Christiane Völling: Hermaphrodite wins Damage Claim over Removal of Reproductive Organs

Rally on occasion of 1st day in “Zwitter Lawsuit”, Cologne, 12.12.2007
(L.t.r.: Elisabeth Müller, Daniela “Nella” Truffer, Katrin Ann Kunze †, Christiane Völling)

Christiane Völling was the first, and as far as we know only, survivor to successfully sue her mutilator. (In all other cases we know of a lawsuits were made impossible because of the statue of limitations.)

Cologne – A surgeon was ordered to pay 100,000 euros (141,500 dollars) in compensation on Wednesday for performing an operation converting a hermaphrodite into a man without consent more than 30 years ago.

Claimant Christiane Völling, who was born without defining gender characteristics, was 18 years old when her reproductive organs were surgically removed without prior information or consent.

Christiane Völling, now aged 50, had described years of suffering after the operation, including physical impairments, pain and psychological problems. During the trial, seen as setting a precedent, while she demanded ‘at least’ 100,000 euros in compensation, she said she mostly sought ‘moral recompense.’

>>> Full Text: Christiane Völling: Hermaphrodite wins damage claim over removal of reproductive organs (DPA) 

Open Letter of Concern to ESPE 2012, Leipzig 20.-23.09.12

[…] Furthermore, we are deeply saddened to learn that the dissemination of systematic cosmetic amputations or excisions of clitorises considered ‘too big’ on children in europe is  inextricably linked to both ESPE as a society from its very beginning as well as to prominent individual members like e.g. Andrea Prader or Jürgen Bierich, and that they both are praised and immortalized by scientific prizes bearing their names given out in part by ESPE, despite the fact that e.g. the latter stubbornly advocated clitoral excisions on the basis of ‘scientific proof’ that the removal of a functioning clitoris would cause ‘no harm’ to the persons ability of experiencing orgasms. [1] While we recognise the medical achievements of both ESPE and its members, we feel it is intolerable to not also acknowledge their errors and the lifelong suffering they caused to the people concerned. We feel it is long overdue for ESPE to start a process of coming to terms with the past in order to be able to working towards a better future not tarred by unnecessary suffering and grave human rights violations. […]    >>> Fulltext 

Call for support UNHRC Hearing Re: Intersex Genital Mutilations, October 29, 2012

Zwischengeschlecht.org on Facebook

Dear fellow campaigners, allies and friends

Next week, the UN Human Rights Council will debate Intersex Genital Mutilations, on occasion of the Universal Periodic Review of Switzerland during the 14th UPR Session in Geneva, and on the basis of our submission within the Swiss Coalition Shadow Report (see intersex.shadowreport.org and fact sheet below).

Below you’ll find our mailing to all of the UNHRC Missions in Geneva, accompanied by our fact sheet re: Western Genital Mutilation [>>> PDF 75 kb].

We ask if you and/or your group could contact your country’s UN Mission in Geneva and/or other appropriate bodies, seconding our submission/mailing/fact sheet, and ask them to also recommend that Switzerland should take appropriate steps in order to end this grave human rights violation. This will also benefit intersex submissions from other countries already in the pipeline for future UPR sessions. Feel free to ask your allies to do the same.

You’ll find the details of your country’s mission here:
http://www.unog.ch/80256EE600582E34/%28httpPages%29/8CEC446B720477DA80256EF8004CB68C?OpenDocument&expand=1&count=10000#1

Please help us to end intersex genital mutilations! Time is of essence!

In case of questions, please get in touch.

Feel free to redistribute this email.

Thank you for your support!

Kind regards

Daniela Truffer, Markus Bauer / Zwischengeschlecht.org
  

Documentation
‘Intersex Genital Mutilations: History & Current Practice’

>>> Download (PDF, 2.4 MB)   [ TRIGGER WARNING!!! ]

STOP IGM Primer:
What everyone should know about Intersex Genital Mutilations (IGM)!

>>> Download (PDF, 1.95 MB)     

  


       

F A C T   S H E E T    >>> PDF (75 kb)

Western Genital Mutilation a.k.a. Cosmetic Genital Surgery performed on Children
Switzerland 14th Universal Periodic Review 2012

Summary:
Clitoris amputations and other cosmetic “genital corrections” in children’s clinics

Clitoris amputations on young girls have been prevalent in western medicine since the 19th century as therapy for a) masturbation, b) hysteria, and c) “enlarged clitoris”. While amputations motivated by a) and b) had been abandoned between 1900 and 1945, amputations of “enlarged clitorises” took a sharp rise after 1950 and became de facto medical standard on newborns in the 1960s, partly in combination with gonadectomies (castrations). Doctors argued, these amputations would not affect the ability to achieve orgasm. However, in the 1980s they switched to new techniques involving only partial removal of the clitoris, allegedly now preserving sexual sensation. In addition, a new trend emerged towards “masculinizing surgeries”. Since the 1990s, the persons concerned denounce all of these surgeries as “immensely destructive of sexual sensation”, as western genital mutilation, and as violation of their right to physical integrity and self-determination. 2011, UN-CAT criticized cosmetic “genital corrections” and recommended  investigations into the practice (CAT/C/DEU/CO/5 [>>> PDF, 474 kb], point 20. “Intersex people”, p. 6-7).

14th Universal Periodic Review

In 2012 for the first time an NGO of persons concerned and supporters from Switzerland, Zwischengeschlecht.org, is asking the Human Rights Council for help in order to abolish these harmful practices. See issue 18 from Swiss NGO Coalition’s Submission (p. 9):

18. Cosmetic genital surgery performed on children

About 1 child in 1000 is born with “inconclusive“ physical sexual characteristics (hermaphrodism, intersex, disorders of sex development). Such children are very frequently operated on “for cosmetic reasons” at a baby age. Those affected often see these operations as unwanted surgery without medical necessity and evidence. Furthermore, such interventions represent an infringement to the right to physical integrity and self-determination.

Recommendation

Switzerland should establish a commission to deal with the issues of those affected by the consequences of cosmetic genital surgery in an unbiased and fair manner.

In the name of the persons concerned, we petition the members of the Human Rights Council to consider their pleas and to help forcing the Swiss government to abandon mutilating cosmetic surgeries on defenseless children.

Contact:
Daniela Truffer, person concerned and founding member of Zwischengeschlecht.org
info_at_zwischengeschlecht.org
Mobile +41 76 398 06 50

>>> intersex.shadowreport.org
>>> humanrights.4hermaphrodites2.org
>>> stop.genitalmutilation.org  
  

STOP IGM Primer:
What everyone should know about Intersex Genital Mutilations (IGM)!

>>> Download (PDF, 1.95 MB)

Documentation
‘Intersex Genital Mutilations: History & Current Practice’

>>> Download (PDF, 2.4 MB)   [ TRIGGER WARNING!!! ]

Open Letter to ’51st Annual Meeting of ESPE’ 2012
Open Letter to ‘3rd EuroDSD Symposium’ 2011
Open Letter to ’11th EMBL/EMBO Conference’ 2010

 


Subject: Swiss UPR: Genital Mutilation in Children’s Clinics in Switzerland
To: UNHRC Missions in Geneva
From: Daniela Truffer Zwischengeschlecht.org

Dear Madams and Sirs

I’m asking you for your support to end a grave human rights violation in Switzerland, on behalf of our human rights group Zwischengeschlecht.org, representing affected persons, and contributor to the Swiss NGO Coalition Shadow Report, where we outlined our grievances re: cosmetic genital surgeries on children with “atypical genitals” (see fact sheet below and attached).

I was submitted to repeated “genital corrections” myself, as well as to “gonadectomy” (castration/forced sterilisation) and other degrading treatments, about which my parents were lied to, and can testify to the detrimental effects of these irreversible and serious surgeries, also on sexual sensation.

The Swiss government, while quickly to condemn genital cutting in african countries, still refuses to acknowledge the human rights violations perpetrated in local children’s hospitals, let alone setting their own house in order. Despite the fact that recently also the UN Committee on Torture (CAT) criticised the cosmetic genital surgeries on children (see fact sheet).

Please help us, in the name of the future children, so that they can grow up intact and without mutilating surgeries and other degrading “treatments”! Please confront the Swiss government with our grievances, and demand they take appropriate steps!

In case of further questions, as well as suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

Kind regards

Daniela Truffer / Zwischengeschlecht.org

Mobile +41 76 398 06 50

stop.genitalmutilation.org
intersex.shadowreport.org
humanrights.4hermaphrodites2.org
 

STOP IGM Primer:
What everyone should know about Intersex Genital Mutilations (IGM)!

>>> Download (PDF, 1.95 MB)

Documentation
‘Intersex Genital Mutilations: History & Current Practice’

>>> Download (PDF, 2.4 MB)   [ TRIGGER WARNING!!! ]

Open Letter to ’51st Annual Meeting of ESPE’ 2012
Open Letter to ‘3rd EuroDSD Symposium’ 2011
Open Letter to ’11th EMBL/EMBO Conference’ 2010
  


Lawson Wilkins, 1950: “Amputation of the clitoris at the earliest possible time” to prevent “anxiety in parents” – “already existing tradition of clitorectomies” at Johns Hopkins University Hospital “persisting” under Wilkins and Money (2)

Excerpts from: Sandra Eder: “The Volatility of Sex: Intersexuality, Gender and Clinical Practice in the 1950s”, in: Gender & History, Vol. 22 No. 3 November 2010, pp. 692–707.

Throughout the records, children’s sexuality caused a high level of anxiety in parents, especially as they feared psychological problems.

In girls, special attention was paid to the enlarged clitoris, and surgical reduction or amputation was the usual intervention. Surgeons at Hopkins performed clitorectomies on CAH children who were raised as girls, a procedure that was neither discussed nor questioned in the patient records. (53) In the sixteen cases in my sample where ‘enlarged clitoris’ was listed as one of the complaints, surgeons performed a clitorectomy at the earliest possible time after admission on all but one patient. Hopkins seemed to have had an already existing tradition of clitorectomies that persisted through the introduction of cortisone [by Lawson Wilkins] and Money’s gender concept. (54)

As with boys, a major concern for physicians and parents was frequent erections of large clitorises and masturbation. Physicians regularly inquired after such behaviour and often parents addressed it themselves. This resonates with a longer medical tradition to cure masturbation (and insanity) through clitoral surgery. (55) At the Hopkins clinic, this tradition was combined with the social concern that psychological difficulties might arise from growing up as a girl with an enlarged clitoris or phallus; it would raise doubts concerning her sex and trouble her gender role. Psychological adjustment justified depriving ‘a patient of what some authorities have declared the most significant erotic zone in the female’. (56) Again, the body was thought to be more flexible than a child’s gender role. Clearly, an enlarged clitoris initially was more upsetting to parents and physicians than to the children themselves. (57) [pp. 700-701]

Clearly, CAH’s sexual symptoms, such as ‘virilised’ genitals in girls and precocious genitals in boys, caused anxieties in parents and physicians. Medical/surgical intervention provided a solution to a social problem of ambiguous or precocious sex. [p. 704]

The Hopkins protocols, as the publications that resulted from Money’s study became known, created a sense of emergency that encouraged physicians to assign sex quickly and to alter the body surgically in order to achieve psychological healthiness in children with intersexual conditions. (12) The ethics of these medical interventions have been criticised extensively, as adult patients started challenging the irreversible surgery and culture of secrecy and shame that had permeated their treatment. (13) Money’s thesis that gender was learned was quickly replaced by more biological determinant theories. (14) Nevertheless, the practice of early surgical intervention continues to this day. [p. 693]

Note: These 3 excerpts contain all paragraphs regarding clitoral surgery i.e. amputation of the clitoris within the 13 pages text, which is – surprise, surprise! – exclusively centered around questions of “gender”, and does NOT discuss ethics and human rights considerations. 20 years of survivors bearing witness to harmful, non-consensual, purely cosmetic genital surgeries are mentioned exactly once in just 1 single sentence (quoted also above):

“The ethics of these medical interventions have been criticised extensively, as adult patients started challenging the irreversible surgery and culture of secrecy and shame that had permeated their treatment.” (13)

As sources, only scholarly publications are given, but – once again – NO testimonies by survivors themselves – not even by scholarly ones …

NOT once mentioned at all are the various adverse effects of the clitoral surgeries/amputations for the “patients” concerned – an obvious “lack of awareness and attention to the reality of intersex lives [that] biases the presentation of the topic, potentially unintentionally perpetrating the invisibility and objectivation of intersex people” (Koyama/Weasel).

This will not do! “Intersex patients” are human beings with feelings and human rights, who have been greatly wronged by – no matter how well intentioned – unethical “scientists”, “doctors”, and “researchers”, and who are still suffering today. They deserve justice, NOT being served up as guinea pigs for “scientific theories” – again!

>>> Emi Koyama & Lisa Weasel: “From Social Construction to Social Justice” (2002), in:
         “Teaching Intersex Issues. 2nd Ed.” (2003) (PDF, p. 2–9) 

See also:
Lawson Wilkins, Andrea Prader 1950: From Experimentation to Extermination (1) 
Lawson Wilkins et al. (1958, 1971): Cosmetic clitoris amputations (3)

Zwischengeschlecht.org on Facebook

Intersex Genital Mutilations
Human Rights Violations Of Children With Variations Of Sex Anatomy

2014 NGO Report to the UN Committe on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
>>> Download PDF (3.65 MB)     >>>
Table of Contents  

STOP IGM Primer:
What everyone should know about Intersex Genital Mutilations (IGM)!

>>> Download (PDF, 1.95 MB)

  

UN-Committee against Torture urges Germany to investigate Intersex Genital Mutilations and to compensate Survivors

In its 47th session, the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) considered a >>> Shadow Report by Intersexed People in collaboration with Humboldt Law Clinic: Human Rhigts concerning cosmetic genital surgeries on intersexed children.

In its >>> Concluding Observations (PDF), the Committee against Torture criticized especially medically not necessary castrations (unfortunately the only form of cosmetic genital surgeries specifically highlighted in the shadow report) and on pages 6-7 recommended amongst other things, that Germany

(a) Ensure the effective application of legal and medical standards following the best practices of granting informed consent to medical and surgical treatment of intersex people, including full information, orally and in writing, on the suggested treatment, its justification and alternatives;

(b) Undertake investigation of incidents of surgical and other medical treatment of intersex people without effective consent and adopt legal provisions in order to provide redress to the victims of such treatment, including adequate compensation;

This is a big step forward! Hopefully, in the near future all forms of medically not neccessary cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex children will be reorted to UN committees, and considered accordingly.

Intersex (or “inter-sex” and “inter-sexual persons” respectively) were also mentioned in the UN press releases on the review of Germany (Session 1 | Session 2).

Preview: The next the UN-agenda will be Switzerland’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in October 2012, cosmetic genital surgeries will be specifically mentioned in a joint shadow report of 47 Swiss NGOs including Zwischengeschlecht.org. In 2013, Germany’s and Switzerland’s follow-up reports on the implementation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) are due, with shadow reports by NGOs pending, as well as the UPRs of Germany, India and other countries.

Call to Sign Open Letter of Concern to ’53rd ESPE 2014′

>>> Dublin Sept 18–20: Peaceful Intersex Protests vs. ’53rd ESPE’ 2014

STOP Intersex Genital Mutilation!Zwischengeschlecht.org on FacebookDear fellow intersex people, friends, and allies

Please find here the >>> Draft of the Open Letter of Concern (PDF) to D$D docs’ ’53rd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology’, and Irish D$D clinics and universities, which we ask intersex people and allies (and their organisations) to sign, and which we will hand over to the addressees on occasion of the peaceful protests starting next Thursday in Dublin (as a follow-up to last year’s Open Letter to ESPE/PES/etc.’s ‘9th Joint Meeting’ in Milan).

HOW TO SIGN: Please send an email to presse_at_zwischengeschlecht.info (replace _at_ with @) with your NAME, CITY, COUNTRY, and (if applicable) ORGANISATION so we can add your signature. THANKS!

(In case you want to sign the letter not on behalf of your organisation, but in personal capacity, just add ‘Personal Capacity, Affiliation given for identification purposes only’ behind your name and organisation.)

Feel free to spread this invitation to other parties and individuals concerned! Corrections welcome (please remember English is only our third language).
Please respond quickly! Thanks for adding your signature to let the doctors know that it’s NOT OK to cosmetically alter children’s genitals!

Kind regards

Daniela “Nella” Truffer, Markus Bauer
Founding members human rights NGO Zwischengeschlecht.org

>>> Dublin Sept 18–20: Peaceful Intersex Protests vs. ’53rd ESPE’ 2014 

Intersex Genital Mutilation: America’s Double Standard

Dix Poppas, Weill Cornell University and Medical School

While Americans are outraged at the thought of female genital mutilation in Africa, practices just as shocking and unwelcome have been taking place in the US and have remained behind closed doors for years, performed not by a barber in a dingy backroom, but by a certified doctor in a respected hospital in Manhattan. 

People like Janet Green, born with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, also known as undetermined sex say the choice to operate, made by doctors and parents, was subjective in her personal case, as well as countless others.

Many of these surgeries have no medical necessity. It really is a cosmetic surgery that is done on infants and on children. They were done at the expense of their sensation, at the expense of their not being comfortable with intimacy, so the goal of having us be able to be intimate was really lost,” said Green.

Sex therapist Tiger Devore feels they are victims of medical research.

They have been experimenting on our bodies since the fifties, and they have to stop doing that as quickly as possible, because there are lots and lots, and lots of us telling them – it’s not working”, said the former patient.

Devore said the rate of suicides among young males operated on as children has been sky rocketing. He is now crusading for limiting surgeries to adults able to voice their consent.

>>> Continued: Genital mutilation: America’s double standard (Video + Transcript)

“Frankly, we are sick and tired of being lied to and being fobbed off with the same old denials, excuses and cheap promises”

«A Gonad For A Gonad, A Lust Organ For A Lust Organ» - Garry L. Warne (left) at the main entrance of '3rd EuroDSD Symposium', Lübeck 20.5.11 “3rd EuroDSD Symposium” Lübeck, May 21, 2011    –> Open Letter
(Center: Garry L. Warne, Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne)

For 60 years now, the practice of cosmetic genital surgeries on little children with “atypical” genitals continues. In all these years and decades, the endocrinologists, surgeons and other clinicians responsible for these surgeries couldn’t be bothered to gather evidence for the alledged beneficience of these surgeries, or even to do consistent follow-ups or only disclose statistics, but continue to operate on mere anecdotal evidence.

For 20 years now, survivors of these surgeries oppose them publicly, and consistently criticise them as “immensely destructive of sexual sensation and of the sense of bodily integrity”. For 20 years now, the clinicians concerned refuse to listen, let alone acknowledge these grave concerns.

“There is a serious ethical problem here: risky surgeries are being performed as standard care and are not being adequately followed-up. Intersexuals are understandably tired of hearing that ‘long-term follow-up data is needed’ while the surgeries continued to occur.”

There are also many reports and statements by Human Rights Advocacy Groups (e.g. Terre des Femmes 2004, CEDAW 2009, Amnesty Germany and Amnesty Switzerland 2010) and publications by experts in these fields (e.g. Hanny Lightfoot-Klein 2003, Fana Asefaw 2005, Nancy Ehrenreich/Mark Barr 2005) clearly stating that non-consented cosmetic surgeries on children gravely violate human rights (particularly the Right to Physical Integrity) and who underline the similarities and parallels between these surgeries and the practice of female genital mutilations.

>>> Full Text: Open Letter of Concern to “3rd EuroDSD Symposium – From Gene to Gender” (Zwischengeschlecht.org) 

1950: From Experimentation to Extermination (Lawson Wilkins 1)

“STOP Genital Mutilation in Children’s Clinics!” – St. Gallen, February 6, 2011

In 1950, the US-endocrinologist Lawson Wilkins introduced systematic cosmetic surgeries on children with “atypical genitals” at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Staying at Johns Hopkins at that time, visiting Swiss endocrinologist Andrea von Prader introduced this practice in Europe after his return to Zurich in the same year. In 1955, the now infamous sexologist John Money published a justifying theory after the fact, declaring early cosmetic surgeries as (pseudo) standard.

Since the late 1950s, medical guidelines around the globe have been recommending children born with “atypical genitals” a.k.a. “Hermaphrodites/Intersexed/DSD patients” to be surgically “corrected” preferably within the first 18 months of their lives. According to the classic surgeons’ motto “It’s easier to dig a hole than to build a pole”, most of them are “made to girls”, although in the meantime urologists increasingly indulge in the “challenge of masculinization”.

Today, according to studies by the mutilators themselves, at least 90% of the population born with “indeterminate” or otherwise “unusual” sex anatomies were (and still are!) submitted to on average multiple medically unnecessary genital surgeries starting in early childhood, resulting in appallingly high risk of lifelong loss of genital sensation, physical pain and massive psychological traumata.

The cosmetic “treatments” include:

  • “corrective surgery”, e.g. amputation of the penis/clitoris a.k.a. “clitoral reduction”; “penile recostruction”; “hypospadias repair”; etc.
  • carving an artificial “neo-vagina” which has to be dilated permanently
  • castration, followed by lifelong hormone “therapy”
  • pre-natal hormone “therapy” (introduced in the late 1970s)
  • concealing the truth from the “patients”

What these systematic non-consented surgeries actually do FEEL like for the “patients”, was never part of the equation, let alone their alleged “benefits” clinically tested. Adult “patients” were simply left behind by the hundreds of thousands.

Arguably, the continuing forced “medical treatments” of children with “atypical” genitals are one of the worst human rights violation perpetrated in the “developed countries” since the end of World War II.

>>> Full Text: Hermaphrodites in the “Developed World”: Extermination by Surgery vs. Struggle for Human Rights – Victims of Modernity – 1950: From Experimentation to Extermination – A Human Rights Issue! 

See also:
Lawson Wilkins: “Amputation of the clitoris at the earliest possible time”
  
to prevent “anxiety in parents” (2)
Lawson Wilkins et al. (1958, 1971): Cosmetic clitoris amputations (3)

Zwischengeschlecht.org on Facebook

Intersex Genital Mutilations
Human Rights Violations Of Children With Variations Of Sex Anatomy

2014 NGO Report to the UN Committe on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
>>> Download PDF (3.65 MB)     >>>
Table of Contents  

STOP IGM Primer:
What everyone should know about Intersex Genital Mutilations (IGM)!

>>> Download (PDF, 1.95 MB)

Petition to end genital mutilations in children’s clinics

CEDAW #43 To End Forced Genital Surgeries Now!Advocates for Informed Choice (AIC) has an online petition ready to sign. Though the main angle is genital surgeries on girls with ‘too big’ clitorises, via footnote (3) the petition covers all forms of mutilations of children with ‘atypical genitals’, including ‘hypospadias corrections’.

>>> Please sign the petition here!

Thank you for your solidarity!