LETTERS

Whole Earth, Fall, 2000

Whole Earth is a conversation. Compliments, cavils, and corrections are welcome. Letters and e-mail may be (reluctantly) edited for space or clarity.

The Real Green Parties

The "Greens"--those trying to make a dent in the two-party system--are ever plagued by the extremeleft/Bookchin anarchist group of a few hundred members known as "Green Party USA." Alas, the press always confuses their Left-Green platform (e.g., abolish the US Senate, tax the rich at 100 percent) with ours. Also, when Web browsers go to GreenParty they get THEM and think they're US!

"Us" is the Associated State Green Parties, the organization of state-level Green Parties (in twenty-four states so far), with hundreds of thousands of members. It was at our convention in Denver (not the tiny splinter group's earlier convention in Chicago) where Jim Hightower nominated Ralph Nader as our presidential candidate, and he accepted. Our Web site is www.gp.org. Nader has his own Web site: VoteNader.org.

Cheers,

Charlene Spretnak Moss Beach, CA

[See Charlene's "How About That Green Option?" in Whole Earth, Summer 2000 --Ed.]

Intersex Interlocution

Dear Dr. Bruce Bagemihl,

I write in regard to your article in the Spring 2000 issue of Whole Earth. We share your interest in bringing to light evidence of the variability of sex in the natural world. However, we would like to update your knowledge of human intersexuality.

I am an intern at the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA is a leader in a growing social justice movement--our mission is to end shame, secrecy, and genital mutilation of people born with mixed sex anatomy. Intersexuality is fairly common; at least one in two thousand people is born with an anatomy that defies easy classification as male or female (see www.isna.org/frequency.html). Less extreme variations are considerably more common.

The photograph you [Not Bruce. It was Whole Earth's selection. Bruce had nothing to do with it. --Ed.] used to illustrate intersexuality accurately reflects the medical view that intersexuality is a medical problem and that it is freakish, rare, and shameful. ISNA is working hard to replace such representations with pictures of real people without their eyes blacked out, and with their real names attached.

You [Again, Whole Earth wrote the caption, not Bruce. --Ed.] also write that "male pseudo-hermaphrodites are all very attractive `women.'" I think that you have confused the term "male pseudo-hermaphrodite" with the diagnosis of complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (c-AIS). The term "hermaphrodite" is misleading and stigmatizing, and we are working to replace it with the less loaded term "intersex" (see www.isna.org/hermaphrodite.html). In addition, c-AIS is one of the rarer forms of intersexuality; the diagnosis "male pseudo-hermaphrodite" covers anyone with testes and some physical sexual ambiguity. These individuals have bodies that may look anything from female to ambiguous to male. See "Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism," by Cheryl Chase, in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Spring, 1998.

On intersex, please refer to the ISNA Web site, www.isna.org. I encourage you also to consider purchasing our half-hour video, Hermaphrodites Speak! which can be ordered from the Web site.

Sincerely,

Mary Kelterborn. ISNA Intern Ann Arbor, MI

Dear Mary,

I completely agree with you that the photograph included with the article and the accompanying caption were inappropriate! If I had seen them, I would have objected most strenuously to that photograph and its caption on exactly the grounds you indicate. Such images look very much like (in fact, some of them are!) medical illustrations, and including them would perpetuate the medical/pathological model of intersexuality that I am trying to challenge. Doubly so for pictures of intersexual people's genitals, which would be dehumanizing, objectifying, and not at all appropriate in my opinion.

While I cannot speak directly on their behalf, I do not believe that the editors of Whole Earth intended any disrespect. Peter Warshall and the magazine were otherwise remarkably sensitive, open, and responsive to the issues and communities discussed in the article. Indeed, their decision to publish this piece was a courageous and controversial one that not many other magazines would have taken on, and they were my first choice for placement of this article because of their track record for intelligently and creatively presenting important topics to a broad audience.

Elsewhere I have been an outspoken advocate and supporter of trans rights and I continue to speak out against medical models of intersexuality against the pathologizing of transgender, and in favor of the right of gender-variant people to resist medical definitions of their lives and to determine exactly how much or how little surgery and other biotechnologies to allow in their lives. See, for example, my "GenderTalk Radio" interviews with Nancy Nangeroni and Gordene MacKenzie (available on the Web at www.gendertalk.com/real /gt216.html); and my keynote address to the Ars Electronica 2000 Festival of Art, Technology, and Society (www.aec.at/nextsex), where I speak about the impact of new biotechnologies on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people.