October 26 is International Intersex Awareness Day
Today is the anniversary of the first public demonstration by intersex people in the USA in 1996, which demanded an end to non-consensual surgeries on intersex children. This public demand of recognition for intersex people and their rights is a fight not yet won.
The Hate Crime Bill is currently making its way through the Scottish Parliament. Intersex people and people with a VSC are already protected by Scots hate crime law, but the bill will clarify this and ensure for the first time that those hate crimes are properly recorded and counted. This would be a big step forward in legal recognition of people with an I/VSC. We are currently working with stakeholders to ensure that they have their voices heard.
Equality Network is working with an international academic consortium: Intersex – New Interdisciplinary Approaches(INIA). This consortium is working together with 10 researchers in policy and practice across a range of sectors relating to intersex rights. Research in the area of I/VSC rights is currently sorely lacking. We will welcome two of those researchers who are prolific international intersex activists to Equality Network in February 2021. To find out more about the project, click on this link.
Free online Intersex Awareness event on 11 November
Equality Network will be joining LGBT Health who will host a free online Intersex Awareness event on the 11 of November. We will be joined by Elizabeth Reiff and Magda Rakita (iCon UK). This event aims to provide an informative and supportive space for the community to learn more about intersex variations in sex characteristics and the lived, unique experiences of, and barriers faced by, some intersex people. To book your place, please visit here.
This Intersex Awareness Day we can reflect on what has been achieved and recognise there is a long way to go in order to achieve the recognition those first activists strove for 24 years ago.
