Commentary and opinion of Curtis E. Hinkle, Intersex activist
Alice Dreger caused great damage to the intersex movement and let me give just a small example of how she threw oil on the fire.
While campaigning against early genital surgery, she became a staunch defender of Anne Lawrence who wrote the following journal article.
Lawrence, A. A. (2006). Clinical and theoretical parallels between desire for limb amputation and gender identity disorder. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35, 263-278. Full text: http://www.annelawrence.com/publications/amputation-GID.pdf
How can someone be opposed to surgery on children on the one hand and approve of surgery for people with a limb amputation fetish on the other hand? How can one deal with real gender identity issues in children who are surgically assigned to a sex without consent and at the same time maintain that the reason that people would want to change their gender assignment as an adult is a limb amputation fetish? Conflating these two issues is so repulsive to many intersex people that it only further drove wedges between marginalized communities – the intersex and trans movement – communities which actually have a lot in common if one does not include limb amputation fetishes as the motivation for rejecting one’s original gender assignment.
Then when she gave the following speech at the Kinsey Institute entitled “Parsing Intersex: No matter how you slice it”, many of us realized just how long she must have been palling around with Anne Lawrence.
So, little people, beware.
Footnote:
You may wish to read the following article by Alice Dreger:
Lavish Dwarf Entertainment
