Hermaphrodites with Attitude (Summer 1995)

The Intersex Society of North America, founded in 1993, advocates ending shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries of intersex peoples. The word hermaphrodite was chosen for their quarterly publication to counter physicians’ assertions that life as a hermaphrodite would be worthless. It was a “way to break the vicious cycle in which shame produces silence, silence condones surgery, and surgery produces more shame. The trail work in the other direction as well: surgery perpetuates shame, shame perpetuates silence, and silence condemns us (and intersexual infants yet to be born) to hell.”