Source: Lambdaistanbul, “Kız görünümlü erkek, erkek görünümlü kız değil: İNTERSEKS!,” (“Not a girl that looks like a boy or a boy that looks like a girl: INTERSEX!”) 1 October 2013, http://www.lambdaistanbul.org/s/etkinlik/kiz-gorunumlu-erkek-erkek-gorunumlu-kiz-degil-interseks/
During the Gezi Resistance in June, a significant part of society clearly saw how the media can be prejudiced, manipulative, and can choose to ignore certain things. However, this has always been the case for groups who have been made “the other” or silenced. Mainstream media has always ignored what women, unrecognized ethnic groups, LGBT people have said, done and experienced or turned them into circus freaks who can be abused. In general, these groups have tried to overcome this problem by creating their own alternative media outlets. On the other hand, one group has remained more silent, more invisible than the others. They could not even create a safe ghetto, a sub culture to exist in. We will tell you more about intersex people.
Intersex people are born with biological gender differences. They are called hermaphrodites by science, and the public use vulgar colloquial terms that denote an androgenous or monoclinous nature to describe them. Intersex people are living with the loneliness and pain caused by being invisible and the fear of being labeled if they become visible. Last week, mainstream media surprised us by showing us an example of how one can be ignored and labeled at the same time. In a widely publicized story, “He became a boy at age 10,” from Anadolu Agency sources, the experience of an intersex child called R.Y. was reported, without once using the word ‘intersex’ and instead using phrases like “originally a fertile girl,” “a girl that looks like a boy or a boy that looks like a girl” as if R.Y. was a product in a store. R.Y. was operated on without permission or receiving counselling. Not only was the uninformed child subjected to a harsh medical procedure without their opinion or consent, they also became the plaything of the media that used an incorrect and harsh language.
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