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This letter to the editor is in response to the March 24, 2003 article on transgender rights. The word limit was 175, which we somehow managed to meet.
Dear Editor,
Thank you for your article about transgender rights. Transgender people deserve protection from discrimination.
However, the article's treatment of intersex reproduces the same problem transgender activists complain about the Orlando gay rights ordinance: it helps some people, but not others. In this case, while an ordinance that includes "gender identity" may help transgender people, it will not help intersex people.
Unlike transgender people, the main complaint of intersex people is not that we face discrimination for being intersex, but we experience traumatizing surgical and social treatments in childhood designed to conceal and eliminate our "abnormal" bodies. They result in physical scars and reduced sexual sensations, as well as the sense of shame, secrecy, and isolation. Many intersex people do not consider ourselves part of the "transgender" umbrella because issues are so different.
I hope that you will report fully about intersex in the future, but please direct your readers to Intersex Society of North America (www.isna.org) and Intersex Initiative Portland (www.ipdx.org) meanwhile.
Emi Koyama
Director, Intersex Initiative Portland