THE videos of the morning sessions from the White House LGBT Health Conference in Philadelphia on Thursday February 16 2012 are now online and available for viewing at any time. Dana Zzyym, an intersex activist and OII United States member attended the conference and asked a set of questions only to receive a brief and puzzling, troubling answer. 

Dana asked her questions during the Senior Leaders Panel session from 9:40am. The three Department of Health and Human Services – HHS – senior leaders were Kathy Greenlee, Assistant Secretary for Aging, Howard Koh, Assistant Secretary for Health and Ken Choe, Deputy Legal Counsel. Ms Greenlees and Mr Choe are publicly known to be LGBT Presidential Appointees.

Ms Greenlees spoke about the HHS LGBT Working Group followed by Mr Koh and Mr Choe. During question time, Dana’s question was only answered by HHS Deputy General Counsel Ken Choe, who spoke about “gender transgressiveness” and “notions of gender”, two topics of no direct applicability to intersex. Intersex is a range of biological variations in sex, and although all people have a gender or no gender at all, intersex itself is most certainly not a question of gender, gender identity or “gender transgressiveness”.

To watch Dana asking her questions and receiving Mr Choe’s answer, go to about the 54:50 mark in the video. We believe that more work needs to be done to ensure that Health Department officials know what intersex is and what intersex people’s health needs are.

Intersex people remain one of the most disadvantaged groups of people on the planet, without equality, human rights or fundamental client-centred healthcare, often subjected to non-consensual genital surgeries as infants, and often impoverished and with poor life expectations.

Internal links:

• The Intersex Network – Intersex and LGBTI are now starting to appear in federal US health websites and grants programs
• The Intersex Network – LGBT and LGBT-friendly appointees to the Obama-Biden Administration
• The Intersex Network – OII’s Bhakti Ananda Goswami’s open letter about intersex to organizers of the White House LGBT Conference on Health, February 16th, 2012, in Philadelphia
• The Intersex Network – The White House LGBT Conference on Health, Thursday, February 16th in Philadelphia

External links:

• HealthyPeople.gov – About Healthy People
• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services