Being born intersex in Chile: end of surgical operations

It has been five years since the activist who represents the group of Intersex in Chile Patricia Ahumada, has worked tirelessly to bring about substantial change regarding How people with this condition are treated. With the team from the NGO he chairs, they traveled from Arica to Punta Arenas to knock on doors and make intersexuality visible. The problem, he says, is so vast that It goes from the homes of thousands of Chileans who don’t even know what it means to be an intersex person, to hospitals, where newborns are mutilated to reassign them to a gender they were not born with. Misinformation and the hiding of information are one of the main obstacles that have meant that for a long time, the demands of this community have not been heard by anyone. However, today, with the launch of a new ministerial circular the panorama will change.

Intersex people are born with sex characteristics (including genitals, gonads, and chromosome patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of the male or female body. Experts estimate that between 1.7% and 2% of the population are born with intersex traits, Explain it Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. These traits, although they may be apparent when the person is born, may not be apparent until puberty or adulthood.

In the past, being intersex was considered a disorder of sexual development, just like an illness. However, he emphasizes Cleveland Clinic , “being one is not a disorder, illness, or condition. It also doesn’t mean they need treatment, special care, or gender-affirming surgeries. This does not affect whether you are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or asexual or have any other sexual orientation. It’s also not the same as being transgender. A transgender person identifies with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth. An intersex person may be transgender if their gender identity does not match their assigned sex. .

The misinformation on this subject is so deep that over the years it has had an impact on the conduct of unnecessary sex change operations. What is sad, says Patricia Ahumada, is that, frightened by this “disease”, as some doctors call it when they tell parents that their child is intersex, these parents agree to do what they believe is best for their child. babies.

“Some parents wrote to us, very guilty of having operated on their children without really knowing what it entailed, asking us what they could do now. All that remains is to tell them that they are no longer responsible. “They did it out of ignorance and because they thought it was what was best for their baby,” Ahumada says.

This circular is a document issued by the Ministry of Health (Minsal) intended for all health networks, mainly clinical establishments. “It aims to educate medical teams about sex reassignment operations, which are usually performed on newborns, and clarifies that they should not be performed for aesthetic or aesthetic purposes.” , only when its purpose is functional. That is to say, to care for and preserve the functionality of the human body and not because the attending physician subjectively finds it outside of their gender norms, as is currently the case when they are operated on unnecessarily,” explains Dr. Felipe González. . , president of the National Department of Gender and Health of the College of Physicians of Chile.

Application of this document is mandatory. If we don’t apply it, the doctor said, two things can happen. “On the one hand, child protection resources are activated to ensure that the rights of the boy or girl are not violated, and on the other hand, there are health administrative processes, but this is very variable, it is not like a criminal legal procedure. sanction, but it would apply at the health level,” he comments.

Although the impact of this policy is reflected in the way intersexuality in newborns is addressed, by depathologizing this condition it is a step of great importance in meeting the demands of this community . “This work has been going on for a long time. I have been trying to obtain a circular, a document, a law for five years and it was very expensive (…) The Minsal wanted to release another document, which we refused because we thought it was important to first listen to the voices of people who live in this reality,” explains the president of Intersexuales Chile.

This is how, in collaboration with the organizations that represent the intersex community in our country – Intersexuales Chile, Intersex South Pacific And Network dissidents – and the medical community, we could be the bridge between the demands of civil society and institutions within the intersexual health table. “For the design of this circular, the voice of intersex people was very important. “There are many studies, but people who experience these situations never listen to them,” Ahumada said. And he adds: “We collected these requests through our field of psychology, taught by Mitzi Ubilla. Many cases arrive there. On the other hand, they write to us a lot on our WhatsApp. We were in Bolivia and Uruguay talking with other groups and we realized that the demands were similar.

Likewise, Irina Karamanos, former first lady, was involved in promoting this project through “extra-institutional” activism. “My commitment to this project has been to tell society as a whole that we need to help make these issues visible. We need to be a part of causes and activism, whether we are part of the community or not. You don’t have to be part of it to want a society that doesn’t discriminate. I believe that we will never be a fair, equal society where collective freedoms reign if we do not involve absolutely everyone. That’s why I think raising your voice is relevant at all times,” says Karamanos.

And this is not trivial: the situation is so precarious that we have very little data, believes Irina Karamanos. “We can only estimate the number of intersex people living in Chile based on the existing global averages for intersex, which are 2%. What is tragic is that, on the one hand, there is no data, but on the other hand, the concealment of the first surgical interventions that were carried out in many cases also means that even the families, that is, fathers, mothers and fathers of intersex children know exactly what procedure was performed on their baby, so in many cases not only is there a lack of public information to take action decisions regarding public policy, but there is also a lack of family, personal and intimate relationships. information. I think that psychologically, it is also a wear and tear that we cannot continue to tolerate,” he says.

And in fact, those who underwent surgery when they were children do not always know what was done to them. Among the cases treated by Intersexuales Chile, we know of people who looked at themselves and had a scar, but did not know where it came from. They looked up the medical history and it didn’t exist or this page wasn’t there. It’s this ignorance of not knowing what happened to you that torments them.

“It seems to me that it is time for society to take responsibility for investigating and knowing what are the different problems and discriminations that we passively reproduce. By not doing anything, not getting involved and not knowing what is happening in our own country, we are also passively contributing to it continuing this way,” concludes Karamanos.