ACLU issues call to stop medically unnecessary nonconsensual surgeries
Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union has called for an end to nonconsensual medically unnecessary surgeries on young intersex children. Strangio talks to “fellow trans advocates”, highlighting common ground around a call for bodily autonomy
On this Intersex Awareness Day, I urge my fellow trans advocates to call on medical associations and hospitals to join the international human rights community in banning nonconsensual, medically unnecessary surgeries on children with intersex traits. It is plainly unethical, cruel, and unnecessary to perform surgeries on the genitals of children and infants because we are afraid that their bodies do not seem normal and out of an impulse to “assign” a binary sex to a child before that child can articulate their gender. We must do better than that. We must celebrate the beauty of our differences rather than fear such difference so deeply that we cut into the genitals of our kids to erase it.