OII-USA

Organisation Intersex International - United States of America
Abbreviation OII-USA
Formation February 2011
Type NGO
Purpose Intersex human rights
Region served
 United States
Director
 Hida Viloria
Website oii-usa.org

OII-USA was founded in February 2011[1] The director of OII-USA is author and activist Hida Viloria.[1][2] Claudia Astorino is an associate director.[3]

Mission

OII-USA aims to campaign for the human rights of intersex people, particularly rights to self-determination and bodily integrity. It also aims to support intersex individuals, and provide information on the actual life experiences of people with intersex variations to professionals working providing services to them, including medical personnel, psychological experts, sexologists, sociologists and academics.[4]

Activities

OII-USA advocates for human rights for intersex people in the United States via personal communication, public speaking, publishing, and lobbying. The organization provides peer support, news updates, information, and educational resources regarding intersex people, including the documents Brief Guidelines for Intersex Allies and Your Beautiful Child: Information for Parents, a groundbreaking resource of information for parents including links to unbiased medical studies regarding "normalizing" genital surgeries and hormone treatments of intersex infants and minors .[1][5]

On December 10, 2013, OII-USA Executive Director Hida Viloria became the first openly intersex person to speak at the United Nations, educating about the human rights violations intersex people face and the need for legal protection from discrimination at the Human Rights Day event, "Sport Comes Out Against Homophobia".[6][7] Viloria has been lobbying the U.N. for the inclusion of intersex people in their human rights efforts [8] and, in the spring of 2013, assisted the U.N. Human Rights Office in drafting the definition of intersex people in their groundbreaking Free & Equal Campaign for LGBT Equality.[9]

Media Activism & Visibility

Recent broadcast interviews with OII-USA spokespeople include an introduction to intersex with Director Viloria and Associate Director Claudia Astorino on Huffington Post Live, November 2013.[10] In October 2013 Viloria provided expert testimony for the Spanish language television court show Caso Cerrado,[11] and she was interviewed on BBC World Services radio in November regarding Germany's third gender law for intersex infants [12] and in May regarding the ground-breaking U.S. lawsuit by the parents of an intersex child against the doctors that operated on him as an infant.[13] Director Viloria and Associate Director Astorino both write about intersex in their respective blogs Intersex and Out and Full Frontal Activism: Intersex and Awesome, and Viloria has written about intersex in The Advocate, The Global Herald, Ms., and others, and Astorino in Autostraddle.

Astorino was critical of media coverage of the story that Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps is dating an intersex person, describing the coverage as a "scandal" and declaring: "Intersex people exist, and we’re fighting for our basic human rights. Stop treating us as props and oddities."[14] Astorino criticizes inaccurate treatment of 'intersex' and 'transgender' as synonyms and notes that speculating on the future of the relationship asks readers "to ponder, in effect, whether anyone accepts intersex people enough to date them at all."[14]

Birth assignments and surgical treatment

Articles specifically focusing on intersex birth registrations by Hida Viloria can be found at The Advocate,[15] and The Global Herald.[16] Her work focusing on "normalising" surgeries has been published at The Advocate.[17]

Access to sport

Hida Viloria has prior experience in advising the International Olympic Committee on intersex perspectives in access to sport, and she has continued this work as part of OII-USA.[18][19][20] With Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño,[21] Viloria has argued that Olympic sex testing is applied in a way that targets only 'butch' women, those who are "masculine looking".[19] On International Human Rights Day 2013, Hida Vilora spoke as director of OII-USA at the United Nations event, "Sport Comes Out Against Homophobia".[22][23]

Affiliations

OII-USA is a national affiliate of Organisation Intersex International, and a member of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Welcome to OII-USA, promoting human rights and bodily integrity for intersex people!, OII-USA, January 15, 2012
  2. ↑ Op-ed: Intersex, the Final Coming-Out Frontier, Hida Viloria at The Advocate, 12 June 2013.
  3. ↑ Claudia Is Intersex, Let’s Talk About It, Claudia Astorino at Autostraddle, February 20, 2013.
  4. ↑ Our mission, OII-USA
  5. ↑ Your Beautiful Child: Information for Parents, OII-USA, May 16, 2013.
  6. ↑ International Human Rights Day 2013: Sport Comes Out Against Homophobia, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, December 2, 2013.
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ Open Letter: A Call for the Inclusion of Human Rights for Intersex People, ILGA-Europe, December 10, 2012
  9. ↑
  10. ↑ Is being intersex a third gender?, Huffington Post Live, November 2013
  11. ↑
  12. ↑
  13. ↑
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Astorino, Claudia (November 24, 2014). "The real Michael Phelps 'scandal' is the offensive portrayal of intersex people". The Guardian (theguardian.com). Retrieved November 24, 2014.
  15. ↑ Germany’s Third Gender Law Fails on Equality, The Advocate, November 2013
  16. ↑ Germany’s Third Gender Law: Not What Intersex People Most Need, The Global Herald, November 2013
  17. ↑ Why We Must Protect Intersex Babies, The Advocate, September 27, 2013
  18. ↑ The IOC's unkind cuts, Roger Brigham, Bay Area Reporter, March 11, 2010.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Reexamining Rationales of “Fairness”: An Athlete and Insider's Perspective on the New Policies on Hyperandrogenism in Elite Female Athletes, The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, 2012.
  20. ↑ Gender Rules in Sport – Leveling The Playing Field, Or Reversed Doping?, Hida Viloria, The Global Herald, April 11, 2010.
  21. ↑ Well, Is She Or Isn't She?, SI, September 7, 2009
  22. ↑ Sport Comes Out Against Homophobia, UN Live United Nations TV, December 10, 2013
  23. ↑ At UN human rights event, Navratilova and Collins decry homophobic violence, United Nations UN News Centre, December 10, 2013

External links