Sex assignment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about sex assignment in humans. For sex assignment in other animals, see sexing.

Sex assignment (sometimes known as gender assignment) is the discernment of an infant's sex at birth.[1] Assignment may be done prior to birth through prenatal sex discernment. In the majority of births, a relative, midwife, nurse or physician inspects the genitalia when the baby is delivered and sex is assigned without ambiguity.[2]

Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's anatomical sex and phenotype. The number of births where the baby is intersex—where they do not fit into typical definitions of male and female at birth—has been reported to be as low as 0.018%, but is often estimated at around 0.2%.[3][4][5] The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 0.02% to 0.05%.[6] These conditions may complicate sex assignment.[7] Other intersex conditions involve atypical chromosomes, gonads or hormones.[3][8] Reinforcing sex assignments through surgical or hormonal interventions is often considered to violate the individual's human rights.[9][10][11][12]

The act of assignment carries the implicit expectation that future gender identity will develop in alignment with the physical anatomy, assignment, and rearing.[13] In about 99.7% of cases, the child's gender identity will match their sex assignment.[14] If sex assignment and gender identity do not align, the person may be transgender or gender non-conforming (GNC).[15][16][17][18] The sex assignment of an intersex individual may also contradict their future gender identity.[19]

Terminology[]

Sex assignment is the discernment of an infant's sex at birth.[20][21] Terms that may be related to sex assignment are:

Assigned male at birth (AMAB): a person of any age and irrespective of current gender whose sex assignment at birth resulted in a declaration of "male". Synonyms: male assigned at birth (MAAB) and designated male at birth (DMAB).[22][23]

Assigned female at birth (AFAB): a person of any age and irrespective of current gender whose sex assignment at birth resulted in a declaration of "female". Synonyms: female assigned at birth (FAAB) and designated female at birth (DFAB).[22][23]

Intersex, in humans and other animals, describes variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".[8] These may complicate the sex assignment of a newborn and can result a phenotypical sex assignment that is inconsistent with normal genotype.[7][19]

Transgender people have a gender identity, or gender expression, that differs from their assigned sex.[16][17][18] Transgender people are sometimes called transsexual if they desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another.

Sex reassignment : a treatment program consisting of a combination of psychological, medical, and surgical methods intended to physically change a person's sexual characteristics.

History[]

A Dutch report on gender registration states that sex registration was introduced in 1811 as an intrinsic component in population registration, due to gender-specific rights and responsibilities, such as military conscription.[24] Many discriminatory provisions in legislation no longer exist, but the provisions remain for rationales that include "speed of identification procedures".[24]

Assignment in cases of infants with intersex traits, or cases of trauma[]

Intersex topics
Intersex flag
hide
Human rights and legal issues
Medicine and biology
Society and culture
History and events
Rights by country
See also
  • v
  • t
Main articles: Intersex medical interventions and History of intersex surgery

Observation or recognition of an infant's sex may be complicated in the case of intersex infants and children, and in cases of early trauma. In such cases, sex assignment is generally taken to require medical treatment to confirm that assignment, but this is disputed in part due to the human rights implications of such treatment.[8][25]

Intersex broadly denotes the presence of atypical sex characteristics: at least some aspect of the genitalia, internal organs, secondary sex characteristics, gonadal tissue, or chromosomes is more typical of the other sex. When the external genitalia appear to be in between, they are described as ambiguous.[26]

Cases of trauma include the famous John/Joan case, where sexologist John Money claimed successful reassignment from male to female at age 17 months of a boy whose penis was destroyed during circumcision. However, this claim was later shown to be largely false. The subject, David Reimer, later identified as a man.

The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 4,500 (0.05% to 0.02%).[6] Typical examples would be an unusually prominent clitoris in an otherwise apparently typical girl, or complete cryptorchidism in an otherwise apparently typical boy. In most of these cases, a sex is tentatively assigned and the parents told that tests will be performed to confirm the apparent sex. Typical tests in this situation might include a pelvic ultrasound to determine the presence of a uterus, a testosterone or 17α-hydroxyprogesterone level, and/or a karyotype. In some of these cases a pediatric endocrinologist is consulted to confirm the tentative sex assignment. The expected assignment is usually confirmed within hours to a few days in these cases.

In a much smaller proportion of cases, the process of assignment is more complex, and involves both discerning what the biological elements of characteristic sex may be and choosing the best sex assignment for the purposes of rearing the child. Approximately 1 in 20,000[citation needed] infants is born with enough ambiguity that assignment becomes a more drawn-out process of multiple tests and intensive education of the parents about sexual differentiation. In some of these cases, it is clear that the child will face physical difficulties or social stigma as they grow up, and deciding upon the sex of assignment involves weighing the advantages and disadvantages of either assignment. Intersex activists have criticised "normalising" procedures performed on infants and children, who are unable to provide informed consent.[25]

History[]

In European societies, Roman law, post-classical Canon law, and later Common law, referred to a person's sex as male, female or hermaphrodite, with legal rights as male or female depending on the characteristics that appeared most dominant. Under Roman law, a hermaphrodite had to be classed as either male or female.[27] The 12th-century Decretum Gratiani states that "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails".[28][29][30] The foundation of common law, the 16th Century Institutes of the Lawes of England, described how a hermaphrodite could inherit "either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile."[31][32] Legal cases where sex assignment was placed in doubt have been described over the centuries.

With the medicalization of intersex, criteria for assignment have evolved over the decades, as clinical understanding of biological factors and diagnostic tests have improved, as surgical techniques have changed and potential complications have become clearer, and in response to the outcomes and opinions of adults who have grown up with various intersex conditions.

Before the 1950s, assignment was based almost entirely on the appearance of the external genitalia. Although physicians recognized that there were conditions in which the apparent secondary sexual characteristics could develop contrary to the person's sex, and conditions in which the gonadal sex did not match that of the external genitalia, their ability to understand and diagnose such conditions in infancy was too poor to attempt to predict future development in most cases.

In the 1950s, endocrinologists developed a basic understanding of the major intersex conditions such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), androgen insensitivity syndrome, and mixed gonadal dysgenesis. The discovery of cortisone allowed survival of infants with severe CAH for the first time. New hormone tests and karyotypes allowed more confident diagnosis in infancy and prediction of future development.

Sex assignment became more than choosing a sex of rearing, but also began to include surgical treatment. Undescended testes could be retrieved. A greatly enlarged clitoris could be amputated to the usual size, but attempts to create a penis were unsuccessful. John Money and others controversially believed that children were more likely to develop a gender identity that matched sex of rearing than might be determined by chromosomes, gonads, or hormones. The resulting medical model was termed the "Optimal gender model".[33]

The view of gender as a social construct, and gender identity as a result of nurture rather than nature reached widespread acceptance, at least in liberal, progressive, and academic portions of Western society. The primary goal of assignment was to choose the sex that would lead to the least inconsistency between external anatomy and assigned psyche (gender identity). This led to the recommendation that any child without a penis or with a penis too small to penetrate a vagina could be raised as a girl, taught to be a girl, and would develop a female gender identity, and that this would be the best way to minimize future discrepancy between psyche and external anatomy in those infants determined to be genetically male (i.e. XY genotype) but without a penis that meets medical norms (e.g., cloacal exstrophy), and also in those like in the John/Joan case who lost it to accidental trauma in early infancy.

From the 1960s, pediatric surgeons attempted and claimed success with reconstruction of infant genitalia, especially enlargement or construction of vaginas. The recommended rules of assignment and surgery from the late 1960s until the 1990s were roughly:

  • Any XX infant, no matter how virilized, should be raised as a girl to preserve the chance of future fertility. A large, protruding clitoris should be reduced in size with a nerve-sparing recession or reduction rather than simple amputation.
  • Any undervirilized XY infant should be raised as a boy if the penis could be expected to be large enough to stand to urinate and to insert into a vagina for coitus. If it was too small or atypically formed (e.g., cloacal exstrophy) for these functions, it was recommended that the baby be assigned as female, any gonads removed, a vaginal opening surgically constructed, and estrogen provided at puberty.
  • An infant with mixed chromosomes (e.g., mixed gonadal dysgenesis or true hermaphroditism) could be raised either way depending on appearance of genitalia and size of phallus.
  • Gender identity is set by 2 years of age and reassignment after that age should not be attempted unless requested by the patient.[citation needed]
  • Non-disclosure of the intersex condition to the individual on whom sex assignment treatment was conducted.[34][35]

Since the 1990s, a number of factors have led to changes in the recommended criteria for assignment and surgery. These factors have included:

  • Public disclosure by intersex individuals and organizations about unsatisfactory sexual function or incongruent gender identity, and criticism of infant surgery for "psychosocial rationales".
  • In 1997, the rest of David Reimer's story, referred to above as John Money's John/Joan case, was made public. He was the boy who had lost his penis to a botched circumcision at 8 months in 1966, was reassigned from boy to girl at 18 months with further surgery to remove testes and estrogen treatment beginning at age 12. Although John Money had described the reassignment as a success in the 1970s, Reimer went public with his account of continuing to have a male gender identity despite the reassignment to a female sex of rearing. At age 15, Reimer reverted to living as a male. At age 38, he committed suicide.
  • A large proportion of XY infants born with cloacal exstrophy and raised as female from early infancy have requested reassignment to male gender in late childhood and adolescence.

Clinical recommendations in the 2000s for assignment changed as a result:[citation needed]

  • Raise nearly all XX infants with functional ovaries as female. The only rare exception would be completely and unambiguously virilized XX infants with CAH, who might be raised as male with genital surgery deferred.
  • Raise most ambiguous XY infants with testes as male unless the external genitalia are more female than male, marked androgen insensitivity is present, and testes are absent or non-functional. Raise as male any XY infant with unambiguous micropenis. Raise as male any XY infant with functional testes and normal androgen sensitivity but atypically formed or absent penis.
  • Raise infants with mixed gonadal tissue, true hermaphroditism, or other chromosome anomalies as the sex most consistent with external genitalia, since gonads are usually nonfunctional.
  • Gender identity is set by 1–2 years of age and reassignment after that age should not be attempted unless requested by the patient.

These recommendations do not explicitly necessitate surgical or hormonal interventions to reinforce sex assignments, but such medical management persists worldwide, utilizing rationales such as the mitigation of parental distress and trauma, reducing the likelihood of stigma, making a child feel more "normal", and improving marriage prospects.[36]

In 2011, Christiane Völling won the first successful case brought by an intersex person against a surgeon for non-consensual surgical intervention described by the International Commission of Jurists as "an example of an individual who was subjected to sex reassignment surgery without full knowledge or consent".[37]

Controversy[]

Further information: Intersex human rights

Controversies over surgical aspects of intersex management, have often focused on controversies regarding indications for surgery and optimal timing. However, intersex and human rights organizations have criticized medical models as they are not based on the consent of the individuals on whom such irreversible medical treatments are conducted, and outcomes may be inappropriate or poor.[36][38] Anne Tamar-Mattis, for example, states that, "The true choice is not between early and late [surgery], but early surgery versus patient autonomy."[38] Human rights institutions now refer to such practices as "harmful practices".[9]

However, while surgical interventions remain experimental, and clinical confidence in constructing "normal" genital anatomies has not been borne out, medically credible pathways other than surgery do not yet exist.[39] Changes to clinical recommendations in the current millennium do not yet address human rights concerns about consent, and the child's right to identity, privacy, freedom from torture and inhuman treatment, and physical integrity.[19][10][11]

In 2011, Christiane Völling won the first successful case brought against a surgeon for non-consensual surgical intervention. The Regional Court of Cologne, Germany, awarded her €100,000.[40]

In 2015, the Council of Europe recognized the right for intersex persons to not undergo sex assignment treatment, identifying issues with the pathologization of intersex bodies as inherently disordered.[19] In April 2015, Malta became the first country to recognize a right to bodily integrity and physical autonomy, and outlaw non-consensual modifications to sex characteristics. The Act was widely welcomed by civil society organizations.[41][42][43][44][45]

Reassignment of sex or gender[]

Main articles: Sex reassignment therapy and Sex reassignment surgery

Sex reassignment surgery is when a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered after an original sex assignment in infancy. This may occur in several types of circumstances.

  • An early reassignment may be made to correct a clear error. The most common example of this is when a newborn is assumed to be male and assigned as such despite absent testes. If at 1–4 weeks of age it is discovered because of newborn screening, a salt-wasting crisis, or investigation of the cryptorchidism that they have ovaries, uterus, an XX karyotype, and CAH, the child is likely to be reassigned as female. When virilization is complete and unambiguous, reassignment may be declined or deferred. Any reassignment after the first month or two is no longer considered an "early reassignment".
  • There have been cases where a male infant has been reassigned to female at several days, weeks, or months of age because of an irreparable birth defect of the genitalia or loss of the penis due to trauma or other accident. This is no longer recommended by most experts in the field because of the publicity surrounding similar failed reassignments which became public in the 1990s, such as that of David Reimer.
  • There have been cases where a child with an intersex condition has made known that they are of a gender identity that does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth, and has requested reassignment. Examples of this have occurred in adolescents with several forms of CAH and 5-alpha-reductase deficiency.
  • The most common type of reassignment occurs when a child or adult with no detectable intersex condition makes known that they are of a different gender identity to the gender identity they were previously known by, and either requests or asserts the recognition of their gender. Such a person is described as transgender. Therapy and/or surgery may be performed in adulthood and, since the 2000s, adolescence to align their body with their gender identity. People who seek these processes often form a subset identity among transgender people known as transsexual, albeit not all may identify as such.

Challenges to requirements for sex assignment[]

In recent years, the perceived need to legally assign sex is increasingly being challenged.[24][46] A report for the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice states "Gender increasingly seems to be perceived as a ‘sensitive’ identity feature, but so far is not regarded, nor protected as such in privacy regulations".[24] Australian government guidelines state that "departments and agencies that collect sex and/or gender information must not collect information unless it is necessary for, or directly related to, one or more of the agency's functions or activities"[47]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Rathus SA, Nevid JS, Rathus LF (2010). Human Sexuality in a World of Diversity. Allyn & Bacon. p. 168. ISBN 978-0205786060.
  2. ^ Reiner WG (2002). "Gender identity and sex assignment: a reappraisal for the 21st century". Adv. Exp. Med. Biol. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. 511: 175–89, discussion 189–97. doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-0621-8_11. ISBN 978-1-4613-5162-7. PMID 12575762.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b Sax, Leonard (August 2002). "How common is intersex? a response to Anne Fausto-Sterling". Journal of Sex Research. 39 (3): 174–178. doi:10.1080/00224490209552139. ISSN 0022-4499. PMID 12476264. S2CID 33795209.
  4. ^ Blackless, Melanie; Charuvastra, Anthony; Derryck, Amanda; Fausto-Sterling, Anne; Lauzanne, Karl; Lee, Ellen (11 February 2000). "How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis" (PDF). American Journal of Human Biology. 12 (2): 151–166. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1520-6300(200003/04)12:2<151::AID-AJHB1>3.0.CO;2-F. PMID 11534012. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  5. ^ "On the number of intersex people". Intersex Human Rights Australia. Retrieved 2018-05-10.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b Witchel, Selma Feldman (2018). "Disorders of Sex Development". Best Practice & Research. Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 48: 90–102. doi:10.1016/j.bpobgyn.2017.11.005. ISSN 1521-6934. PMC 5866176. PMID 29503125.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b Mieszczak, J; Houk, CP; Lee, PA (Aug 2009). "Assignment of the sex of rearing in the neonate with a disorder of sex development". Curr Opin Pediatr. 21 (4): 541–7. doi:10.1097/mop.0b013e32832c6d2c. PMC 4104182. PMID 19444113.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b c United Nations; Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (2015). Free & Equal Campaign Fact Sheet: Intersex (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-03-04.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b UN Committee against Torture; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child; UN Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities; UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; Juan Méndez, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; Dainius Pῡras, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; Dubravka Šimonoviæ, Special Rapporteur on violence against women its causes and consequences; Marta Santos Pais, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Violence against Children; African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights; Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (October 24, 2016), "Intersex Awareness Day – Wednesday 26 October. End violence and harmful medical practices on intersex children and adults, UN and regional experts urge", Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, archived from the original on November 21, 2016
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics NEK-CNE (November 2012). On the management of differences of sex development. Ethical issues relating to "intersexuality".Opinion No. 20/2012 (PDF). 2012. Berne. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-23.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b Involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people in Australia Archived 2015-09-23 at the Wayback Machine, Australian Senate Community Affairs Committee, October 2013.
  12. ^ World Health Organization (2015). Sexual health, human rights and the law. Geneva: World Health Organization. ISBN 9789241564984.
  13. ^ Cecilia Hardacker; Kelly Ducheny; Magda Houlberg (17 October 2018). Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Health and Aging. Springer. p. 3. ISBN 978-3-319-95031-0. The government, society, healthcare and school systems, and the child's parents have traditionally assumed that all children with a female sex assigned at birth will grow up to be women and all children with a male sex assigned at birth will grow up to be men. It has been assumed that people are cisgender, in other words, that people's sex assigned at birth was automatically identical to their gender identity - which is their personal felt experience of gender, of being male, female, a combination of male and female, or a unique blend of those genders. It was also assumed that gender was binary and that there are only two ways to experience gender either as a girl/woman or as a boy/man.
  14. ^ Gates, Gary J. (2011). "How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender?" (PDF). Williams Institute. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-02-14. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  15. ^ Shaw, Alison; Ardener, Shirley (2005). Changing sex and bending gender, p. 21. Berghahn Books, ISBN 978-1-84545-099-1
  16. ^ Jump up to: a b Terry Altilio; Shirley Otis-Green (2011). Oxford Textbook of Palliative Social Work. Oxford University Press. p. 380. ISBN 978-0199838271. Archived from the original on December 1, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation [GLAAD], 2007).
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b Craig J. Forsyth; Heith Copes (2014). Encyclopedia of Social Deviance. Sage Publications. p. 740. ISBN 978-1483364698. Archived from the original on December 1, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identities, gender expressions, and/or behaviors are different from those culturally associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.
  18. ^ Jump up to: a b Marla Berg-Weger (2016). Social Work and Social Welfare: An Invitation. Routledge. p. 229. ISBN 978-1317592020. Archived from the original on December 1, 2016. Retrieved April 12, 2016. Transgender: An umbrella term that describes people whose gender identity or gender expression differs from expectations associated with the sex assigned to them at birth.
  19. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Council of Europe; Commissioner for Human Rights (April 2015), Human rights and intersex people, Issue Paper, archived from the original on 2016-01-06
  20. ^ "Terminology | Adolescent and School Health". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). December 18, 2019. Archived from the original on May 7, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  21. ^ Raveenthiran, V (2017). "Neonatal Sex Assignment in Disorders of Sex Development: A Philosophical Introspection". Journal of Neonatal Surgery. 6 (3): 58. doi:10.21699/jns.v6i3.604. ISSN 2226-0439. PMC 5593477. PMID 28920018.
  22. ^ Jump up to: a b Harrington, Lee (May 2016). Traversing Gender: Understanding Transgender Realities. Mystic Productions Press. pp. 50, 56. ISBN 9781942733836. Archived from the original on 2016-12-21.
  23. ^ Jump up to: a b Serano, Julia (October 2013). Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive. Seal Press. p. 301. ISBN 9781580055048. Archived from the original on 2016-12-21.
  24. ^ Jump up to: a b c d van den Brink, Marjolein; Tigchelaar, Jet (2014), M/F and beyond, Gender registration by the state and the legal position of transgender persons. English summary, Ministerie van Veiligheid & Justitie, archived from the original on 2016-03-04
  25. ^ Jump up to: a b Cabral, Mauro; Carpenter, Morgan, eds. (2014), Intersex Issues in the International Classification of Diseases: a revision, archived from the original on 2015-10-29
  26. ^ Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, Erica A. Eugster (2004). Pediatric endocrinology: mechanisms, manifestations, and management, p. 253. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, ISBN 978-0-7817-4059-3
  27. ^ Roller, Lynn E. (1997). "The Ideology of the Eunuch Priest". Gender & History. 9 (3): 542–559. doi:10.1111/1468-0424.00075.
  28. ^ Decretum Gratiani, C. 4, q. 2 et 3, c. 3
  29. ^ "Decretum Gratiani (Kirchenrechtssammlung)". Bayerische StaatsBibliothek (Bavarian State Library). February 5, 2009. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016.
  30. ^ Raming, Ida; Macy, Gary; Bernard J, Cook (2004). A History of Women and Ordination. Scarecrow Press. p. 113.
  31. ^ E Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, Institutes 8.a. (1st Am. Ed. 1812) (16th European ed. 1812).
  32. ^ Greenberg, Julie (1999). "Defining Male and Female: Intersexuality and the Collision Between Law and Biology". Arizona Law Review. 41: 277–278. SSRN 896307.
  33. ^ Australian Senate; Community Affairs References Committee (October 2013). Involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people in Australia. Canberra: Community Affairs References Committee. ISBN 9781742299174. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23.
  34. ^ Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics NEK-CNE (November 2012). On the management of differences of sex development. Ethical issues relating to "intersexuality".Opinion No. 20/2012 (PDF). 2012. Berne. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-23.
  35. ^ Holmes, Morgan. "Is Growing up in Silence Better Than Growing up Different?". Intersex Society of North America. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2015-12-27.
  36. ^ Jump up to: a b Carpenter, Morgan; Organisation Intersex International Australia (February 6, 2015). "Submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Rights Snapshot Report". Sydney: Organisation Intersex International Australia. Archived from the original on April 13, 2015.
  37. ^ International Commission of Jurists. "SOGI Casebook Introduction, Chapter six: Intersex". Retrieved 2015-12-27.
  38. ^ Jump up to: a b Tamar-Mattis, A. (August 2014). "Patient advocate responds to DSD surgery debate". Journal of Pediatric Urology. 10 (4): 788–789. doi:10.1016/j.jpurol.2014.03.019. ISSN 1477-5131. PMID 24909610.
  39. ^ Liao, Lih-Mei; Wood, Dan; Creighton, Sarah M (September 28, 2015). "Parental choice on normalising cosmetic genital surgery". BMJ. 351: –5124. doi:10.1136/bmj.h5124. ISSN 1756-1833. PMID 26416098. S2CID 20580500.
  40. ^ Zwischengeschlecht (December 17, 2015). "Nuremberg Hermaphrodite Lawsuit: Michaela "Micha" Raab Wins Damages and Compensation for Intersex Genital Mutilations!" (text). Archived from the original on May 11, 2016. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  41. ^ Cabral, Mauro (April 8, 2015). "Making depathologization a matter of law. A comment from GATE on the Maltese Act on Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics". Global Action for Trans Equality. Archived from the original on July 4, 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-03.
  42. ^ OII Europe (April 1, 2015). "OII-Europe applauds Malta's Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act. This is a landmark case for intersex rights within European law reform". Archived from the original on May 22, 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-03.
  43. ^ Carpenter, Morgan (April 2, 2015). "We celebrate Maltese protections for intersex people". Organisation Intersex International Australia. Archived from the original on July 4, 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-03.
  44. ^ Star Observer (2 April 2015). "Malta passes law outlawing forced surgical intervention on intersex minors". Star Observer. Archived from the original on 14 August 2015.
  45. ^ Reuters (1 April 2015). "Surgery and Sterilization Scrapped in Malta's Benchmark LGBTI Law". The New York Times.
  46. ^ Chan, Emily. "Get gender off birth certificates, B.C. activists argue". CTV News. Archived from the original on 2015-11-18. Retrieved 2016-01-01.
  47. ^ Australia; Attorney General's Department (2013). Australian Government Guidelines on the Recognition of Sex and Gender. Archived from the original on 2015-07-01.
Retrieved from ""