Issue 8, 2014

Hello dear readers,

Thats it, weve reached week 8, were ofcially halfway
through our semester and many, though not all, of us have
made their midterms and are nishing up some last things,
or are wondering why their professors still insist they go to
school (for those of you still doing midterms, GOOD
LUCK). For those currently being bored (to death) by their
professors, hopefully this will offer some distraction. For
those still in the thick of it, good luck and use this
newsletter as a short break before giving it your all again!
Word of the week: Intersex

This weeks word is Intersex. Wikipedia denes it as in
humans and other animals, [intersex] is a variation in sex
characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, or
genitals that do not allow an individual to be distinctly
identied as male or female (1). Parents of children who
are born with ambiguous genitals are often strongly
advised by their doctor to get surgery done and
sometimes hormone treatments are suggested as well; all
this to ensure they t into the category male or female.
These treatments are outright condemned by the
intersex community and found ambiguous by (some)
doctors. These issues are also more and more recognised
as an abuse of human rights by UN agencies, an
Australian parliament and ethics institutions.
Events

This weeks Discuss-a-Something will be
on Intersex, in honour of Intersex
Awareness Day next week (26th of
October). Since it is nearing the end of
the semester it will be a very informal
session in which we will discuss intersex
and show you some clips from intersex-
people in the media. As usual, it will be in
Eleanor 7 at 8.30PM. After this we will go
to Glam for a bit and then through to
Elliot, or we will go straight to Elliot,
depending on the time we nish.

Friday there will also be a Glam meeting,
starting at around 11PM. Come join us
for some cheap booze and/or dance
and/or chat. Some of us will be going to
Koestraat insteadfree booze! Hope to
see you all there!
Contact

www.facebook.com/LGBTQ.UCR
gaysociety@rasa.ucr.nl

Love,
Ian Snel, Kelly Roemer, Kayleigh Mathey
Queer person of the week:

David Reimer was a man who, unlike what the theme of this newsletter
might suggest, was not intersex. He was born in 1965 together as Bruce
Reimer and with his identical twin brother Brian. When they were roughly
one year old, they were diagnosed with a urination problem and their
parents were therefore advised to have the boys circumcised. For Brian
this went just ne; for Bruce, however, it went so badly his penis was
beyond saving. Dr. Money advised the parents to have Bruces leftover
penis turned into a vagina and to raise him as a girl. After deliberation, his
parents agreed, and so Bruce was raised as Brenda.
Initially, it appeared as if they had been successful. Dr. Money, whose
theory was that gender identity was all due to nurture and no nature, was
delighted. With no knowledge of having been born male, Brenda now
identied as a girl, and the twins also went to lots of therapy sessions to
enforce gender roles upon them however, these were both highly
unethical and most likely traumatising. Brenda never felt very female, was
bullied for their tomboyish appearance and was suicidal at age 13, at
which point their parents decided to come clean to the twins. Brenda
stopped all sessions and hormones given by Dr. Money, transitioned back
to male and changed his name to David.
Although David himself was not intersex, this shows that if your child is
born intersex, you cannot simply pick a gender and expect the child to
identify that way later in life. Sometimes it works out, but sometimes those
children end up identifying as transgender or genderqueer. Sadly enough,
sex assignment surgeries still often end up being performed on intersex
babies in order to normalise them."
Trivia

This is the South Africa version of the
rainbow ag, imitating the countrys
ag:
Sources
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex