Trans* Jersey is very proud to announce that it has become an associate member of the UK Intersex Association (UKIA). The United Kingdom Intersex Association (UKIA) is an education, advocacy, campaigning and support organisation which works on behalf of Intersex people.

UKIA has the following aims:

• to educate, inform and campaign in order to remove the shame, secrecy, social prejudice, ignorance and stigmatization that surround Intersex people;
• to campaign against the pathologising and medicalisation of Intersex peoples’ lives;
• to campaign against the use of surgery and other medical treatments for coercing Intersex people to physically conform to cultural definitions of “normal”;
• to campaign against the widespread practice of withholding information from Intersex people regarding the medical implications of being born Intersex, where these exist;
• to campaign for the same status and respect for human rights accorded to all others to be equally accorded to Intersex people.

As the above list of aims suggests, there is a lot of work to be done around educating people about what Intersex means and the reality of the lives Intersex people live, not least with the medical profession.

Many of the UKIA aims could apply equally to the trans* community, which is why Trans* Jersey sees this association with the UKIA as a good fit for the work being done in Jersey to improve the lives of all those who, for whatever reason, fall outside of the gender binary.

There are other aims that the UKIA highlights that are unique to the Intersex community and Trans* Jersey hopes to work with the UKIA to educate and inform the general public, the medical profession in Jersey and the States of Jersey about these specific requirements.

To support this work, Trans* Jersey has signed up to the following UKIA principles:

• Total opposition to cosmetic surgery on intersex infants in an attempt to “normalise” their appearance;
• Rejection of the concept that the human species exists as a physical binary (male & female) model and contends that anything which deviates from this stereotype is “abnormal”;
• Accept that all individuals, whatever their identification (male, female, other etc.) are to be respected and have the right to equal opportunities both socially and occupationally;
• Support the campaign to secure the rights of intersex people to change their birth registration to match their personal identification, rather than that which was chosen for them;
• Rejection of the pathologisation of intersex conditions (such as the use of demeaning terminology e.g. “Hermaphrodite”, “Disorders of Sex Development (DSD)” etc.

It is hoped that together Trans* Jersey and the UKIA can make a difference to our island’s Intersex residents.