Intersex Awareness Day is an internationally observed

awareness day Lists of holidays by various categorizations. Religious holidays Abrahamic holidays (Middle Eastern) Jewish holidays *Chag HaMatzot (Feast of Unleavened bread, Unleavened Bread – 7 days of consumption of matzo with wine and avoidance ...

each October 26, designed to highlight human rights issues faced by

intersex Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical b ...

people.

History

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 The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is an American professional association of pediatricians, headquartered in Itasca, Illinois. It maintains its Department of Federal Affairs office in Washington, D.C. Background The Academy was found ...

was holding its annual conference. Intersex activists

Morgan Holmes Morgan Holmes is a Canadian sociologist, author, and a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario. She is also an intersex activist and writer, and former member of Intersex Society of North America. Holmes participated in the first public de ...

and

Max Beck Max Beck (1966January 12, 2008) was an American intersex advocate, active in the now-defunct Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). Max participated in the first known public demonstration against human rights violations on intersex people, ...

participated for the (now-defunct)

Intersex Society of North America The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) was a non-profit advocacy group founded in 1993 by Cheryl Chase to end shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries.Matthews, Karen (Oct 22, 2000). Debate Grows Over Using Surgery on Infants with Amb ...

, 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 Betsy Driver (born 1964) is the mayor of Flemington, New Jersey, and an advocate for intersex human rights and awareness. She is the first openly intersex person to be elected to office in the United States. Early life Driver was born in Buffalo, ...

and

Emi Koyama Emi Koyama (b. 1975) is a Japanese-American activist, artist, and independent scholar. Koyama's work discusses issues of feminism, intersex human rights, domestic violence, and sex work among many others. Koyama is best known for her 2000 essay ...

. A central

awareness raising Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...

site was later re-established in 2015 by

Morgan Carpenter Morgan Carpenter is a bioethicist, intersex activist and researcher. In 2013 he created the intersex flag, and became president of Intersex Human Rights Australia (formerly OII Australia). He is now a co-executive director. In 2015, he cofound ...

with Laura Inter of Brújula Intersexual, and support from

Open Society Foundations Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a st ...

Observance

Intersex Awareness Day is an international day of grass-roots action to end

shame Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Definition Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...

, secrecy and unwanted genital cosmetic surgeries on intersex children. The day also provides an opportunity for reflection and

political action In sociology, social action, also known as Weberian social action, is an act which takes into account the actions and reactions of individuals (or ' agents'). According to Max Weber, "Action is 'social' insofar as its subjective meaning takes ...

. Between October 26 and November 8, intersex organizations bring attention to the challenges

individuals face, culminating in the

Intersex Day of Remembrance Intersex Day of Remembrance, also known as Intersex Solidarity Day, is an internationally observed civil awareness day designed to highlight issues faced by intersex people. It marks the birthday of Herculine Barbin, a French intersex person who ...

on November 8, the birthday of Herculine Barbin, also sometimes known as Intersex Solidarity Day.

Notable observances

2013

On Friday 25 October 2013, the day before Intersex Awareness Day that year, the

Australian Senate The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Chapter I of the Constitution of Australia. There are a t ...

published a report on an inquiry titled the ''Involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people in Australia''. On 11 November 2014, the

New South Wales Legislative Council The New South Wales Legislative Council, often referred to as the upper house, is one of the two chambers of the parliament of the Australian state of New South Wales. The other is the Legislative Assembly. Both sit at Parliament House in t ...

in Australia passed a motion marking Intersex Awareness Day and calling on the State government to "work with the Australian Government to implement the recommendations" of the 2013 Senate committee report.

2014

For Intersex Awareness Day 2014, the Senate of the German Land of Berlin issued a statement calling for

self-determination The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a '' jus cogens'' rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms. It sta ...

for intersex people. Also in 2014, the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City, Distrito Federal, held a visibility event on intersex issues.

2015

In 2015, institutional events included the launch of an Intersex Human Rights Fund by Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and a motion submitted to

New South Wales Legislative Assembly The New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the lower of the two houses of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The upper house is the New South Wales Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament Ho ...

in Australia by Greens MP

Jenny Leong Jenny Leong (born 1977), an Australian politician, is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing Newtown for the Greens since 2015. Leong is the first person to represent Newtown in its current form, as it was created f ...

. A lawsuit was filed by Dana Zzyym of the Intersex Campaign for Equality, with

Lambda Legal Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, better known as Lambda Legal, is an American civil rights organization that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities as well as people living with HIV/AIDS ( PWAs) through imp ...

, suing the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...

for legal gender recognition on their passport as nonbinary and intersex.

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ke ...

reported that over 4.2 million people saw personal stories posted on social media in an action coordinated by activist Pidgeon Pagonis.

2016

In 2016, the

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nati ...

launched an awareness website, while UN experts, including the Committee against Torture, the

Committee on the Rights of the Child The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a body of experts that monitor and report on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Committee also monitors the Convention's three optional protoc ...

and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, along with the Council of Europe

Commissioner for Human Rights The Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent and impartial non-judicial institution established in 1999 by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, to promote awareness of and respect for human rights in the council's 46 member states. The ...

, the

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the IACHR or, in the three other official languages Spanish, French, and Portuguese CIDH, ''Comisión Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos'', ''Commission Interaméricaine des Droits de l'Homme'' ...

and United Nations Special Rapporteurs called for an urgent end to human rights violations against intersex persons, including in medical settings. Multiple governmental bodies made statements, alongside many civil society organizations. Official recognition included statements by the

and

Australian Human Rights Commission The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body funded by, but oper ...

also made statements, The South African government acknowledged a need for action to prevent human rights violations, and there was a first event in

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. In June 2017, the State Department statement was cited in a policy paper by

Joycelyn Elders Minnie Joycelyn Elders (born Minnie Lee Jones; August 13, 1933) is an American pediatrician and public health administrator who served as Surgeon General of the United States from 1993 to 1994. A vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commiss ...

David Satcher David Satcher, (born March 2, 1941) is an American physician, and public health administrator. He was a four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as the 10th Assistant Secretary for Health, and t ...

, and

Richard Carmona Richard Henry Carmona (born November 22, 1949) is an American physician, nurse, police officer, public health administrator, and politician. He was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as the seventeenth Surg ...

, three former Surgeons General of the United States, calling for a rethink of early genital surgeries on children with intersex traits.

2017

Australians held an intersex awareness day event in their national parliament. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement for Intersex Awareness Day, 21 years after a demonstration outside its conference that is now marked by the Day. The

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...

issued a statement recognizing violence of forced medical practices.

2018

In 2018, OII Europe,

ILGA-Europe ILGA-Europe is the European region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. It is an advocacy group promoting the interests of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex ( LGBTI) people, at the European level ...

and the European Parents' Association published a multilingual guide to parenting intersex children. US advocates wrote about proposals to define gender strictly in accordance with genitalia observed at birth. This was accompanied by news reports on children who have not undergone

intersex medical interventions Intersex medical interventions, also known as intersex genital mutilations (IGM), are surgical, hormonal and other medical interventions performed to modify atypical or ambiguous genitalia and other sex characteristics, primarily for the purposes ...

. Australian intersex organizations held parliamentary meetings, and awarded the 'Darling Award' to the

National LGBTI Health Alliance LGBTIQ+ Health Australia (formerly the National LGBTI Health Alliance) is a peak health organisation for LGBT and intersex organisations in Australia. A not-for-profit company, it was established in August 2007. Key areas of activity Key ...

to recognize work beyond affirmation of the Darlington Statement, a regional community declaration.

2019

* On October 25, the intersex flag was raised at London City Hall, Ontario, Canada for the first time ever. * The spire of Arts Centre in Melbourne was colored in colors of intersex flag, to celebrate the day.

References

External links

Intersex Day
* {{Intersex Civil awareness days Events about intersex History of LGBT civil rights in the United States LGBT events in the United States October observances Awareness days LGBT awareness periods