Temporality
Mauro Cabral Grinspan: My name is Mauro Cabral Grinspan, I am Argentinian and I am an intersex person and a trans person myself. I believe that the medical management of intersex or our experience produces certain trauma in the experience of time or the experience of time becomes traumatic. And than it's difficult to get out of certain places. At some point we are still there. And when you listen to people narrating some traumatic experiences many of us are still there.
Eliana Rubashkyn: Our pain is very deep. It's a very deep pain. Because as other elements of the rainbow community are celebrating, being able to be free in their sexuality and in their identities, we are still struggling even to cope with what happened to us or to even define who we are. And we can't even have, in many occations, time to even build or discover what is our gender identity or our sexuality.
Mani Bruce Mitchell: We were talking the other night in a meeting. The intersex community has got really good about talking about who we are. As Obioma said. But there was something said the other night and that is »The world is saying that our different bodies are the problem. That's not the problem. The problem are the doctors and then our families who get disturbed by our bodies. And actually that's the problem that's made it this pathologized medical model.« So that's what we need to deal with.
Eliana Rubashkyn: And we all have this sense of injustice, deep sense of injustice that we are like a second-class citizens of the world because the way we are being treated by everyone. By maybe our parents, the doctors, our governments. Everyone indulce actually that we're supposed to feel kind of like admiration. Because doctors are those figures that you know people actually admire and respect. And for us they are monsters.
Crystal Hendricks: I would say it's definitely not easy, but it's also important to have that thoughts of the inter-Utopia, because that's what keeps you going. I feel in the space where we are, we are dealing with people that have their human rights completely stripped away from them. And thats a thing that as intersex people we face, the violations against our body, the isolations from our communities because we 'are so different' as they say. And also the erasure, because of them choosing an identity for an intersex person completely erases that intersex person at all. And because of that erasure, the isolation and also the mutilation that intersex people face, it could be very difficult to look to the future and see – okay hopefully this is going to end. So it's very difficult to imagine that, but I also feel like: We have to! We have to. We need to have that positive outlook. You know, there is a way for intersex people to live freely. It may not be in our lifetime but it could even be in the next lifetime, but eventually intersex people will live in that freedom.
Mauro Cabral Grinspan: Some of us feel that a part of us died back then. Then it's really difficult to think ›What is the past?‹, when you're dead, or ›What is the present?‹, or ›What is the future?‹, ›How the future look like?‹. I'd say like ›Well, you know, I'm dead inside, or part of me is dead. So that part doesn't have a future. I take it with me, but, you know, it's already dead.‹ So yeah, I'm sorry for being so …
Luan Pertl: No, no, no!
Mauro Cabral Grinspan: Sounds like ... tragic. But for me, as an activist, my job is to try to move us forward. But I believe that this is a movement that is moving forward, pushed by people that have all kind of issues with temporality and with time and with life and death and things that can't be repaired, you know, so, yeah ...
Eliana Rubashkyn: Our pain is very deep. It's a very deep pain. Because as other elements of the rainbow community are celebrating, being able to be free in their sexuality and in their identities, we are still struggling even to cope with what happened to us or to even define who we are. And we can't even have, in many occations, time to even build or discover what is our gender identity or our sexuality.
Mani Bruce Mitchell: We were talking the other night in a meeting. The intersex community has got really good about talking about who we are. As Obioma said. But there was something said the other night and that is »The world is saying that our different bodies are the problem. That's not the problem. The problem are the doctors and then our families who get disturbed by our bodies. And actually that's the problem that's made it this pathologized medical model.« So that's what we need to deal with.
Eliana Rubashkyn: And we all have this sense of injustice, deep sense of injustice that we are like a second-class citizens of the world because the way we are being treated by everyone. By maybe our parents, the doctors, our governments. Everyone indulce actually that we're supposed to feel kind of like admiration. Because doctors are those figures that you know people actually admire and respect. And for us they are monsters.
Crystal Hendricks: I would say it's definitely not easy, but it's also important to have that thoughts of the inter-Utopia, because that's what keeps you going. I feel in the space where we are, we are dealing with people that have their human rights completely stripped away from them. And thats a thing that as intersex people we face, the violations against our body, the isolations from our communities because we 'are so different' as they say. And also the erasure, because of them choosing an identity for an intersex person completely erases that intersex person at all. And because of that erasure, the isolation and also the mutilation that intersex people face, it could be very difficult to look to the future and see – okay hopefully this is going to end. So it's very difficult to imagine that, but I also feel like: We have to! We have to. We need to have that positive outlook. You know, there is a way for intersex people to live freely. It may not be in our lifetime but it could even be in the next lifetime, but eventually intersex people will live in that freedom.
Mauro Cabral Grinspan: Some of us feel that a part of us died back then. Then it's really difficult to think ›What is the past?‹, when you're dead, or ›What is the present?‹, or ›What is the future?‹, ›How the future look like?‹. I'd say like ›Well, you know, I'm dead inside, or part of me is dead. So that part doesn't have a future. I take it with me, but, you know, it's already dead.‹ So yeah, I'm sorry for being so …
Luan Pertl: No, no, no!
Mauro Cabral Grinspan: Sounds like ... tragic. But for me, as an activist, my job is to try to move us forward. But I believe that this is a movement that is moving forward, pushed by people that have all kind of issues with temporality and with time and with life and death and things that can't be repaired, you know, so, yeah ...
