ISNA’s legacy of shame and secrecy: The Sextard Movement |
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After 15 years in operation, the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) has quietly closed its doors and published a farewell message.
http://www.isna.org/farewell_message
I have not gotten too involved in intersex activism over the years, but I do believe I can offer some perspective from my vantage point as a trans activist.
ISNA can boast of several important accomplishments. The term “hermaphrodite” is now deprecated, and ISNA’s efforts helped with that (once they stopped calling their newsletter “Hermaphrodites with Attitude"). Some neonates have avoided normalizing genital surgery because of ISNA’s work. Perhaps ISNA’s best legacy is the media they produced which allowed intersex people to share their personal stories and speak in their own voices.
But somewhere along the line, perhaps at its founding, ISNA was organizationally and ideologically hijacked by non-intersex people. Founder Bo Laurent (aka Bonnie Sullivan aka Cheryl Chase) has presented a murky and often contradictory autobiography and medical history, as has early collaborator Denise Tree (aka Kiira Triea, etc.). Tree, for instance, has claimed to have endured unconsented surgery at age 14 in 1974, but a recent court case indicated that this simply cannot be true. International group Organization Intersex International (OII) has published a number of recent pieces questioning Laurent/Chase’s use of both names simultaneously (suggesting they were two different people) and pointing out a number of inconsistent autobiographical statements.
From a trans perspective, ISNA quickly devolved into a group that asserted its members were very different from transgender people, significantly escalating tensions between two communities with significant overlap in political goals. That’s ISNA’s most problematic legacy for me personally.
Sadly, the most problematic and enduring legacy of ISNA and Laurent/Chase will now be “disorders of sex development” (DSD), what I call the Sextard Movement. By shifting intersex traits from natural human variance to developmental disorders, ISNA leaders effectively repathologized a whole class of people, lumping them in with other forms of mental and physical “retardation.”
This massive political misstep can be directly traced to the long-running personal and professional association between Laurent/Chase and historian Alice Dreger. Dreger is the J. Michael Bailey of the intersex community, an academic opportunist who exploits emotionally vulnerable people like Laurent/Chase. This highly effective strategy of personal validation led to a feedback cycle where Dreger gained power and money by validating Laurent/Chase, who out of gratitude put Dreger forth as an “expert” and helped Dreger’s career.
Laurent/Chase’s personal crusade focusing on issues of cosmesis got tangled up with issues of function, which I believe was another big mistake. Many intersex traits do involve concurrent issues of genital or systemic function that require medical intervention. This is very different than medical intervention undertaken merely for reasons of cosmesis. By conflating the two as DSDs, Laurent/Chase turned cosmetic issues from variance to disease.
Like the intersex community, the trans community is also in the midst of finding its voice, and that is an arduous path. We also have occasional flare-ups from people who self-identify though metaphors of impairment and disease and try to impose their worldviews on everyone. That’s exactly what happened with ISNA.
ISNA’s purported mission has been to “end shame and secrecy” about intersex traits. Note to the next generation of intersex activists: one great way to help end shame and secrecy is to use your real names and be honest about your medical histories. One more note: intersex people should be speaking for themselves, not letting other people siphon off financial and media opportunities that rightfully belong to intersex people.
Laurent/Chase’s new organization the Accord Alliance receives funding via the Tides Center, which allows them to receive untraceable donations with no paper trail. So much for ending secrecy. Now that Laurent/Chase has re-emerged as the Accord Alliance, I urge all politically-minded intersex people to get involved with alternative organizations that aren’t so closely tied to the medical and insurance industries.
Let’s hope the next generation of intersex activists can learn from the mistakes of ISNA and Laurent/Chase. It will take great effort to undo the shameful and secretive collusion that led to stigmatizing them as sextards— I mean, people with “disorders of sex development.”
It’s worth noting that ISNA’s first message in 1993 was pseudonymous, and its 2008 farewell message is anonymous. It’s time to move on from all the shame and secrecy and address this stigmatizing Sextard Movement.
