Full Human Rights for the Intersexed

OII – USA Mission Statement on Human Rights

As a result of the arbitrary division of sex into only two legal categories, the intersexed are deprived of one of the most basic human rights, to live and be legally accepted for who they are – intersexed. Sex is not dimorphic and the two sexes, male and female, are not discrete biologically accurate categories. As a result we will never have a precise definition of what a man or a woman is because there will never be a way to establish a precise definition without intersex people being mutilated, normalized and forced into one or the other category. We therefore propose:

1) That no one who is intersexed should be arbitrarily imposed an assignment in either of these legal categories because it deprives us of basic human rights by sanctioning normalization and bigotry against our natural sex – intersex.

2) That either the government stop the sexist binary assignments altogether and allow all people the right to identify themselves socially as the sex they know they are or that intersex people be granted the same legal status that all other people with standard male or female anatomies have – intersex as our legal sex with the right of the individual intersex person to request this legal status which would allow them to marry whomever they wish, to have total legal protection against sex harassment that males and females currently are granted and to live openly and proudly as who we are with legal and medical acknowledgment of our sex. Since some intersex persons do identify as male or female, no coercion by the government should be used to force them to change their legal status from male or female which would also be a violation of their basic human right to self identify.

3) It is our hope that all society would benefit by openly acknowledging the presence of intersexed individuals, not just the intersexed. In so doing, many sexist stereotypes and other unnatural gender norms would be officially destabilized.

4) We openly affirm that we are proud to be who we are and demand an end to the silence, shame and forced normalization which is institutionalized against us and legal in our country.