In ancient Greece, it was understood that there was only one biological sex, but in some people, the genitalia developed and in others not. With the evolution of biology, one more sex was discovered, thus appearing male and female. Today, studies already point to a third sex that is intersex. California is the first state to officially consider it a gender.
On October 26th, we will celebrate Intersex Visibility Day.
In Brazil, however, thousands of children are mutilated in maternity wards to “adapt” to the gender binarism imposed by society.
It is difficult to typify the procedure as a crime of mutilation described in the Brazilian Penal Code because there is Resolution No. 1664 of the Federal Medical Council that authorizes mutilations as long as the parents approve and that it is carried out by a multidisciplinary team. Thus, even if the Statute of the Child and Adolescent brings the child as a subject of law, intersex babies are treated, every day, as an object of the right of their parents. It is necessary to emphasize that even though parents are responsible for their children, they are not the owners of their children, they have a duty to protect their children's rights and not the power to withdraw those rights.
But this violation of rights does not end in the operating room. Many times, doctors refuse to deliver the DNV (Declaration of Live Birth) without marking gender ignored with the observation that it is an intersex child. However, there is Law 12,662 of June 5, 2012 , which deals with how the DNV must be filled out. In the case of intersex children, this law determines that neither sex should be marked , but many doctors mark male or female and put the observation that it is a child with DSD (Sexual Differentiation Disorder). There are even some doctors who even use offensive words to describe that the child is intersex. On the other hand, if the parents do not accept this DNV and demand a correctly completed DNV, the doctors will run a series of tests and it will take months for this DNV to be delivered. Unfortunately, without it, the parents cannot produce the child's Birth Certificate and, without the child's Birth Certificate, the mother is not entitled to maternity assistance.
Faced with the situation described above, I ask you: “Do we have anything to celebrate?” It is true that, with a lot of struggle, it has already been obtained in court that the certificates show unknown gender, but our gender is not indefinite. It is quite true that, nowadays, notaries already issue this certificate without the need for judicialization. However, maternity hospitals need to change the way they act, and the CFM also needs to change its resolution so that we have a real reason to celebrate.
As the intersex population suffers a lot of prejudice, Austria has spearheaded a draft Declaration for the Protection of Intersex Persons at the UN . This project had the support of several countries, including countries with right-wing governments, however Brazil did not support this project , which was presented at the UN on October 1st, a very symbolic date, since we celebrate intersex visibility in that month.
Really, there is no way to talk about celebration in Brazil.
In our country, our bodies are treated as anomalies, our sex as non-existent and, moreover, mutilation of intersex babies is still authorized.
This year, I started the month of October with a bleeding heart, but with a lot of determination and a will to fight because we have the Associação Brasileira Intersex (ABRAI) which is chaired by Thaís Emília de Campos dos Santos, a mother of an intersex child who fought for rights of the child and fights until today for the right of intersex bodies. ABRAI also embraces the cause and has intersex activists who fight for the cause.
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Monica Port. Intersex person, lawyer professor specializing in Social Security Law, post-graduate student in Homoaffective and Gender Law and President of the LGBTQI+ Commission of the OAB/SE.
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