The Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E)

Our mission is to promote human rights and equality for all intersex people through art, education, and action. Our aim is to build a society where intersex people are included equally in all sheres, such as education, medicine, in the workplace, and under the law, and granted self-determination over our bodies and identities.

We recognize that to turn a blind eye to additional forms of discrimination and violence which many intersex people face based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, or class, is to consent to the culture of oppression; and we stand in solidarity with and support our most marginalized community members.

Our History

IC4E was originally founded as OII-USA, the American affiliate of the Organisation Intersex International (OII)), in 2011 by Hida Viloria and Claudia Astorinby co-founding the Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E). OII-USA was very active, initiating contact in 2011 with the US State Department, and spearheading the first global call by and for intersex human rights in history, via a letter authored by our ED Hida Viloria, signed by thirty intersex organizations across the globe and delivered to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR) on Human Rights Day 2012. On Human Rights Day 2013, our ED became the first intersex person to speak to the UN General Assembly, by invitation, where they addressed social erasure and medical human rights violations of intersex people. OII-USA also authored and published two groundbreaking community resources, Brief Guidlines for Intersex Allies (2012) and Your Beautiful Child, Information for Parents (2013).

In 2015, we evolved into the Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E), co-founded by ED Hida Viloria, along with intersex activists Dr. Dani Lee Harris and Dana Zzyym,due to the growing recognition that some intersex individuals, particularly gender-nonconforming intersex people and intersex people of color, remain stigmatized and marginalized even within the intersex community. We are dedicated to representing all intersex people regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ability or class.

On Intersex Awareness Day, October 26th, 2015, we launched a groundbreaking effort for federal recognition of intersex people via our Associate Director Dana Zzyym’s lawsuit against the US State Department for a passport that identifies their sex as neither male nor female. This lawsuit inspired the wave of third gender state Driver’s License laws that followed. It was successfully resolved in 2021 when Zzyym became the first US citizen to receive a passport with an X sex marker, ushering the way for third sex/gender passports to be available to all citizens starting in April, 2022.
 

POLICY POSITIONS:

Stopping Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM)

Intersex infants and minors are often subjected to medically unnecessary surgeries and medical treatments in order to make their bodies’ sex characteristics conform to the binary male or female sex system, a practice often referred to as Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM) due to its similarities to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

The Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E) condemns medically unnecessary, nonconsensual treatments performed on intersex infants and minors as Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), and advocates that intersex people be allowed to make our own decisions about elective, medically unnecessary medical treatments. We believe IGM is driven by interphobia (negative attitudes against intersex bodies and people) and homophobia, which are used to justify the practice despite it being found so harmful that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child, the World Health Organization (WHO), GLMA (Gay And Lesbian Medical Association), and Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, NASGAP, and three former U.S. Surgeon Generals, have all called for an end to it.
 
Declassification of being intersex as a “Disorder of Sex Development”

In 2006, being intersex was pathologized by the global medical establishment with the label “disorders of sex development” (or “DSD”). Our founding director has advocated against the term “disorders of sex development” since 2007, and The Intersex Campaign for Equality (formerly OII-USA) has rejected “DSD” since our founding, because we believe it adds to social stigma against intersex people, which make it harder to protect intersex children’s rights to physical integrity and self determination.

Note: While we welcome the use of a modified version of the DSD acronym, representing “differences of sex development”, as an improvement, we believe that we are much more than simply bodily differences, and thus advocate for the rights of “intersex people” as equal citizens, rather than “patients” or “people with differences.”

Attaining Legal Gender Recognition for Non-Binary Intersex People

Note: The United States legal system uses the terms “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, as do many trans and non-trans people. Although we are aware of the difference between the terms, we shall use them in the way the legal system does in order to discuss this legal issue.

We believe that the lack of federal gender recognition for non-binary adults (those who do not identify as men or women) supports IGM by contributing to the perception that intersex infants and minors should be subjected to sex reassignment surgeries in order to make then “fit in” to one of two gender categories: male or female. Our Assicate Director Dana Zzyym is requesting an X on their passport –rather than an I for intersex– because we recognize that although some non-intersex people identify as non-binary, many intersex people are satisfied with their sex assignment as male or female, and we believe that gender categories should not be dependent on biological determinism.

Sex Assignment of Intersex Infants

In accordance with the demands of the global intersex community as stated in the Public Statement of the Third Intersex Forum (aka The Malta Declaration), we advocate that until intersex people have equal rights and protections, intersex infants should be assigned male or female as a non-binary designation could make them targets for state sanctioned discrimination. However, we support any parents who may wish to acknowledge their child’s intersex status and take on the battle of advocating for their intersex child’s equal rights.

Solidarity with the Global Intersex Community

Our founding E.D.has been in the vanguard of intersex activism since its inception, and served by selection as one of three intersex organizers, and the only American organizer, of the Third International Intersex Forum.

Between 29 November and 1 December 2013, the Third International Intersex Forum, supported by ILGA and ILGA-Europe, took place in Valletta, Malta. This event brought together 34 activists representing 30 intersex organisations from all continents.

It culminated in the release of the Public Statement of the Third International Intersex Forum, a.k.a. The Malta Declaration. It is the most widely accepted statement by the global intersex community, and we stand in support of the 17 demands listed therein, and below:

Demands

1. To put an end to mutilating and ”˜normalising”™ practices such as genital surgeries, psychological and other medical treatments through legislative and other means. Intersex people must be empowered to make their own decisions affecting own bodily integrity, physical autonomy and self-determination.
2. To put an end to preimplantation genetic diagnosis, pre-natal screening and treatment, and selective abortion of intersex foetuses.
3. To put an end to infanticide and killings of intersex people.
4. To put an end to non-consensual sterilisation of intersex people.
5. To depathologise variations in sex characteristics in medical guidelines, protocols and classifications, such as the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases.
6. To register intersex children as females or males, with the awareness that, like all people, they may grow up to identify with a different sex or gender.
7. To ensure that sex or gender classifications are amendable through a simple administrative procedure at the request of the individuals concerned. All adults and capable minors should be able to choose between female (F), male (M), non-binary or multiple options. In the future, as with race or religion, sex or gender should not be a category on birth certificates or identification documents for anybody.
8. To raise awareness around intersex issues and the rights of intersex people in society at large.
9. To create and facilitate supportive, safe and celebratory environments for intersex people, their families and surroundings.
10. To ensure that intersex people have the right to full information and access to their own medical records and history.
11. To ensure that all professionals and healthcare providers that have a specific role to play in intersex people”™s wellbeing are adequately trained to provide quality services.
12. To provide adequate acknowledgement of the suffering and injustice caused to intersex people in the past, and provide adequate redress, reparation, access to justice and the right to truth.
13. To build intersex anti-discrimination legislation in addition to other grounds, and to ensure protection against intersectional discrimination.
14. To ensure the provision of all human rights and citizenship rights to intersex people, including the right to marry and form a family.
15. To ensure that intersex people are able to participate in competitive sport, at all levels, in accordance with their legal sex. Intersex athletes who have been humiliated or stripped of their titles should receive reparation and reinstatement.
16. Recognition that medicalization and stigmatisation of intersex people result in significant trauma and mental health concerns.
17. In view of ensuring the bodily integrity and well-being of intersex people, autonomous non-pathologising psycho-social and peer support be available to intersex people throughout their life (as self-required), as well as to parents and/or care providers.

In view of the above the Forum calls on:

* International, regional and national human rights institutions to take on board, and provide visibility to intersex issues in their work.
* National governments to address the concerns raised by the Intersex Forum and draw adequate solutions in direct collaboration with intersex representatives and organisations.
* Media agencies and sources to ensure intersex people’s right to privacy, dignity, accurate and ethical representation.
* Funders to engage with intersex organisations and support them in the struggle for visibility, increase their capacity, the building of knowledge and the affirmation of their human rights.
* Human rights organisations to contribute to build bridges with intersex organisations and build a basis for mutual support. This should be done in a spirit of collaboration and no-one should instrumentalise intersex issues as a means for other ends.