An Intersex Mayor in Australia

Hobson’s Bay has elected a new mayor, Tony Briffa. This interests me because Briffa is open about being intersex.

He tells his story in depth on his website. In part, he writes:

I feel very comfortable having accepted my true nature. I am not male or female, but both. I am grateful for the years I lived as a woman and the insight and experiences it gave me. I am still “Antoinette” and have now also incorporated and accepted my male (“Anthony” or “Tony”) side. I feel whole. I’ll continue to live as Tony but I feel I am now at a point in my life where I can celebrate being different.

He also provides a long list of links relating to media surrounding his journey. He discusses the mistreatment that the medical status quo visited upon him as an infant:

They diagnosed me with an intersex condition called “Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome” and the treatment paradigm – likely elsewhere in the world – dictated that I was to be raised as a girl, any male physical attributes had to be surgically removed if possible, and I was not to be told the truth about my condition.

Doctors castrated him, told his parents to raise him as a girl, and to never reveal the truth to him. Some doctoring.

[I] lived as a woman until I learned the truth about my condition and sought to find out who I would have been had the medical profession not sought to “normalise” me.

This (mis)treatment is common for babies born intersex. Western medicine has a pathological need to force cultural beliefs about gender onto non-conforming infants’ bodies. THE GENDER BINARY MUST BE MAINTAINED AT ALL COSTS! Even if that cost is medically-unnecessary infant genital mutilation.

To learn more about what happens to intersex babies and children, I recommend the website of the Intersex Society of North America. Their definition of intersex is quite good.