Hanif asks about community organizations and health providers modeling support

Thank you all so much.

I wanted to hear a little bit more about the community organizations and health care providers that are modeling

positive support for intersex New Yorkers that this council should know about.

And I know Interconnect was mentioned.

And I heard the feedback around Can the Lord needing to be called in.

I'd love to hear just a little bit more about like who's out there that we should be, we should know about.

I will say, honestly, the folks at DOHMH who, you know, tried to get the 2021 education

campaign off the ground, it got slashed by Mayor Adams when he was blaming all immigrants for everything and cutting funding.

I'm blaming the immigrants for that too.

So, but they are actually working on it right now, getting it back up and running.

And I legit cannot say enough about the folks at UHMH.

And it's in kind of like the Reproductive Justice and Sexual Health Bureau.

I will say I am delighted to hear, Liat, that you are finding competent care.

I often am like, I mean, I've seen folks who, again, are supposed to be experts.

And, you know, truly, as I enter a new phase of my life,

the phase, there's nobody who knows what my endocrine profile is supposed to look like.

So we're just figuring it out together.

And that's actually the thing is that the best care I have received isn't from doctors who thought they knew a lot.

Yeah.

It's from doctors who knew that they didn't know.

So they asked deep questions.

They actively listened.

And they...

did their own homework in between our visits.

Like, truly, I went from an endocrinologist who, you know, mostly worked with people with diabetes, didn't know anything about intersex variations, and she...

Just supported me so well because she knew she wasn't an expert and that she had to rely on some of my own expertise about my experience.

And I went from there to an absolute expert at a gender clinic at a hospital that I don't want to name, but like this guy,

was so sure that he knew everything that he actually made a bunch of very serious medical mistakes, including doing things like sending me for a

dexamethasone suppressed hormone panel, which basically means like the testosterone that my body produces was diminished, right?

And so then that was supposed to be for comparison.

I came back and I met with him and he said, good news, you're normal.

And I was like, oh, there are so many things wrong with what you're saying to me right now.

And actually, the worst thing isn't that you shouldn't say that to an intersex person.

The worst thing is that you don't remember that this is a dexamethasone suppressed test that you sent me for.

And you're just reading it as if these are my everyday.

endocrine numbers.

So, um, honestly, I, I, like I, I love specialization.

I love expertise, but the people who are humble are, are providing the best care.

Um, and yeah, DOHMH, like they are just trying really, really hard to, um,

absolutely lead in the nation's public health departments on intersex understanding and education.

Yeah, on the medical piece, I would say from the years of 2011 to 2021, I was

And so it was such a journey to try to find even one qualified or educated medical professional.

It was a lot of me doing my own advocating and me doing my own educating, which as an intersex person, we can all agree that it is exhausting

having to over and over explain yourself to someone why you don't have a period, why you don't produce whatever hormone you don't produce, et cetera, et cetera.

Someone who went to med school and makes a lot more money than you do who should know those things.

Yeah, they should.

They truly should.

But it was surprising to me, even as recently as this year, to be connected with an endocrinologist for my diabetes, like a completely unrelated condition, at least not unrelated to my intersex variation.

And for me to go in thinking, okay, another time I'm going to have to explain my whole body to this person.

And immediately she shut me down and was like, oh, yeah, I know about that.

And I was like,

I mean, do you know or do you really know?

And she was like, it's this.

It happens this way.

You experience this.

You experience this.

And I was like, blown away.

That's Dr.

Jillian Goddard.

Shout out to her.

Terrific endocrinologist in the village.

But beyond the health care side of it, I think the community side of it, Interconnect operates all over the nation, obviously.

We're headquartered in Illinois, technically.

But we do a lot of our work online.

So we're providing a lot of support services on the Internet.

And we're providing at least one annual national gathering once per year, usually in July.

We just had our gathering in July of this year in Connecticut.

We would love to have it in New York if it wasn't so expensive to have conferences and conventions here, maybe someday.

We did have our first actual meeting in 1996 in New York.

And, you know, I think for our future gatherings or in-person support, we'd like to continue to have these regional.

Regional events to support the team.

If there were some way or some co-sponsoring organization or something that y'all are aware of that

you could connect us with to be able to have those smaller, maybe half-day kind of gatherings, I know that there are a lot of intersex New Yorkers or people in the tri-state area that would be very, very excited about that.

One thing I just wanted to add actually was that because health and hospitals was also the first and I guess only public health system in the U.S.

to outright ban non-consensual surgeries on intersex kids and I think also referrals for.

I wonder if there isn't something that we could explore in terms of

clinical intersex competency situated within health and hospitals.

You know, that, you know, just sort of like a partnership between DOHMH and the folks who are in the health and hospitals subset.

I feel like there could be, you know, something to do.

And, you know, it wouldn't have to fall on Cal and Lord as a private organization that takes a lot of public funding.

It could be a public and publicly funded topic.

Yeah, I just know they do take public funding, including city funding.

Our health committee.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's what I was like.

I know we're like short on time and I want to make sure we're germane to this specific ordinance when there's obviously a lot of work that needs to be done.

But yeah, happy to speak in other contexts about what was done in Texas and what we might be able to replicate here elsewhere.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.