Instrumentalizing intersex: “The fact that LGBTs in particular embrace intersex is due to an excess of projection” – Georg Klauda (2002)

Intersex: No Reckoning, No Reconciliation! Fifteen years ago, the German solidary gay sociologist Georg Klauda published his groundbreaking analysis on the psychological background of the ever-increasing instrumentalization of Intersex genital mutilation as a means to an end by third interest groups, specifically to advance LGBT, civil registration and gender politics. Like the similarly groundbreaking study on intersex appropriation in academic teaching and research by Emi Koyama and Lisa Weasel, also published in 2002 (fulltext PDF), and Raven Kaldera‘s pioneering 2001 publication (fulltext) and Chris Somers‘ 2002 article (PDF –> p. 20), Klauda’s hardly surprising findings are consistently ignored by the appropriators and swept under the carpet at every turn, even though this makes them even more complicit in the ongoing genital mutilation of defenseless intersex children – how much longer?!

To raise awareness of this issue, StopIGM.org presents an english translation of key excerpts of Georg Klauda’s shocking findings of LGBT persons and groups instrumentalizing intersex:

Georg Klauda: “About the Mutilation of Hermaphrodites”
Presentation 31.10.2002 @ House of Democracy and Human Rights, Berlin
(German fulltext | Print version | PDF

«When we talk about the mutilation of hermaphrodites, as I will do in the following, it makes sense to consider the danger of projection. We tend to perceive things only in a coordinate system that we are familiar with, and to project problems onto an object that are not the same as those of the object itself. When we then begin to talk about the topic, whether as journalists, academics or political activists, there is a danger that the problems we construct will mask the voices of those who want to report first-hand on their experiences.

Such forms of projection have been taking place for some years now in the field of genital mutilation of hermaphrodites. […]

I say this because there is a phenomenon to subsume hermaphrodites under such newer signs as queer and transgender. Such a de-differentiation is only beneficial to medicine, because it hides the specific problems of each particular group, on the one hand, and on the other hand because it reissues the concept of the Third Gender from the early 20th century, which is based on sexual medicine. […]

I think that hermaphrodites find themselves in this scenario only remotely, because they are not concerned with their self-definition, but with ending an invasive medical practice. Therefore often it is not themselves, but transsexuals as well as lesbians and gays who represent hermaphrodites in public. The fact that they in particular embrace this topic is due to an excess of projection. They do not see that their own set of problems, i. e. the problem of coming out and social recognition, is not that of hermaphrodites. They do not see that the unwanted adoption of hermaphrodites by the lesbian, gay and trans movement is tantamount to blindsiding and colonization, and is morally unacceptable because it masks the actual concerns of people with a medical experience of violence. […]

The queer and transgender models also create colonization cascades: lesbians and gays colonize transsexuals, transsexuals colonize transgenders, transgenders colonize hermaphrodites. […]

We will therefore have to get used to addressing hermaphrodites not as members of a minority but, in their own opinion, as victims of medical torture. […]»

>>> Intersex human rights are under attack!!!

See also:
Academic Complicity in IGM Practices
UK: Misappropriation of Intersex Funding by LGBT Groups
Denmark: Intersex children abused as cannon fodder for LGBT politics
Australia: LGBT group misappropriating intersex funds – again! 🙁
“You shouldn’t always talk about the surgeries!” 

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