Busy year for Intersex

Intersex has a busy year ahead. We encourage all intersex to participate in the Private Lives survey at www.privatelivessurvey.org.au Intersex inclusion will enable us to argue for health resources and fill in information gaps.

This year it is possible that a fully inclusive human rights and equal opportunities act will be legislated. We encourage all LGBTIQ activists and individuals to make submissions, attend meetings and always include intersex in your submissions.

The fight for marriage equality is likely to be hotly contested this year with every likelihood of being successful sometime soon. Marriage equality will allow not only same-sex relationships — it will also include intersex and gender diverse individuals in access to marriage rights.

OII will once again argue against the pathologising of intersex by medicine which since 2006 has described it as a disorder. We will continue to seek wider understandings of intersex as natural differences of sex anatomy and to argue for broader interpretations of sex so intersex people may have access to medicine depending on their circumstances without needing to conform to stereotypical binary roles to qualify.

We will argue against the current restrictive criteria for the prescription of androgen-suppressing drugs where if those criteria are not met the only option is to be placed on a potential sex offenders list held by the Therapeutic Goods

Administration. We will seek to have alternative uses approved and to have names placed on the list for reasons other than real expectations of sex offences expunged.

OII will again march in Mardi Gras. Our first march as OII was last year. We hope to see more faces this year and invite anyone intersex, a friend or ally to join us.

We look forward to a year of cooperative participation with all LGBITQ activists in achieving our common and not-so-common objectives. I thank all those who supported intersex and OII last year and look forward to your continued support.

info: Visit http://oiiaustralia.com

By GINA WILSON, Intersex International Australia