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This is a a little pouch that I carry around with me and my travels. So the first one is, um, a heart And I was talking about it yesterday. So when I first started doing my work and trying to work out who I was as an intersex person, I was already 40 finally I didn't know what being an intersex person really meant. I I'd been [00:00:30] loaned by my doctor AAA book out in the medical library here or she had stolen. And I'm not quite sure how that went, um, about intersex, which is a very strange way of finding out who you are in the world, because it was a highly pathologize, medicalized text. But for me, it was very exciting because for the first time, I realised that there were other people like me in the world and I had just started doing my what would become my healing work. [00:01:00] And there was this notion of loving yourself, which in those days it's a bit hard to know, but I was a very tough person. Um and I thought it was a load of horseshit, but all sensible people were saying it was important so I thought, OK, I'll try and learn about what this self love is. And it's Christopher here. No. So Christopher, who is here, ran AAA crystal shop and I saw this, um, heart. It was unusual. It stood out because it was unusual. [00:01:30] And I've since found out it's rotated quartz, and it has tiny flakes of titanium in it. So I think it was the right heart for me to to pick little path that can go around is with the talking this little yellow shell. Um I. I thought about it this morning out of the Pacific. It's not a New Zealand shell, but it's yellow because yellow is the colour that, um, some of us have claimed for being under sex. So when [00:02:00] I was growing up in the fifties, if the child was a boy, then anti knitter blue things. And if the child was female, anti knitted pink things, if you didn't know and it wasn't a nice bright yellow like this, it was a lemon colour, Um, for the child that you didn't know. So under six people around the world have been claiming the yellow colour and you'll notice on the front page of your book that we have what is becoming [00:02:30] the recognised as the intersex flag and then in many cultures around the world. And we were talking about this this morning that, um, realities are ancient and known, and intersex has been known in traditional cultures for not hundreds of years, thousands of years. And this is a, um, intersex figure from India, where, um, the intersex tradition is is very well known and recognised. [00:03:00] So just these are my little that travel around the world with me. And this remind me because sometimes being an intersex person, that's tough, and particularly when you're working in in these circles, um, at conferences like this, it's both wonderful, but also sometimes really hard because we're not that visible. So So let's talk about, um, intersex and the rainbow within [00:03:30] the rainbow because it's a good way of describing it. So intersex people represent a wide range of medical conditions. I used to say 30 but it's I think, well, over 35 if we got a final figure for diagnosis is lots. What? What drives the commonality, I guess, and and and still connects all of us is the way medicine [00:04:00] responds to people who have intercept conditions, and the way medicine still responds at the moment is in a very narrow, medicalized way. So it's a belief system that sees the world as a binary male and female. And there's a truth to that. Like most people on planet Earth do identify as male or female. But it's a model that doesn't recognise at all. The the things that we now [00:04:30] know about gender and fluidity and the things that are very visible and prominent at this conference and then underneath That is something much more complicated. And Denise will be talking to us, um, during this workshop about some of the research that she's doing because I still don't totally understand what goes on for doctors, even though I am myself a clinician. But my own thinking [00:05:00] is that it's a very disturbing situation for parents and for doctors. So, um, when it's visible at birth and not all the conditions are visible at birth, there's a disturbance and in medicine, and I'm a mental health professional. I put my hand up disturbance is not a good thing exactly. That makes everybody feel very anxious. And there's a desire to undisturbed. [00:05:30] And so in the 19 fifties, Um, and it's interesting when we think about the history so immediately post war. And there was a desire on planet or Earth to get back to normal. Whatever normal was, um, a group of doctors led by a New Zealand clinician, sexologist doctor John Money came up with this new theory, and and [00:06:00] I think to be fair, the more reading I do around John Money. His thinking got incorporated into the medical model, but it wasn't driven totally by him. I think that's what I would understand now. But his notion was that gender is something that comes from our environment so you could take any child and put them in a pink box. And so long as the parents [00:06:30] responded appropriately and congruently, that child would go off identifying as a female and vice versa. You could put the child in a blue box and they would grow up male. Now it just saying that is a truth. I'm sure everyone's going What? How could anyone believe that? But you know that thinking is still there as part of our current medical model, sort of weirdly unchallenged. [00:07:00] So the model went and and this is where I think it gets really interesting because John Money was also working with the transgender community, as I do as a, um, mental health professional. And there is something with in the transgender community around, um dysphoria. And it's real. And [00:07:30] when you see it, um, in somebody, it is a game very disturbing and somebody who experiences significant dysphoria. And I'm imagining that the people that John Money worked with would have been people who experienced significant dysphoria have that ameliorated with surgery and with hormones. So it doesn't surprise me that he had this idea that, um for [00:08:00] people to feel well and healthy. Um, you need bodies that look normal in terms of what the world sees normality as male and female. So I want to both validate that dysphoria is real because it is. And that is the experience for um, and of course, in those days when John Money was working, it was the transsexual community. Transgender was not a term being, in fact, very early. It was transvestite [00:08:30] was the term he would have used. So it's interesting because we have this this weaving, this interconnectedness with a trans narrative from the the early days, but not with any clarity that there had been a weaving. So part of his model was the child needed to be male or female something that I don't disagree with because we live in a binary world. And up until very recently, um, there [00:09:00] were only two options in terms of identity documents. She had to be male or female. But this idea of congruence comes into it as well. And it's interesting, because just after the Second World War, for the first time ever, we can do tiny, um, very delicate and detailed surgery. And we have the anaesthetics to go with it. And this had all come out of the fact that we had had thousands of men mostly [00:09:30] needing complicated plastic surgery as a result of the war. So all these things are are coming to a point, so the thinking was have to be male, have to be female. And then there were the limits also of the plastic surgery at the time. So the large majority of intersex Children during the fifties and sixties being assigned female because it was very difficult. [00:10:00] Then it's still difficult now to construct normal male genitalia. And this idea of parents not feeling comfortable with their Children if they didn't look normal. So the the idea of putting you into a box and as I said, it was easier to put people into the pit box than the blue box. And then the notion of early, [00:10:30] um, surgery, I'll tell you a little bit about my story, and then we're gonna break into groups and do some work. So I was born in 1953 and in New Zealand in 1953. The model that we were still using was the Victorian model. This model of doctor moneys hadn't arrived yet. So when I was born, um and I don't know what my intersex condition [00:11:00] is, if it ever existed as a diagnosis, it was either, um, eaten by rats, flooded or burned up, because that's what happened to intersex records. So I've been told, and alarmingly large numbers IE my records. My childhood records were destroyed deliberately so initially I signed mail, and when I did my research, um, with that [00:11:30] book that my doctor borrowed or stole from this library, there's a medical legal section in it, which was wonderful for me to find, because the Victorian thinking and what drove medical practise completely different was that it was considered inappropriate to deny the rights and privileges of being male to anyone who was possibly male. OK, so because I had either a very, um, [00:12:00] small Penis or a very large plater, that this was a possible expression of masculinity. So of course I was going to be a guy, which meant I would have inherited the family farm. And I would have grown up to be an all black and it's really, really interesting. But the model was about to change and would change radically in that first year of my life. So by the time I went back to a hospital for a laparotomy, which [00:12:30] was a very crude way that, um, they worked out what your sex was in those days and and they had to delay it because it was, um I presume I got a massive operation and high risk, so it was delayed until I was one. So I had a Laroy. They literally cut me open, had a look inside and found a uterus. So in a 24 hour period. I went from being a little boy to being a little girl. I mean, it would have been a recovery period. But I still [00:13:00] think of my parents going up to Auckland with their son, a child who was called Bruce and then coming back with a child called Margaret. Female. Um, my parents never had any support to do that. I mean, as I look now, there was a period of time I went through. I was so angry at them, and not probably very nice to be around, but I think now they actually did a brilliant job with the information that they had. Um, so [00:13:30] that's my story and my narrative. I started doing this work, this public work when I first met Margaret and the extraordinary team that was then at Wellington Sexual Health, which in that era was part of the Wellington Hospital. Um, unit was in an old building down on Adelaide Road. I had been [00:14:00] the manager of regional civil defence, so I was very comfortable and confident in in a media sense, I'd had lots of training. My original training was as an educator. People had no idea the mess that I was behind the screen that I put to the world. But what I worked out really quickly was that the I couldn't change anything about my past. Um, that was not possible. And I realised the thing that had done the most [00:14:30] damage to me wasn't the surgery. That though that's horrible. And I will live with that for the rest of my life. What had done terrible damage to me and to my family was this lying and the secrets, Um, that had just not impacted profoundly on me. It it affected my siblings, and it affected that community that I grew up in. And it affected my relationship with my extended family. And I thought, Well, that's something that I can change [00:15:00] now What I've learned in my, um, extraordinary journeying around the world because I've met lots and lots of people is that, as indeed has been said the intersex community as a rainbow within itself. So the truth is, as adults, most intersex people see themselves as suspended so they would identify the majority as male or female. And within that, just like the rest of the population, the overwhelming statistic [00:15:30] is people would see themselves as heterosexual. So here I am, a bearded, gender nonconforming queer identified, um, intersex person, you know, and I didn't know how it would fit in in that wider, um, larger intersex community. And it wasn't until four years ago when I was invited to a conference [00:16:00] in America where the overwhelming people in the audience were sis and heterosexual. So most of the couples that were there were married, and they had many of them had their Children there. And so I went into that room very nervous. I felt like an outsider and felt a little bit like a fraud. And I certainly felt that that would not be a safe place for me to go [00:16:30] until we started talking and sharing stories. And then I'm reminded of what Renato was talking about. It seems like days ago, but it's actually what only a day and a half ago at our opening, when he was talking about difference and creating, you know, a planet where all of us have a place and and can be safe. So I I [00:17:00] went in and and gave my speech about being non-binary to people that look to me extraordinarily straight and you know, a world that is not mine and that I wouldn't be comfortable there. And as I'm talking, I'm looking up and this waterfalls in the room and nearly everybody's crying. The guys are crying, the women are crying, and I started to realise that the commonality of a narrative of pain, of [00:17:30] being invisible and not having a place so many of the women in that room I would come to know, um, have a condition called a IS. And where, um, people have, you know, and we don't have the language, I will. I will get very clumsy because our language is clumping, so they have male bodies, but their body doesn't respond to the male hormones, so they grow up looking like women and identifying [00:18:00] as women. And the traditional response to this is because doctors are very disturbed by someone who looks like a female who has testes coming up with the idea that, um, they might turn into cancer. So we have to take them out. It's like, yeah, so the breast. So we'll cut all those off and test these off, and, um, testicles get cancer. So we'll cut all those off as well. No, it's really interesting. We just do it with intersex people and these extraordinary women, these straight blonde women from [00:18:30] Middle America. Most of them had tattoos, and it's a reclaim movement in America. And many of these women have beautiful orchids tattooed on their bodies to symbolically mark where they testes have been taken, and the woman who because often these conditions are genetic so they've passed on. So their young Children are now growing up in a very different environment, where the, um, mums and dads [00:19:00] are saying to doctors, No, we're not taking the testes out of our Children because these produce hormones that the bodies need. Yeah, we'll monitor um, and we and we'll check. And if it looks like there's a cancer developing, then we'll deal with that. But we're knowing now that that's not necessary. So I want to honour that our intersex community and we probably pretty well represent that diversity sitting here in the room, that amazing rainbow within the intersex community. [00:19:30] And it's really important for our allies to be aware of that that within this community there is a lot of diversity, and within this community of intersex people. There are just people now. I've just, um I can't believe this. Seven weeks ago, I was in America. It's only seven weeks ago. Um, I was at a conference in Chicago and the largest GO BT I conference in the world 4.5 [00:20:00] 1000 delegates. And we had, um, quite a large gathering of intersex youth, and they were in charge of the the material for the conference. So they produced these buttons and the button say, LGBT Q the I is in green and a so it says the I is for intersex, not invisible. So they were there at the conference, outrageously and very proudly, um, visible intersex. And people were asking [00:20:30] the A what does the A stand for and the under six youth were really, really clear. The A stands for allies because most and six people live in communities where there is not a community. They live by themselves. And they all knew these young people the importance of allies. So it's wonderful that we're sitting here with with you because our and our allies will be in the queer community. Our allies will be so this, um, [00:21:00] service last night where I where I was telling you, you know, to be in a church with so much warmth from the Salvation Army community. To me, when I was growing up, the Salvation Army was the enemy, and it was a community that was doing a great deal of harm to to my family. So so again, Um, and in this room with this all these people and I'm being hugged by these people in uniform and that was that was beautiful. So I, I guess what intersex [00:21:30] is doing in the movement it It's the kind of piece that moves around making sure that no one's getting too comfortable because there's there's a narrative and a truth here. That's that's a bit like Mercury, you know, don't don't put anything into a box. And I think it invites us into that. That world that Reinado was talking about when he was talking, you know so beautifully on, um, Wednesday night, as it's not the world that we're living in at the moment, [00:22:00] it it's absolutely not, Um, yeah, and I am on that boat. I'd love to be, um, still alive when we get to it, but maybe That means I have to come back for another life because I think Reinado is right. We we are on that journey. But it might take us a while to get there. So I think I've done enough talking. What what I would like us to do now is just, um, break into small groups and we were talking about, you know, what does our community [00:22:30] need to do to recognise that the eye? So this afternoon there's going to be an opportunity for us to talk in the plenary, but probably not very long. And depending on who's controlling the mic, whether we get, you know, thinking about be like standing there fiercely going, this is not fair. You didn't control the time, and I've only got two minutes and everybody else got lots, so we'll try and make sure it's fairly apportioned. But I would like a voice to come forward for I'm [00:23:00] not going to speak from somebody else who is into sex, and we can help narrate that. Like what? What is the the key points that we need to say back to everybody, to make sure that everyone knows that the eye is here and maybe something for the people in the to to be reminded so we can start that process. Just, um, talking in small groups. Um, if you've got questions, certainly. [00:23:30] Um, are you guys happy to answer questions as well? Yeah. So we can be sort of a bit like a panel to talk to, Um, how long? Much longer have we got? Further? Half an hour. Yeah. Do the talking for 10 minutes, and then we'll think of what extraordinary, astounding things we're going to say this afternoon. And as as as I guess, as you feedback from your talking and your groups, um, [00:24:00] if there's questions within the feedback, then these guys will answer. Yeah, great. So if you have a question for one of some for an intersex person in the room, then they feel comfortable answering it. So I'm gonna suggest that intersex crew make their own group, and then the rest of you have your groups, and I'm making some assumptions here because there might be an intersex person here that is not out yet. And that's absolutely fine. You don't have to, but if you want to come out, then this would be a safe place to do it [00:24:30] Now I've got a tactic Money. I hope you agree with me. I've just I'm gonna write everything that people say on the board. Um, so if you've made notes at the end, can you Can you give me those notes for yeah, so I can photograph them? All right. So we'll just come around and Tony's right. We don't have lots of time, so let's go quickly. Just we've got one blanket [00:25:00] statement. We came up with a whole bunch of things, but, um, the big one, we decided was, uh, diversity education around intersex to the medical, uh, teaching establishments. Um, we identified many other contexts where, um, diversity education would be useful. But we feel that specifically to help intersex people and parents of intersex Children, the medical fraternity [00:25:30] are the strongest target that we can locate. The media was probably our second one, but, um, and we, we I I'll give the rest of our diversity education and medical settings, and the second is educating the media. Oh, can I say one for our group? Um, we talked about how awesome it has been that this conference has, um, had intersex voices and intersex workshops [00:26:00] and that visibility and a lot of people that this time they've had so much exposure to that. Um, and that's largely because money has been one of the main organisers of the conference. Um, and that that's incredible. But it's not OK for this to be a one off special occasion that needs to be in all of the conferences and stuff that is organised. So even when intersex people are in the organising committees or, you know, um, at the initial table that people still need to be raising them, it needs to be to be visible and they need to be invited. [00:26:30] So don't forget that I were you specifically meaning within the LGBT community. No, I was gonna turn it into I was saying the acronym and then I thought I'd make it rainbow to make it culturally, and I know that it's more letters after that. But, um, other letters are already in many ways how they tell me Rainbow with a It's a [00:27:00] exclusive term. It's inclusive. It's not meant to exclude gender, Alex. And just to recognise that, like even if there are intersex people present that they might not want to be the one The same thing as what Bella has been saying to us. So can we turn that into a statement? So I think [00:27:30] that something else we discussed in our group was, um how do we safely be allies when we're not speaking for something that we don't necessarily know enough about? I think we do it by not, um, standing there being the like the same for any issue. II. I am not an intersex person, but this is an important issue, and I'm making a statement. [00:28:00] Yeah, yeah, it's a full stop. That's good, I think regarding this I mean, allies of intersex can be part of the rainbow or not part of the rainbow community. And And I did so and I want to make something clear. It's that with all these issues of gender and sexual orientation, as in, uh, sorry gender expression, gender identity. And now the new [00:28:30] part of this being discussed that is sex characteristics like us. We are just Even though we are a very little part of the community, we represent something that can bring out understanding to the to the entire, Like I say to the world that there is not only two colours that being, you know, understood like there is a and like the, uh, by by being visible, they can really understand how [00:29:00] diverse is is is is actually in nature and how colourful is the existence. So we might not be so many. But we can be be civilising the beauty of nature and how everyone can be accepted so we can actually make LGBTI more like, I don't know if you get my point. It's what was talking about that we actually, our gift the LGBTI community brings to the world [00:29:30] is we can all be stunning and fabulous and stop putting us in boxes like make this space to bring out the beauty. And I'd like to say I had a problem this morning because I didn't feel personally, uh, visible because, um, I don't know. I don't identify as Trans as such, but I haven't been, like, had experience with being male or female. And my experience has just always been female. And, [00:30:00] um so a lot of people are talking about, you know, trans like I transitioned, but I've never had a transitioning moment. You know, I I've always identified as female right from the day I was born. For now and the fact that we see because if you're ambiguous genitalia, you've had to face the fact because it's obvious you change from male to female or your gender queer. And then, you [00:30:30] know, you could tell outwardly that that you're either male or female. But most people look at me and they just all they see is a female. And then they're very when I've ever told people that I'm an XY woman. They're very, quite shocked and quite surprised because I don't up here like, you know, like a transition or transsexual or whatever. So today I didn't feel like I. I felt a little bit lonely like you. Even when you talked about being trans and intersex, I felt a little bit lonely and isolated, and it sort [00:31:00] of took me back to all those years when I was struggling or they were saying that you know, they had a very difficult adolescence because I never really had a pubis as female, a gender asexuals person, right to the age of 18. And um, yeah, I just wanted to say that there's a lot of like you say rainbow within a rainbow of intersex people. So it's a really important point for the queer community. If you are going to bring the eye in. [00:31:30] That actually means bringing people into discourse of smallness as well, really small part of the community. I think a bit of a problem because actually, it's not necessarily that it's a small part of the community. It's that it's an invisible part of the community, and 1.7% of the population is a lot. My experience so far I've not met anyone like myself. That's been cisgender. But even my friend Lou in Auckland has had been male [00:32:00] initially and female. But I have not met anyone. That's been cisgender, um iden and presents as female and has a strong female. Um, yeah, so I just sort of a little bit lonely because I know there's people out there on the right. So is there anything else coming around the corner in that group? [00:32:30] Come around the corner, your body at eight. Mike, Margaret. Denise, looks like you were gonna be deceiving quite a few, so I just I would read them out if you would have been covered there. As my friend says, one lobbying global change, informed consent, human rights, restrictive surgery, [00:33:00] that sort of thing to ask the intersects what legislation is appropriate. That's been a theme of the conference. And is it, um, looking towards the model was I think it was either that or sorry. And the top we got medical fraternity. Um, could you change it to health care professionals? Because it needs to be everything that nurses, [00:33:30] doctors, physiotherapists, occupational admin staff. Absolutely. Yeah. So, uh, no tagging onto transgender own voice. Got my own voice. Yeah, I guess what we're meeting in particular about this, um often, things get merged and and and and can cause, and particularly for what you were saying before about not having [00:34:00] your own voice and and showing, I guess that diversity within intersect that along being visible. Um, that's actually Yeah, that's one of our other points as well. That's not to say of someone that transgender that's not also appropriate to have a voice. But I guess often in for documents and think there'll be one like one word of insect [00:34:30] and a document that's largely focused on transgender and and and I think it's important to have a separate similar to like when they talk about it. Being gay, bisexual, actually talk about. So can I say they are defining differences between trans and intersex experiences so that we know that that's associated with narratives as well as, um, you know, stuff you were talking about ideally around gender expression, the social as well as medical [00:35:00] infrastructure and our lives and environment. Is that clear? Because I find out that many, almost everyone in the LGBTI community don't really understand how intersex is overlaying with the with the other aspects of of the, you know, the community or out of the community. And that's why we are on a not understood and and you know, a lot of things for them become like like, very like [00:35:30] glory. And they try to understand who you are. Like, um, yesterday somebody was telling me, Choose one to be intersex, but don't choose one. And then I was a bit upset with that. I was I was upset. It was I mean, I have my self determination to understand. Yes, I think there's something there, [00:36:00] Tom, and I think that's for every single person in the room. No one has the right to tell us who we are. We are ourselves. Self determination is very important. So it's, uh yeah, I mean, what defines my identity in a visible way is my intersexuality, because becoming a refugee and all this stuff and the dramatic change that I I had in my face, in my body, in my hands and everything it was because of my intersex condition. But the actual thing, [00:36:30] the actual transition, is what could create all of my experience as a person. And all of my experience as a person is around the transition issue and is, I feel so alone, so lonely that I don't feel I feel like I'm in a very uncomfortable place of not belonging, not fully belonging to one side or not fully belonging to the other just by being in between. And that's what I just want to point out. And also I. I felt very loud and isolated [00:37:00] because she came out a few months ago, a few months ago, and, um, it's just like the medical model told me that you know, that was so rare and because I had a bad one you know, a couple of traumatic experiences. Um, So what I'm saying is it's it's I've had years of suppressing it and and feeling quite alone. And I've never had counselling and and the other issue I talked about was infertility and and and [00:37:30] the human rights issue for intersex people be able to adopt. But that is a really to my heart, because I've always wanted a family because we are running out of time. The group came up with a great list. So is there anything more over here? Yes. So we got We have 0.4. We have nine points. Um, basic, uh, level inclusion of eyes and also subgroup recognition of eyes within the educating people and getting inclusion into [00:38:00] departmental dialogue, medicine and education. 0.6 was existence notification, non binary gender. So, basically notifying the people that exist, so seven is education and medicine. So I'll say that again. Education of medicine. No, patho. Uh, and it is outreach of insects for support and networking. How [00:38:30] is this done? We didn't really have an answer for that one, but I guess sort of for people out there and to be able to make contact or read information or find people are not left feeling like they the only one and the nine is is pretty much similar to what one was that there was visibility creating peer network. That's pretty much similar to six. Thank you. And that's it. [00:39:00] We've got a few minutes. Um, some of these are the I'll just go through. Um, so needs to know that we're a rain. Um, but some intersex people feel invisible because there's this gender and heterosexual, and they don't fit into What is it? I don't fit in the trans one. and then, um that, [00:39:30] but also that some people are trans and intersex, and I think also that some intersex people are queer and some intersex people are by and like So it's like we're a rainbow within the rainbow. But we're also across the rainbow and outside the rainbow. I think the intersex people should be the pot of gold. [00:40:00] Exactly. Um the yellow and I think this comes into that. Nobody can tell us who we are is that we don't need to justify ourselves. That can be a separate statement. I don't need to explain to justify or explain Um, yeah. And we mentioned briefly that so about fertility and reproductive issues that [00:40:30] the most important health issue for you to have a human right, We need equal access to that stuff. Um, and access to adoption counselling by human right issue. Um, um C gender. Um, CIS gender, non intersex. Non people in this country have fully right to have fertility treatments, but [00:41:00] we intersex people have not. And that's the discrimination happening there. Um, should I wait for a second? Um, and then how to address medical violence that, um, under the UN that it's been recognised that it's like normalisation surgery is torture, Um, and that we need to kind of push in New Zealand for that to be [00:41:30] the legislative change around that, Um, um, OK, stop it. And I think we also separate from that the fact that it's not just stuff that happens at birth and in childhood that acknowledging that for some intersex people they don't find out until adulthood and that, um, the health services also need to, um, be better at treating intersex adults who, um including, like people who are intersex [00:42:00] throughout their lives and but also people who find out about the Yeah, I like to guess about informed consent because I was almost 18 and it wasn't discussed with me. Um, I think of one consent I'd like to have a say in my own body. What happens to my body was taken out of my hands and my body, my choice or my right to decide [00:42:30] that self determination, which is a social construct and body autonomy, which is the important consumer. So is there any more? So with five minutes to go, what what I'm going to suggest is that the, um visible under people take this to the plenary this afternoon. But but but with the group's permission, [00:43:00] um, it's been alluded to several times during the conference that we are we the intersex trust at the moment is in a conversation with the Human Rights Commission. And this is a follow up from the transgender inquiry. Would it be the consensus of this group and particularly my intersex allies that we table this total document to the, um also to the intersex round table? Everyone agrees with that. [00:43:30] We are not sick on there as well because it's seen as a disorder or condition. That's quite often we are, We are not. And there's one other thing as well. Um, in terms of the surgery, because the focus is around normalisation surgery. But hypospadia is sometimes an intersex [00:44:00] condition that's specifically stated because people will or medical professionals will not recognise that as intersex, hyper hyper as intersex condition and a lot of medical people. We just need to talk to people who have hyperphagia and they will say, Yes, I'm in right So I just want to in the five minutes that are left mark this historic event. As far as I know, this is New Zealand's first intersex workshop. [00:44:30] It's not the first in our part of the world. My colleagues in Australia are ahead of us. They've had these kind of, um workshops in Australia. But this is our first for New Zealand. We are so much more to say and I have a sense that there's a lot more to say and one of the things I've been saying during um, this conference [00:45:00] and this week when when and I sat down because we were so disappointed and devastated that Auckland wasn't going to go ahead. Um, Tommy and I had been in a conference in Australia, we knew that the need to have a conference here. There's, um, the the team that's run this conference. They're shattered at the moment and the idea of doing another conference just fills everyone with horror. But it's interesting because people are already saying We need to do this So there's [00:45:30] an idea that we, um have a There'll be a small legacy, I hope from this conference, but a but a bi annual conference and we'll move it around New Zealand. So, um and then I think within that we need subset conferences. So obviously the intersex community needs to be able to meet. I think the trans community needs There's other communities that that need so II, I think just supporting somehow the idea of getting together, how important [00:46:00] it is and also giving some context to imagining that this is the first part of this conversation that has ever occurred here. So in that context, and we've done this much work in that time frame. So, um also consider that you know, there's lots more work to do, so you know, if there's any sense of frustration from your feelings of loneliness or isolation in this. Remember that. [00:46:30] Hold that with the knowledge that we respect you for being here, especially those members of the MC community who are out today. We highly respect you and are grateful for your visibility today. So thank you for being here, including, of course, but, um, I just want to say I know how hard that can be and, um and you know it. It wouldn't This wouldn't happen without you all pay out. So thank you very much for the trust of so just before [00:47:00] we go Sorry. I just like to thank you. Time and money. You both have a great help myself. And, um, if it hadn't been for you, you a bit of a lifeline and a great resource for us to, um, gain help from here. So thank you. And I also want to thank you. And and that is your mind. Told me that you were the first person II I came [00:47:30] out with. You remember that? Because I was not openly, openly intersex Because I feel difficult to explain. How could I be? And I couldn't be more anymore. And I need help because I have issues with my health, serious issues with my health. And it's because of my intersex condition. And I now, when I need support and when I need someone with with with me close by me and more like that. But what I want to do just in closing, [00:48:00] is all of you. Everyone here has been involved in a historically remarkable voice. So I just want people to go around with their eyes and just go around the whole whole group. Do do it yourself. Just making eye contact. You know, this remarkable piece of history. And Margaret, Margaret Spar. You know, you're part of this. You're part of what has been created today. And I thank you so much. You know, we have a doctor here sitting with us, um, supporting and and offering us huge. [00:48:30] Denise, we didn't give you any chance to talk today. I'm so sorry. We No worries. Yeah, well, I think he deserves a clap. And who was responsible for this workshop deserves a clap.
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