• Bodies Like Ours would like to congratulate the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) on naming a new Executive Director to replace outgoing executive director and founder, Cheryl Chase. Incoming ED, Dr. Monica Casper will take over ISNA and lead the organization that opened so many doors to great places. Congratulations to Dr. Monica Casper on becoming the new Executive Director of ISNA. Read more. To learn more about ISNA, please visit their website.

10/03/2002

• Columbus Alive, a weekly alternative newspaper in Columbus, OH, has published an article about PFLAG's adoption of an Intersex Policy Statement. Janet Green of Bodies Like Ours was interviewed and quoted for the article. To read the article, please visit the website of Columbus Alive.

Summer 2002

• Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychology. Intersexed experience has been explored in only a handful of psychoanalytic reports, none of which examine the effects of this treatment paradigm . This paper presents the case of a woman who feared she is intersexed. The dynamics, transference, and countertransference configurations reenact the empathic failure implicit in her medical treatment and her family life, namely a caretaker’s preoccupation with the patient’s unusual anatomy, rather than her trauma. Williams 2002, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 3, 455-474. Reprinted here with permission of the author and the Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychology. Read the entire paper. The author of this case study paper, Dr. Nina Williams, Psy.D is a Founding Board member of Bodies Like Ours.

08/13/2002

• Fathering Magazine online published an article by Alice Dreger about intersex. It is primarily a comprehensive Intersex 101 for new and expectant parents. Read the article here. That link will take you to Fathering Magazine online. Bodies Like Ours has also reprinted with permission the entire article. You can find it here without all the annoying pop-up ads.

07/27/2002

• ISNA founding executive to retire
  Cheryl Chase, the founding Executive Director of Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) announced that she plans to retire from her position by December 31, 2002. Chase created ISNA in 1993 as a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to systematic change within the medical community to end shame, secrecy and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with atypical reproductive anatomies. ISNA is currently conducting a search for a new Executive Director. Read the job announcement.

07/13/2002

• Rocky Mountain News has a story about an intersexed person who tried to keep her medical condition a secret. A police officer thought it would be fun to see if anyone he knew had a record and discovered her secret. The result has been an egregious invasion of privacy and has caused her massive amounts of grief. The county of Denver has paid her a small settlement. Here's the story.

04/26/2002

• ABC News 20/20 examined the controversy over infant cosmetic genital surgery on 4/19/2002. The report featured Cheryl Chase, Executive Director of ISNA; Hida Viloria, a woman who grew up with her clitoris intact; Dr, Bruce Wilson, a pediatric endocrinologist who believes early genital surgeries are wrong; and a pro-surgery pediatric urologist, Dr. Kenneth Glassburg. Dr. Glassburg believes that Hida would have been better off having early genital surgery, even though he never met this woman who grew up happy and well-adjusted with her clitoris the way it is. This modern day Josef Mengele also believes that survivors who are now speaking out against these misguided surgeries are "unfortunate historical footnotes" (Is It a Boy or a Girl, Discovery Channel; available for purchase through ISNA) Read more.

04/23/2002  

• NOW Times Summer 2002 issue publishes an article about atypical genitalia and surgery. The article includes the personal stories of Janet Green, Executive Director of Bodies Like Ours, and Debbie Hartman, the mother of a child with Mosaic Syndrome. Janet has from Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. Debbie is on the Board of both Bodies Like Ours and ISNA Both are tireless advocates for the elimination of cosmetic infant genital surgeries. Janet's story was written under a pseudonym of Dandara Hill.

3/14/2002

• Recent published articles appear to show a link between enviromental hormones and the development of abnormal sexual characteristics. Read More