November 8, 2007,
day intersex people
a time when we denounce female circumcision, a considerable number of disabled children are legally in France. Because they are born with genitalia different standards boy / girl, normalizes surgically by removal of their organs of pleasure glans assumed too small or too large clitoris assumed. These operations are so taboo that "omitted" to annotate the medical record and we will be careful not to reveal to the person it was assigned.
Those of us who have finally discovered what had been done, have often found support and understanding in testimony dating back more than a century: the memoirs of Herculine Barbin (Foucault, Barbin Herculine said Alexina B, Gallimard, 1978,
EAN: 9782070299607).
Born November 8, 1838 in St. Jean d'Angely, Herculine Barbin is declared female. She grew up in an institution for girls where she received an education as a teacher. At age 22, she felt severe pain in the stomach and should consult a doctor who discovers he calls genitals male. Within months, Herculine is encouraged by doctors and his confessor to "become" legally a man. It becomes Abel Barbin and loses its status as a teacher. Rejected by all, living in misery and finding no place in society, it will terminate its days in February 1868. Near his body was found a manuscript in which she recounts her experience.
100 years later, this text has not lost its strength, although truncated by two times: in 1874, when its first edition in 1978 and at its republication by the philosopher Michel Foucault. But more surprising still, despite the emergence of gender issues during the last thirty years in the West, little has changed for the hermaphrodites, intersex or now called intersex.
We are not many advances in the open but today, 169 years after Herculine, we cry our existence and our right to freely dispose of our bodies, the right to choose to live as a man or a woman differently, but not others choose for us by mutilation in the name of a definitive moral despite that we are risking.
Features: •
XXY by Lucia Puenzo
(Argentina-Spain-France, 91 min., 2007) A film
very fair on intersexuality, which shows that we are neither monsters nor ambiguous and often, we like our genitals and do not want to be anything other than what we are. This film won the Grand Prize of the Week Critics this year. We hope it will shed new light to the general public. Projection
preview, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 20:30 in Rex 2 in Paris (http://www.ffglp.net/)
Theatre release scheduled for December 26, 2007
• The Mystery of Alexina Rene Feret
(France, 96 min., 1985) Inspired by the script
Herculine Barbin
Saturday, November 17, 2007 12:00
Rex Cinema 2, Paris
• The assumption hermaphrodite Burosse
Alain (France, 26 min, 1997)
A historical documentary on hermaphroditism
Saturday 17 November 2007, just after the mystery Alexina
• Word order by Cynthia and Melissa Arra
(France, 75 min., 2007) A report on
activists including a gender intersex. The screening will be followed by a discussion meeting.
Sunday, November 18, 2007 at 12:30
Rex Cinema 2, Paris
For more information:
http://www.intersexualite.org
http://oii-france.blogspot.com
Contacts:
Vincent Guillot
vincentguillot608@gmail.com
+33 (0) 2 96 24 94 81
Arthur Cocteau
arthurcocteau@gmail.com
+33 (0) 6 42 49 35 21
