In Your Face News Service
San Francisco
FOR THE first
time a major network news show has focused on
Intersex Genital Mutilation. On June 17,
Dateline NBC, a top-ten news show seen by 25-
30 million viewers, featured an interview
with Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)
founder Cheryl Chase. Included in the
segment was footage from the August '96
demonstration by Hermaphrodites With Attitude
outside the annual conference of the American
Academy of Pediatricians (AAP).
A surgeon representing the AAP declared that surgery is now so improved that operating on intersex genitals has virtually no adverse consequences. He compared the surgery to facial surgery to remove a deformity. But ISNA members, now numbering over 200, state flatly that the surgery has harmed them terribly. Many have been left with little or no erotic sensation. Some have ongoing urinary complications, and almost all of them are outraged and angry that their bodies were cut up without their consent. Following the Dateline report, the San Francisco Chronicle also ran a piece highlighting IGM. A segment on ABC's Prime Time Live is reportedly in the works for the fall. This media attention follows a half- page story in the New York Times Science section, and a 3-page spread in Newsweek magazine. Noting that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as practiced in African or Muslim countries has drawn wide condemnation in the US, Ms. Chase said, "Genital mutilation is a phrase that's easy for us to apply to somebody who belongs to a third-world culture. "Yet any mutilating practice that's delivered by licensed medical practitioners in our world has an aura of scientific credibility."
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