World-leading intersex law passes in Australia
Here’s what you need to know about the Australian Capital Territory’s new law
Around 1% of people are intersex and have innate variations in their bodies that mean they are not typically male or female. There are dozens of different intersex variations that result from genetic and hormonal differences during development. Some are apparent before or shortly after birth, but others can go unnoticed until later in life.
Unfortunately intersex people have historically been pathologised, and today many are still subjected to medically unnecessary hormonal and surgical interventions in an attempt to force them into binary sex categories.
Our laws must protect intersex people from these harmful and unnecessary procedures. The new law in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) seeks to do just that. It is the result of decades of advocacy from intersex advocates and organisations like Intersex Human Rights Australia and Intersex Peer Support Australia, multiple inquiries, and a proposed legislative model produced by Equality Australia.
The ACT law comes eight years after Malta passed a world-first law in 2015. This was followed by Portugal in 2019, as well and Germany and Iceland in 2021. The ACT law passed last week might not be a world-first, but it is world-leading.
The ACT law
The law restricts medical interventions that alter the bodies of intersex people except when they have provided their own personal consent, in emergencies, or when approved by a board of experts as medically necessary.
This board will oversee medical treatment plans for intersex children and other people who do not have capacity to consent (i.e. the cognitively impaired). The board will include intersex people, medical professionals, and experts in human rights, ethics, and psychosocial support.
The law also sends a clear signal that the medicalisation of intersex bodies is not acceptable, and that the rights of intersex people must be respected, by imposing criminal penalties for performing, arranging or authorising unapproved procedures.
This is a significant step to protect the rights of intersex people in the ACT, and other Australian jurisdictions should quickly follow suit to ensure that intersex people are not subjected to harmful medical procedures without their consent and have greater control over their own bodies.
Increased support
While this legislation is a positive step forward, we still have a long way to go to promote greater understanding and acceptance of intersex people. Intersex people still face significant stigma and discrimination, both within the medical community and society at large. This can have a significant impact on their mental health and wellbeing, as well as their ability to access healthcare and other services.
Greater education and awareness-raising around intersex issues is needed. This includes educating healthcare professionals about intersex variations and the potential physical and mental harms of unnecessary medical interventions. It also means challenging harmful stereotypes and myths about intersex people, and promoting greater acceptance and understanding of intersex variations. That’s why it’s good to see that in addition to its new law the ACT is investing in training for health professionals and support for patients and families.
Looking forward
While legislative changes to protect intersex people are welcome, the fact remains that like our female genital mutilation laws they breach the right to non-discrimination by only protecting people of one sex and not others.
Many remain unaware that John Money, who pioneered sex-reassignment procedures of intersex children to “normalise” them, made his start in 1966 with 8-month old Bruce Reimer following circumcision complications that left him without a penis. Bruce became Brenda and was raised as a girl until, suicidal at age 13, he assumed his male identity under the new name of David Reimer. David died by suicide at age 38, two years after his twin brother, who was also circumcised and left psychologically scarred by Money, fatally overdosed on antidepressants.
This story is all the more tragic when you consider that the twin brothers were circumcised at 8-months old due to misdiagnosed phimosis, a condition in which the foreskin cannot retract behind the head of the penis. They didn’t have phimosis—they had the normal non-retractile foreskin every young boy their age should have. (The foreskin remains fused to the head of the penis until puberty, and even if it fails to retract naturally, there are less invasive ways of treating phimosis that don’t involve amputating the foreskin.)
Moves to better protect intersex people are important and long overdue. While I welcome the ACT’s new law, I also look forward to the day we have a single legislative and regulatory framework that protects everyone, regardless of their sex or gender, from non-consensual, medically unnecessary alterations of their bodies.
Jonathan Meddings is the Chair of The Darbon Institute and author of The Final Cut: The truth about circumcision (Get your copy: Affiliate link)
