have avoided at least twelve of those surgeries.

My childhood was filled with pain, surgery, skin grafts, and isolation. I remember when school vacation came, the other kids went somewhere fun. I went to the hospital during vacation, so I wouldn’t miss too much school. When vacation was over, I would return to school, often not yet healed from the latest surgery. Sometimes I went back to school with tubes coming out of me, and stitches and scars, and I couldn’t walk well.

Each year they performed surgery on me, and I watched and felt how rapidly the surgery would break down each time. They couldn’t have missed it, either—there’s no reason for some of the work that they did on me outside of arrogance or incompetence.

The tube that most men pee through is not made of skin, it’s made of a special kind of tissue that can handle contact with urine, and be continuously moist and warm without breaking down or becoming infected. The tubes that they made for me out of skin from other parts of my body broke down over and over, and I regularly get bladder infections. And I still have to sit to pee. I have never been without fistulae [holes in the penis where the surgery has broken down], and I’ve had the entire tube replaced twice, with large skin grafts. If they had just let me pee sitting down, neither I nor my family would have had to suffer all of that—the expense, the pain, the repeated surgeries, the drugs, the repeated tissue breakdowns and urine leaks. It would have been just fine to have a penis that peed out of the bottom instead of the top, and didn’t have the feeling damaged.

>>> Full Text: • Tiger Howard Devore: "Growing up in the Surgical Maelstrom" (ISNA) 
• In: Hanny Lightfoot-Klein: Children's Genitals Under the Knife, p 172-175
• In: A. Dreger (Ed): Intersex in the Age of Ethics, p 79-82

"Human Rights for Hermaphrodites too!" - Zurich, July 6, 2008 (Photo: Ärger)

From a speech by Daniela "Nella" Truffer to future doctors:

At two and a half months, they castrated me, threw my healthy testicles into the dust bin. The doctors decided, I should grow up as a girl, my parents were instructed accordingly. At seven, they shortened my ambiguous genital. After the surgery I went into shock, developed multiple haematoma and necrotic tissue. Pain and scars remained. That I could have died during these surgeries because of a serious heart condition, was of no interest to the doctors. At eighteen, a vagina was tinkered, where there was nothing before.

Personally, I don't want to resort to an eye for an eye, though I admit to having thought about it, and I don't want to have to be imprisoned even more on behalf of my castrators and genital mutilators.

So the only thing left for me is finding other ways of standing up for hermaphrodite children, so that at least they may live in the future. To be a voice for your future patients, to convince you, that cosmetic genital surgeries and other medically not necessary interventions violate human rights and must stop.

To all those among you, who in spite still choose pursuing a career as genital mutilators, to you I wish with all my heart, may a horde of crazed hermaphrodites find you, who will direct their anger not at themselves, but against you. May they turn your lives into hell with lawsuits for grievous bodily harm, may they ruin your reputation and plunder your bank accounts! And to those, who even then still don't have enough, may your hand rot off, which you used to mutilate defenceless children! And perhaps, one day even a hermaphrodite will come to you with a pair of hedge shears, and will teach you what it feels like having to scrape a living with scarred genitals! And the same also to all of you, who, though you don't perpetrate the mutilations by yourselves, still participate or look the other way.

However, to all those among you, who will abide by "first do no harm", and one day will enter the medical profession in the name of humanity, to you, even more with all my heart, I wish you all the best for your future.

>>> Full Text: "May your hand rot off, which you used to mutilate defenceless children!" 

50 min. documentary featuring survivors, a.o. Janet Green and Tiger Howard Devore. Shown worldwide on BBC 1 under the title "Me, My Sex, and I," and in the US by the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN/Discovery) as "The Truth of My Sex."

>>> Watch online

Discriminating, unfair and harmful treatment of intersexed athletes ("hermaphrodites") in women's sports has a long and painful history. The "suspected" athletes' dignity and human rights keep getting violated on a regular basis by both of the ruling international sports bodies, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), as well as by their subsidiaries and affiliates.

Accused as cheaters, "suspicious" athletes are denied their rights to due process, informed consent and medical privacy, arbitrarily stripped of their medals and banned from further competition without proper possibility to appeal.

Public shaming and exposure of "suspects" as "sex test failures" and "hermaphrodites" is used a regular part of the procedure, serving as a compliance tool in order to keep "dubious" athletes from competing (i.e. forcing them to feign injury, undergo surgery or "retire quietly").

Unfortunately, since the decision to abandon the mandatory sex tests for women athletes, and replacing them with discretionary tests for individual athletes on grounds of "suspicion" or "challenge" (as the IAAF policy tellingly puts it), for (suspected) intersexed athletes the situation grew considerably worse, also due to less supervision by women's organizations and other pressure groups.

As the recent "cases" of Santhi Soundarajan and Mokgadi Caster Semenya illustrate, athletes hailing from poor "developing countries" without actual possibilities to defend themselves against this injustice, are treated particularly inconsiderately.

Also, the IOC and the IAAF continue to advocate and impose medically not indicated surgeries and hormone treatments on intersexed athletes, even in cases where the sports bodies fail to bring forward any evidence that the athletes concerned would have any advantage from being intersexed.

>>> Full Text: "Hermaphrodites" in sports: IOC, IAAF and FIFA deny responsibility 

>>> Photoreport of Protest #1 by Behzad on demotix – Thanks!

Today marks the beginning of the 'IV. World Conference of Genital Mutilators in Children's Clinics' a.k.a. 'ISHID 2011' at the Royal College of Surgeons, picketed by survivors remembering the victims and commemorating 15 years of peaceful protests against their tormentors.

During their first peaceful vigil today, the former victims will remember the first public protest by survivors against the mutilators organised by the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA), when 'Hermaphrodites with Attitude' took to the streets picketing the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatricians in Boston on October 26th 1996.   >>> continued 

>>> Video 'Three Vigils' (10:24)     >>> Flyer A4 (PDF 1.7MB) - TRIGGERWARNING!
>>> Open Letter to 'ISHID 2011', RCS, GOSH and UCH