“Hida Viloria, cheerleading for choice” — definitely the silliest way my activism has ever been described, lol, but essentially true & otherwise the interview was great.  It was regarding the groundbreaking lawsuit by the Crawford family for their intersex son, who was castrated at the age of 16 months, before they adopted him.  The lawsuit is the 1st of its kind in the US, & I commend the lawyers who took it on (AIC,  SPLC, & 2 legal firms) & the Crawford parents for standing up for their child & all intersex children! Having less than 2 minutes to describe intersex, the risks & harms of medically unnecessary, nonconsensual infant genital surgeries, and my own experience of being intersex, made me sound more gender-normative than I actually am, as we only talked about my underage years, when I was gender-normative, but hey, that probably makes it easier for all the mainstream listeners to grasp anyway.  And it was even trans* positive, because I got to talk about how one’s genitals shouldn’t have to define one’s gender identity. 🙂

Note: I usually say that doctors do these surgeries with good intentions, but this time, with the brief time available, I instead pointed out that the American Pediatrics Association has been aware of intersex adults’ reports that these surgeries harmed them for decades, and they simply haven’t been listening.  I’m also sick of the deeply sexist assumption that castrating a boy to make him a girl is  “helping him”, b/c as a girl without sexual sensation he’ll be fine, and felt the need to point that out.

The segment begins 44 minutes in, with the father of the child, Mr. Crawford, and my interview begins 48:20 in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0188d3z

 

1 Comment

  1. Curvaceous Dee on August 14, 2013 at 7:10 pm

    Just listened to this, and it was really interesting – not just for learning more about M.C.’s situation, but also for how well you explain the reason why choice should not be removed (which should be obvious, but this is, after all, media and the listening public. Not to mention the doctor’s who keep taking that choice away).

    Anyhow, thank you for being such a great advocate!

    xx Dee

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