#jesuisintersexe: the testimonial hashtag

TÊTU magazine highlighted a hashtag that is gaining more and more weight on Twitter. #JeSuisIntersexe collects testimonies from intersex people who tell their stories.

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"Growing up being an intersex child / teenager is growing up in a permanent taboo. An intimate taboo and a social, societal taboo. Our bodies are erased, hidden. No one knows we exist". This admission comes from the tweet from @tourbillonfou on Twitter. And this comment is not the only one. In recent days, a series of testimonies, with the hashtag #JeSuisIntersexe, begins to emerge to recount medical choices without agreement or consent, medical errors and the feeling of not being seen as a human being, reports TÊTU.

According to experts taken up by the UN, 1.7% of the population is affected by variations in sexual development which can affect the chromosomes, the gonads (organs intended for reproduction) or the anatomy, and the consequences of which can be multiple: atypical formation of the genital organs, abnormal hormone levels, attributes of both sexes … And in many countries, intersex children undergo surgery and other treatments "repeatedly to try to change their sexual characteristics or their appearance ". For associations, in addition to causing them physical, psychological and emotional suffering, these procedures infringe their rights. Cited in a Council of Europe report, research in Germany found gonadectomies in 64% of intersex people and 96% estimated that they are on hormone therapy.

“The vast majority of these are healthy variations. But what crystallizes the debate is that the variations are at the level of the sexual organs (…) we make sure that the person can be penetrated or penetrated ”, explained, in July 2019, Gabrielle, member of the Intersex Collective and Allies at Huffingtonpost.

Many publications speak of non-compulsory medical procedures with complications.

"They commit a serious medical error. The intervention consisted in creating a vagina with a piece of intestine, at the time of closing, they connected the intestine to the newly created vagina. I am told that they made an error watching the intervention video and they leave me for a whole week with feces coming out of the vagina and adult diapers. No painkillers, no psychological help, "said @ LostmemoryCoco /

"The pressure is omnipresent, my parents accept the operation. We promise them 'two surgeries':' bilateral castration 'because of the risk of' gonadal degeneration '(to remove the testicles which were in fact going very well) and a' vaginoplasty "https://www.aufeminin.com/," says Gabrielle.

If at the international level, these operations are considered as genital mutilation, they continue to be practiced. France has been condemned three times by the United Nations. Various reports have been made, but nothing has changed in the legal texts, can be read in the magazine TÊTU.

In a column from the World, dating from July 2019, a group of 24 medical teachers and surgeons and 116 other professionals assured, "on the strength of their experience", that the precociousness of the surgical gesture, in the first months after birth, gives better results for the child.

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