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Timeline of intersex history

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Further information: Intersex in history

The following is a timeline of intersex history.

Timeline

Pre-history

  • Sumerian creation myths, 4000 years ago, include the fashioning of a body with atypical sex characteristics.[1]

Antiquity

  • Hippocrates and Galen view sex as a spectrum between men and women, with "many shades in between, including hermaphrodites, a perfect balance of male and female".[2]
  • Aristotle view hermaphrodites as having "doubled or superfluous genitals".[2]

2nd century BCE

1st century BCE

  • Diodorus Siculus describes the god Hermaphroditus, "born of Hermes and Aphrodite", as having "a physical body which is a combination of that of a man and that of a woman"; he also reports that such children born with such traits are seen as prodigies, able to foretell future events.[5]

43 BCE – 17/18 CE

23–79 CE

  • Pliny the Elder describes "those who are born of both sex, whom we call hermaphrodites, at one time androgyni" (andr-, "man", and gyn-, "woman", from the Greek).[7]

c. 80–160 CE

Medieval period

c. 400 CE

  • Augustine writes in The Literal Meaning of Genesis that humans were created in two sexes, despite "as happens in some births, in the case of what we call androgynes".[2]

c. 940 CE

12th century

  • According to the canon law Decretum Gratiani, "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails" (Hermafroditus an ad testamentum adhiberi possit, qualitas sexus incalescentis ostendit).[12][13]
  • Peter Cantor, a French Roman Catholic theologian, when writing about sodomy in the De vitio sodomitico writes "the church allows the hermaphrodite to use the organ by which s/he is most aroused. But should s/he fail with one organ the use of the other can never be permitted and s/he must remain perpetually celibate to avoid any similarity to the role inversion of sodomy, which is detested by God."[14]

1157

  • In his Chronicle, or History of the Two Cities, Otto of Friesing described hermaphrodites as "a mistake of nature", "grouped together with other supposed defects of the body, such as short stature, dark 'Ethiopian' skin, and lameness".[2]

1188

  • Gerald of Wales in Topography of Ireland states "Also, within our time, a woman was seen attending the court in Connaught, who partook of the nature of both sexes, and was a hermaphrodite."[11]

13th century

  • Canon lawyer Henry of Segusio argues that a "perfect hermaphrodite" where no sex prevailed should choose their legal gender under oath.[15][16]
  • Henry de Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae ("On the Laws and Customs of England", c. 1235)[17] classifies mankind as "male, female, or hermaphrodite",[18] and a "hermaphrodite is classed with male or female according to the predominance of the sexual organs".[19]
  • The Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300) includes a hermaphrodite, outside the borders of the world known to its makers.[20][21]

17th century

  • English jurist and judge Edward Coke (Lord Coke) writes in his Institutes of the Lawes of England (1628–1644) on laws of succession: "Every heire is either a male, a female, or an hermaphrodite, that is both male and female. And an hermaphrodite (which is also called Androgynus) shall be heire, either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile."[22][23] The Institutes are widely held to be a foundation of common law.
  • 17th-century historical accounts include Eleno de Céspedes, in Spain.
  • Thomas(ine) Hall (born c. 1603) in the United States, is ruled to have a "dual-nature" gender by colonial Virginia governor John Pott.

18th century

1755 – after 1792

  • Spanish nun Fernanda Fernández is found to have an intersex trait and subsequently reclassified male.

1763/1764 – 1832

1774

  • 17-year-old Rosa Mifsud appears before a Maltese court after petitioning for a change in sex classification from female.[24][25] Two clinicians perform an examination and found that "the male sex is the dominant one".[25] The petition is appealed and granted.[24]

1792

  • Anglo-Welsh philologist William Jones publishes an English translation of Al Sirájiyyah: The Mohammedan Law of Inheritance which details inheritance rights for hermaphrodites in Islam.[26]

1794

c. 1798

19th century

1843

  • Levi Suydam is an intersex person in Connecticut whose capacity to vote in male-only elections is questioned in 1843.[28]

1838–1868

1851

  • The Welshman newspaper publishes an account of an intersex child on 7 November.[30]
  • During the Victorian era, medical authors introduce the terms "true hermaphrodite" for an individual who has both ovarian and testicular tissue, verified under a microscope; "male pseudo-hermaphrodite" for a person with testicular tissue, but either female or ambiguous sexual anatomy; and "female pseudo-hermaphrodite" for a person with ovarian tissue, but either male or ambiguous sexual anatomy.

20th century

1906

  • The Cambrian newspaper in Wales publishes an article on the death in Cardiff of an intersex child who, at post-mortem examination, was determined to be a girl.[31]

1908

1915

1923

  • The term 'intersex' is introduced as the (contested) medical diagnosis Weib intersexuellen Typus ("intersex type woman") by Austrian gynecologist and obstetrician Paul Mathes[36] His book is published after his death, in 1924.[37]

1930

  • By 1930, the term 'intersex' had already been widely used in medicine in Germany as a new term for Scheinzwitter (pseudohermaphrodite), and doctors reported numerous different procedures of intersex surgery.[38]

1932

  • The German gynecologist and obstetrician Hans Naujoks performs what is described as the first complete and comprehensive intersex surgery and hormone treatment on a patient with both ovarian and testicular tissue, at the University of Marburg. The female patient is described as fully functional after surgery and, starting in 1934, spontaneously menstruates.[39]

1936

1943

1944

1950

1952

1966

1968

1979

  • The Family Court of Australia annulls the marriage of an intersex man who was "born a male and had been reared as a male" and subjected to "normalizing" medical interventions, on the basis that he is an hermaphrodite.[48]

1980

  • Former Polish Olympic track athlete Stanisława Walasiewicz (Stella Walsh) is killed during an armed robbery in a parking lot in Cleveland, Ohio, on 4 December 1980.[49][50] She is found to have intersex traits.[51]

1985

1986

1992

  • The IAAF ceases sex screening for all athletes,[55] but retains the option of assessing the sex of participants.

1993

1996

1997

  • Milton Diamond and Keith Sigmundson publish a paper discrediting John Money and his optimal gender model, after tracking down David Reimer.[60][61]

1999

  • In Sentencia SU-337/99 and then Sentencia T-551/99, the Constitutional Court of Colombia restricts medical interventions on intersex children aged over five years.[62]
  • The term endosex is coined as an opposite or antonym to the term intersex, by Heike Bödeker in Germany.[63]

21st century

2001

  • Indian athlete and swimmer Pratima Gaonkar commits suicide after disclosure and public commentary on a failed sex verification test.[64][65][66]

2003

  • Australian Alex MacFarlane is believed to be the first person in Australia to obtain a birth certificate recording sex as indeterminate, and the first Australian passport with an 'X' sex marker.[67][68]

2004

2005

2006

  • Publication of the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity includes Principle 18 on Protection from Medical Abuses, including "all necessary legislative, administrative and other measures to ensure that no child's body is irreversibly altered by medical procedures in an attempt to impose a gender identity without the full, free and informed consent of the child". Intersex and transgender activist Mauro Cabral is the only intersex signatory to the Principles.
  • The medical "Consensus statement on management of intersex disorders" is published, changing clinical language from "intersex" to "disorders of sex development".[71]
  • Indian middle-distance runner Santhi Soundarajan wins the silver medal in 800 m at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, then fails a sex verification test and is stripped of her medal.

2009

  • South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya wins the 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics in Berlin. After her victory at the 2009 World Championships, it is announced that she has been subjected to sex verification testing, bringing intersex issues to the public eye. On 6 July 2010, the IAAF confirmed that Semenya is cleared to continue competing. The results of the testing are never officially released for privacy reasons and her personal status is unknown.[72]

2010

  • In the Kenyan High Court case of Richard Muasya v. the Hon. Attorney General, Muasya is convicted of robbery with violence. The case examines whether or not he has suffered discrimination as a result of being born intersex. He is found to have been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment while in prison. The Court also determines that he has not suffered from lack of identification documents, but is responsible for registering his own birth, following a failure to do so at the time of his birth.[73]

2011

  • Christiane Völling becomes the first intersex person known to have successfully sued for damages in a case brought for non-consensual surgical intervention.[74]
  • Tony Briffa, believed to be the world's first intersex mayor, is elected in the City of Hobsons Bay in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, at the end of November.[75]
  • The first International Intersex Forum is held, in Brussels.

2012

  • The Swiss National Advisory Commission Biomedical Ethics publishes a report on the management of differences of sex development.[76]
  • On 14 November 2012, the Supreme Court of Chile orders Maule Health Service to pay compensation of 100 million pesos for moral and psychological damages caused to a child, Benjamín, and another 5 million for each of his parents. Born with ambiguous genitalia, doctors surgically removed his testicles without his parents' informed consent, following which he was raised initially as a girl until the age of 10 when tests revealed that he was male.[77][78] (See also Intersex rights in Chile.)

2013

  • On 1 February, Juan E. Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, issues a statement condemning non-consensual surgical intervention on intersex people.[79][80]
  • Patrick Fénichel, Stéphane Bermon and other clinicians disclose that four elite female athletes from developing countries were subjected to partial clitoridectomies and gonadectomies (sterilization) after testosterone testing revealed that they had the intersex condition 5-alpha-reductase deficiency.[81][82]
  • In June, Australia passes legislation protecting intersex people from discrimination on grounds of "intersex status".[83]
  • In October, the Council of Europe adopts resolution 1952, Children's right to physical integrity.[84]
  • Also in October, the Australian Senate becomes the first parliamentary body to publish an inquiry into the involuntary or coerced sterilization of intersex people, entitled Involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people in Australia.[83]
  • Intersex activists testify for the first time before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.[53]
  • Germany passes a law requiring intersex infants who may not be classed as male or female to be assigned as "indeterminate". The move is criticized by civil society organizations and human rights institutions as not based around principles of self-determination.[85]
  • In December, participants at the Third International Intersex Forum publish the Malta declaration.[86][87][88][89][90][91][92]

2014

  • The High Court of Kenya orders the Kenyan government to issue a birth certificate to a five-year-old child born in 2009 with ambiguous genitalia.[93]
  • The World Health Organization and other UN agencies publish a joint statement against coercive sterilization.[94]

2015

  • Malta becomes the first country to outlaw non-consensual medical interventions to modify sex anatomy, including that of intersex people. In the same law, it also becomes the first jurisdiction to protect intersex and other people from discrimination on grounds of "sex characteristics".[95][96]
  • The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe calls for recognition of a right to not undergo sex affirmation interventions.[97]
  • In July, policies on sex verification in sport excluding women with hyperandrogenism are suspended following the case of Dutee Chand v. Athletics Federation of India (AFI) & The International Association of Athletics Federations, in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.[98]
  • Michaela Raab successfully sues doctors in Nuremberg, Germany who failed to properly advise her. Doctors stated that they "were only acting according to the norms of the time".[99] On 17 December 2015, the Nuremberg State Court rules that the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Clinic must pay damages and compensation.[100]
  • The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice establishes the first Intersex Human Rights Fund, in an attempt to address resourcing issues.[101][102]
  • The Ugandan Registration of Persons Act 2015 allows for the birth registration of a child born a "hermaphrodite", and for children's change of name and change of sex classification.[103][104] Many adult intersex persons are understood to be stateless due to historical difficulties in obtaining identification documents.[104][not specific enough to verify]

2016

2017

2018

  • In February, Asian intersex activists publish the Statement of Intersex Asia and the Asian Intersex Forum, setting out local demands.[126]
  • In April, Latin American and Caribbean intersex activists publish the San José de Costa Rica statement, defining local demands.[127]
  • On 15 August, the German cabinet announce a law to create a new sex designation "diverse" in vital records for intersex people who cannot be clearly assigned either male or female at birth.[128] This complies with an Order of the Federal Constitutional Court.[129] LGBT activists say that the law would be failing to make this category available to non-intersex people, and failing to address concerns about medical interventions.[130]
  • On 28 August, California becomes the first U.S. state to condemn nonconsensual surgeries on intersex children, in Resolution SCR-110.[131][132]

2019

2020

  • In July 2020, Lurie Children's Hospital becomes the first hospital in the United States to stop performing medically unnecessary cosmetic surgeries in intersex infants and publicly apologizes to those harmed by past surgeries.[147]
  • In October 2020, Boston Children's Hospital announces that they will stop performing clitorplasties and vaginoplasties in intersex infants and will wait until the patient can meaningfully participate in conversations about risks and benefits of the procedure and give consent.[148]

See also

References

External links

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