"I wish I could stop hating my body. I wish being intersex didn't play such a big role in my life. I wish being intersex was a minor detail. I wish gender and sex were minor details. I wish I would be treated like a human being. I wish I wouldn't get unwanted surgery forced upon me. I wish I could get back the innocence of before my environment discovered I was intersex."

Welcome to WISH

Intersex is a collection of medical conditions which primarily affect the development of the genitals, hence the name 'intersex', as in not being strictly of the male or female sex, but possessing a mixture of these. In many cases it also involves the rest of the body, such as in the case of AIS. Intersex conditions occur in over 1 in every 500 births. See the Wikipedia article in the Links section on the right for detailed information on the wide variety of intersex conditions.

There are a number of issues surrounding intersex, none of which are primarily medical in nature, as most intersex conditions are fairly to completely benign in nature and with the proper medical care should not affect the lifespan of an intersex person in any significant way. The issues in question are primarily political in nature, specifically:

• Refusal to recognize intersex as such, instead referring to it as Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) and treating it as a birth defect where surgery is required to make it fit into the binary male/female system. This results in many infants getting genital surgery, which leads to traumas during their later years, and/or the sensation of being in the wrong body. Many so-called transsexuals are in fact intersex people due to this who had forced genital surgery as an infant or child. See the intersex protocols.
• Denial of medical care. As the protocols prescribe following the DSD-route of genital surgery, any other kinds of examinations including mosaic tests, MRI and other scans of the lower abdomen and so on are generally refused or faked.
• Inability to change one's official gender. Where the Yagyakarta Principle hasn't been accepted into law yet, it is not possible to have one's official gender changed without genital surgery or worse. This leads many intersex individuals to opt for the transgender route as a last resort.
• No or little education about intersex in schools or for new parents, leading to a society including its many intersex people being unaware of the existence of intersex, let alone what it entails.

Goals of WISH

WISH is primarily about self-help. As the maintainer of this project I am not influental enough to help people directly, but those who join WISH can help each other and oneself through:

• Providing educational materials to schools and other institutions.
• Helping organize legal demonstrations.
• Maintaining a database of physicians and similar who do not follow DSD.
• Maintaining a database with the status of intersex recognition and treatment in countries around the world.
• Long-term, the restoration of human rights to intersex people.

As WISH is still in an early stage much of this hasn't been accomplished or even set up yet. I will be working the coming time on setting up said databases and I'll be taking suggestions on how to best verify any claims. I'd be very grateful for any help in populating said databases.

Petition

Buy Shirts

Support the intersex cause by buying and wearing one of these shirts at the online store:

Suggestions for new designs are always welcome!

Contact

You can contact me (Maya Posch) via my personal site. See the link in the menu on the right. You can also contact me via Facebook and Hyves.