news
OII-USA Dana Zzyym’s Lawsuit in Newsday!
This great piece in Newsday accurately describes Dana’s case, points out that some intersex people, unlike Dana, identify as men or women (as we have always made clear), and even features a great pic of Dana and Paul Castillo, the Lambda Legal staff attorney representing Dana in this lawsuit. Big thanks to Newsday for giving…
Read MoreNY Times Covers OII-USA’s Dana Zzyym’s Historic Lawsuit!
“I defended the rights of this country. I believe I should be able to use a few of them.” — Dana Zzyym, Associate Director, OII-USA “It is nearly impossible to end discrimination against a group of people that doesn’t legally exist.” — OII-USA Founder and E.D. Hida Viloria We are deeply grateful and impressed by…
Read MoreHappy Chinese New Year: New Campaign, New Associate Director
2015 is the Year of the Wood Goat, a “year to develop a wild heart, open to love and acceptance on all levels”, and in this vein, we are thrilled to announce a new campaign for human rights by and for intersex people, co-founded by intersex activists Dani Lee Harris, Hida Viloria, and Dana Zzyym.…
Read More“Hermaphrodites Exist: Intersex, the ‘I’ in LGBTI” – Presentation by Hida Viloria and Claudia Astorino at Bluestockings, NYC, Oct 27
Tonight at Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center, 172 Allen Street, New York, New York 10002! [Location Map] Most societies still have a hard time openly incorporating intersex people into their culture. This workshop gets real about the resistance to admitting that hermaphrodites (our original, cultural label) exist, why so few of us are out…
Read MoreOn Health Care for 2012
“Being intersex is often treated as a medical issue, simply because we’re different. Just as being male or female is not a medical issue, although there are specific health issues specific to being male or female, neither is being intersex. Intersex people simply have a naturally occurring variation — just like having red hair —…
Read MoreTen Misconceptions about Intersex
Authors: Curtis E. Hinkle, Founder, Organisation Intersex International & Hida Viloria, Chairperson, Organisation Intersex International All of the following statements are false: 1. Intersex means that a person has both sets of genitalia. This is probably one of the most common misconceptions about intersex. Intersex often has nothing to do with the genitalia of the…
Read MoreWhen medicine can be dangerous to your health and human rights – ACOG pretends that intersex is transgender
MEDICINE, as we often point out, is not a science but a technical art that sometimes makes reference to science. Medical people are as subject to systems of belief – religions and ideologies unsupported by scientific inquiry – as non-medical people. Systems of belief, by their very nature of being based on belief, have little…
Read MoreOur E.D. on Lobbying the IOC on Behalf of Intersex Women Athletes
In October, 2010, our E.D. Hida Viloria participated, by invitation, in the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s meeting, “Athletes with Disorders of Sex Development and their participation in competitive sport,” held in Lausanne, Switzerland (see below). The meeting was the second gathering of experts convened in the wake of Caster Semenya’s gender verification testing…
Read MoreOII’s Petition to the IOC: Depathologization & Fair Policies for Intersex Athletes
OII’s Human Rights Spokesperson, writer and activist Hida Viloria, has authored a petition to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on behalf of the Organization intersex international (OII). The petition was inspired by the negligent, discriminatory treatment of South African track star Caster Semenya, who, on August 19th, 2009, had her gold medal and her…
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