Morgan Carpenter

@morgancarpenter.com

928 Followers 346 Following

Associate Professor, Sydney Health Ethics @sydney.edu.au School of Public Health Executive Director & lived experience human rights defender, @interaction.org.au Intersex flag creator morgancarpenter.com

A colourful blocky image showing all kinds of bodies with the words "All bodies are beautiful" and "All bodies deserve respect"
Text slide reads: Scholarship Opportunity: PhD Scholarship evaluating psychosocial programs to improve the health of people born with innate variations of sex characteristic, University of Southern Queensland
Cover image of “The Dispossessed” paperback book by Ursula Le Guin
Morgan and his dog Keeva. Keeva is on Morgan’s lap and her eyes are closed. They are on a beach. It’s a sunny day and Morgan is wearing a rashie and a wide brimmed hat
A 14 year old Manchester Terrier dog standing on a deck and wagging her tail
The golden sandstone building of the Faculty of Medicine and Health, with jacaranda trees blooming outside in a vivid purple. People are walking around underneath the trees
Events at the 2024 Paris Olympics sadly highlight the inability of a categorical system (weight), additional to sex, to allay concerns regarding participation by athletes purported to have innate variations of sex characteristics (intersex variations/differences of sex development). Instead, abusive campaigns demonised athletes with long, prior histories of competition – and sought to impose methods of sex determination and classification that are not directly tested or applied at birth, and which do not universally apply. I ask if it is ever acceptable to reclassify someone out of their sex determined and classified at birth without their consent. I propose that women athletes should always be able to compete, without preconditions, in their birth-observed, birth-assigned sex.
Karen Middleton in Guardian Australia: "Once back, he spoke to ABC radio in Melbourne on Friday morning and executed a part reversal, declaring there would now be one extra question in the census – on sexuality. Without confirming directly, he made it clear that other proposed questions on sex characteristics – which would have quantified data on transgender and intersex people – were still not proceeding."
Karen Middleton and Mostafa Rachwani in Guardian Australia: "Until this week, the government had been expected to add questions on whether respondents had changed living locations in the previous 12 months and why, plus questions on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural identity, gender – including variations of sex characteristics – and sexual orientation."
Biomedical clinical rationales are rejected by experts “Psychosocial rationales do not rise to the standard of medical necessity to avoid serious harm, given that less intrusive options exist that should be preferred, and that psychological and psychiatric experts do not believe that there is any robust scientific evidence to support the assertion that interventions in the circumstances are in the individual’s best interests.” Australian Human Rights Commission. 2021. Ensuring Health and Bodily Integrity: Towards a Human Rights Approach for People Born with Variations in Sex Characteristics. Sydney, Australia: Australian Human Rights Commission. https://humanrights.gov.au/intersex-report-2021
Clinical research is low quality Practices are grounded in subjective beliefs “This review has identified a heterogenous literature reporting the surgical outcomes, rationales, and controversies of surgical interventions, with notably inconsistent study designs, methods, and outcome reporting. Assessment of surgical rationale and outcomes has revealed that medical teams continue to conduct these interventions in the face of controversy due to desires to mitigate parental distress surrounding the perceived difficulties of raising a child with a congenital variation in sex characteristics, as well as a variety of under-researched or outdated beliefs” Muschialli, Luke, Connor Luke Allen, Evelyn Boy-Mena, Aiysha Malik, Christina Pallitto, Åsa Nihlén, and Lianne Gonsalves. 2024. ‘Perspectives on Conducting “Sex-Normalising” Intersex Surgeries Conducted in Infancy: A Systematic Review’. PLOS Global Public Health 4 (8): e0003568. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003568
International Classification of Diseases 11 (ICD-11) Foundation “If the diagnosis is made at birth, gender assignment must be discussed, depending on the expected results of masculinizing genitoplasty. If female assignment is selected, feminizing genitoplasty and gonadectomy must be performed. Prenatal diagnosis is available for the kindred of affected patients if the causal mutations have been characterized.” World Health Organization. 2018. 46,XY disorder of sex development due to 17-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 3 deficiency. In: ICD-11 Foundation. https://icd.who.int/dev11/f/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f887793448 Carpenter, Morgan. 2018. ‘Intersex Variations, Human Rights, and the International Classification of Diseases’. Health and Human Rights 20 (2): 205–14. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6293350/
Clinical approaches to sex assignment in “DSDs” “Factors that influence sex assignment include the diagnosis, genital appearance, surgical options, need for lifelong replacement therapy, the potential for fertility, views of the family and sometimes, circumstances relating to cultural practices” Ahmed, S. Faisal, and Salma R. Ali. 2022. ‘Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) in the Newborn’. https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198870197.003.0186 “Sex assignment is a dilemma in a small percentage of patients with DSD and requires an individualised approach taking into consideration prenatal androgen exposure, fertility potential, quality of sexual function, surgical options, gonadal pathology/malignancy risk and potential adult gender identity” Vora, Komal A, and Shubha Srinivasan. 2020. ‘A Guide to Differences/Disorders of Sex Development/Intersex in Children and Adolescents'. https://doi.org/10.31128/AJGP-03-20-5266