Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Follow Up On It Is A Mixed Up, Muddled Up, Shook Up World - Kinks' Lola

On Sunday I wrote about a woman in Texas who is intersexed and the problems that she was having getting married there in Texas. How her documentation identified her as both male and female, and as a result the state was questioning her marriage. Well she is not alone, half way around the world a man is being jailed because he is interesexed.

The BBC article reports,
Indonesian in transgender wedding 'fraud' trial

A man has gone on trial in Indonesia accused of falsifying his gender identity in order to marry a woman.

Doctors say Alterina Hofan has the rare condition Klinefelter's syndrome, where a male has an additional X chromosome that makes him look more like a woman.

He says he officially changed his identity papers to show he was a male but his wife's parents have accused him of document fraud.

Mr Hofan is being held in solitary accommodation in a women's prison.

Mr Hofan's mother told the BBC that when he was born, doctors said he was a girl, so he was registered and brought up as such.

But when he was two years old he began to develop male genitalia and had always behaved like a boy, she said.

The staff at that prison, however, ruled he was a man and could not be accommodated with female prisoners. He has since been detained in private facilities at the female jail.

Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights has criticised the authorities for their treatment of Mr Hofan.
When are we going to realize that gender is not just male and female and get over our Puritan bias and our hatred of those who are different?

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