The parents of an intersex child reached a $440,000 settlement in their four-year lawsuit against the hospital that performed genital surgery on their son prior to his adoption, according to court records released Wednesday. The lawsuit is likely the first of its kind for intersex people.

Pam and Mark Crawford’s son, identified in the lawsuit as “M.C.” because he is a minor, was born intersex with both male and female genitalia. The South Carolina Department of Social Services took M.C. into custody after his biological father abandoned the family and the state determined his biological mother to be an unfit parent. The Greenville Hospital System referred M.C. to surgeons at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) who performed genital surgery on him in 2005 and 2006 to remove his male genitalia and further construct female genitalia.

The Crawfords first saw M.C. on an adoption website on which he was listed as a girl. They later learned that M.C. had been born intersex and had been assigned female through genital surgery. The Crawfords adopted M.C. when he was 20 months old. As he grew up, M.C. rejected “girlier” clothing, opted for a more “boyish” appearance, and eventually expressed that he wanted to be a boy, according to Buzzfeed.

M.C.’s family and community accepted him as he transitioned, but his parents told Buzzfeed that the social workers and the hospital’s decision to perform genital surgery on their intersex child should have never been allowed in the first place. In 2013, the Crawfords sued the South Carolina social services department, MUSC, and the hospital system, claiming the hospital had committed medical malpractice.

The Crawfords claimed that “M.C. has incurred medical bills, pain and suffering, damages, and permanent impairment” as a result of the surgery, according to court records. The hospital system settled for $20,000 last year, according to Buzzfeed. MUSC, which settled for $440,000, will pay $270,000 to a structured settlement company to purchase an annuity policy that will pay $440,000 to M.C. over the next 16 years.

While gender is increasingly being accepted as a spectrum, many people still maintain that sex is a binary system. However, intersex activists hope to demonstrate that sex, too, is more than either “male or female,” and that intersex children can be perfectly healthy without needing sex “normalization” cosmetic surgeries that they have not consented to. Additionally, intersex people’s characteristics are not limited to external sexual organs that fall somewhere in the middle of the sexual spectrum, but may also have internal sexual organs and secondary sexual characteristics that appear later in life.

An intersex kid’s non-consensual surgery malpractice case settled for $440,000. Time for real regulation: https://t.co/D7yl2IkEhK #DoNoHarm pic.twitter.com/j9EfNQ1f1b

— Kyle Knight (@knightktm) August 2, 2017

Intersex surgeries. Catastrophic results. Unproven benefits. Lifetime consequences. Don’t cut before a child can decide. #DoNoHarm

— Hayley Gorenberg (@184Justice) July 25, 2017

3 US surgeons general say childhood genital surgery “can cause severe and irreversible physical harm and emotional distress.” #DoNoHarm

— Hayley Gorenberg (@184Justice) July 25, 2017

Human Rights Watch, in collaboration with interACT, spoke with intersex people, their parents, surgeons, and other professionals for a report released last week. The report condemned the practice of non-consensual cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex children. In a June report, three former surgeons general said that such surgeries “can cause severe and irreversible physical harm and emotional distress.”

“Cosmetic genitoplasty should be deferred until children are old enough to voice their own view about whether to undergo the surgery,” the surgeons’ general report said. “Those whose oath or conscience says ‘do no harm’ should heed the simple fact that, to date, research does not support the practice of cosmetic infant genitoplasty.”

As acceptance expands, hopefully the stigmatization of intersex people and efforts to force them into a binary system will fade as well.

Marcus Dieterle

Marcus is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a rising senior at Towson University where he is double majoring in mass communication (with a concentration in journalism and new media) and political science. When he isn’t in the newsroom, you can probably find him reading on the train, practicing his Portuguese, or eating too much pasta. Contact Marcus at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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It’s the day before New Year’s Eve, and 2016 is about to be officially over. If you’re happy to see it go, check out this parody horror movie trailer someone made about the past year. This is the last RantCrush of 2016 but we’ll see you again on January 3, 2017. Happy New Year! Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

The U.S.-Russia Relationship Status: It’s Complicated

President Barack Obama was not happy when it became clear that Russia had in fact tampered with the U.S. election. Yesterday afternoon, he ordered 35 Russian diplomats, residing in Washington and San Francisco, to leave the country. He also imposed sanctions on Russia and closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland. These actions were reportedly part of a series of consequences for the Russian election hacking and interference. But U.S. officials also blamed Russian harassment of American diplomats and officials in Moscow.

“The actions would amount to the strongest American response ever taken to a state-sponsored cyberattack.” https://t.co/TI9P1G7quj

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) December 29, 2016

Then came reports that Russia would reciprocate by expelling the same number of American diplomats. But only hours after that proclamation, President Vladimir Putin said that he wouldn’t expel any American diplomats, which was a surprising announcement considering the diplomatic tradition of reciprocal punishment. He said that he wants to restore the Russian-American relationship once President-elect Donald Trump takes power. It remains to be seen what he actually means by that.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Checking the male or female box on a piece of paper is privilege many of us go our entire lives taking for granted. But for Dana Zzyym those two boxes act as a constant reminder that gender neutrality is not a socially recognized option in the United States. Now Zzyym hopes to raise awareness and compel change by suing the U.S. government for denying people the right to select “X” as an option on U.S. passports.

‘We exist’: Navy veteran Dana Zzyym sues State Department for denying ‘intersex’… https://t.co/nS2ZYCmsKi #UniteBlue pic.twitter.com/oQ7rF7eu4a

— The Progressive Mind (@Libertea2012) October 27, 2015

Lambda Legal, an LGBT civil rights group, filed the lawsuit Monday on behalf of Zzyym, stating that the U.S. State Department and Colorado Passport Agency denied Zzyym fundamental rights “including the freedom of travel” by not recognizing gender identity beyond male and female.

Zzyym, 57, was born with ambiguous genitalia, and therefore has chosen neither to identify as female or male, but as intersex. So for purposes of this article I will use the gender-neutral pronouns “they,” “their,” and “them” when referring to Zzyym.

It took Zzyym over four decades to understand that the conflicting feelings they had experienced relating to gender dated back to birth, and that their parents had tried to hide their non-binary biology with painful irreversible surgeries to make them pass as male. After exploring both genders and even having female genital surgery,  the Navy veteran chose to change their name from Brian Orin Whitney to Dana Alix Zzyym, and went on to became an outspoken activist for the intersex community.

According to BuzzFeed, in September 2014 Zzyym went to their local Denver, Colorado passport agency to apply for a passport in order to travel to Mexico City to attend the International Intersex Forum they’d been asked to speak at. Zzyym arrived with all the necessary documents, including a letter explaining that they were intersex, and requested to use “x” as a marker for gender. But a couple weeks later they received a letter from the State Department saying it was unable to fulfill their request, and that in order to move forward it needed to either “(a) relieve a passport listing Dana as female, (b) receive a passport listing Dana as male, or (c) withdraw Dana’s application.”

The request came as a blow for Zzyym, especially when countries like Australia, India, Malta, Nepal, Germany, and New Zealand all issue passports with alternative gender markers to the standard “M” or”F.” Lambda Legal staff attorney Paul Castillo told BuzzFeed News,

Foreign nationals who have the X marker on their passports are permitted to enter U.S. and yet we’re denying the same rights to own citizens. When you are allowing foreign nationals more rights than you do your own citizens with respect to the same document, there has to be something wrong.

Instead of seeking any monetary compensation, Zzyym is asking simply for a policy change that would allow them to exit the country with a gender label of their choosing. But if we use the nation’s responses to other LGBTQI issues as predictor of the outcome, we can expect a long time before Zzyym and other intersex citizens are rewarded with equal rights.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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