Driving You Mad, Driving You Crazy

1 Nov 2018

INTERVIEW: Andrea & Paul on Intersex Day 2018 which is on October 26 every year

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INTERVIEW: Andrea & Paul on Intersex Day 2018 which is on October 26 every year

David & Sue talk to Andrea (a long time JOY presenter) & Paul about Intersex Awareness Day 2018. It is on October 26 each year but any day can be an Intersex awareness day for you – just start researching it to find out more.

Intersex Awareness Day is an internationally observed awareness day designed to highlight human rights issues faced by intersex people. The Intersex Day Project was established in 2015 by Morgan Carpenter (Australia), with Laura Inter (Mexico).

There are no firm figures for Australia’s intersex population. Estimates range from one in 2,000 births to four per cent of the population, however, the Organisation Intersex International Australia (OII Australia) recommends a mid-range figure of 1.7 per cent of all births. (NOTE: these figures from Australian Human Rights Commission website)

Andrea and Paul also talk about the Darlington Statement which is a joint consensus statement by Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand intersex organisations and independent advocates, in March 2017. It sets out the priorities and calls by the intersex human rights movement in our countries, under six headings: a preamble, human rights and legal reform; health and wellbeing; peer support; allies; and education, awareness and employment.

You can affirm this statement and find out more about the issues around being Intersex at the Intersex Human Rights Australia website.

And here’s some comments about the day from Wikipedia…

“The event marks the first public demonstration by intersex people in North America, on October 26, 1996, outside the venue in Boston where the American Academy of Pediatrics was holding its annual conference. Intersex activists Morgan Holmes and Max Beck participated for the (now-defunct) Intersex Society of North America, alongside allies from Transsexual Menace including Riki Wilchins. Holmes has written that the event was intended not as a demonstration but as participation in the conference. She states that Beck and Holmes had intended to deliver an address, “on long-term outcomes and to challenge their still-prevailing opinion that cosmetic surgery to “fix” intersexed genitals was the best course of action”, but were “met, officially, with hostility and were escorted out of the conference by security guards”. The group only later demonstrated, carrying a sign saying “Hermaphrodites With Attitude”.

The commemoration day itself began in 2003 with the establishment of a central awareness raising site by Betsy Driver and Emi Koyama. A central awareness raising site was later re-established in 2015 by Morgan Carpenter with Laura Inter of Brújula Intersexual, and support from Open Society Foundations.”