Location: Kaohsiung City

22.627278, 120.301435

Meet our grantee partner, Oii-Chinese!

An interview with Hiker Chiu of Intersex Human Rights Fund grantee partner Oii-Chinese, who discusses intersex activism in China and Taiwan and what it’s meant to receive support from Astraea.

Oii-Chinese was established by Hiker Chiu in 2008 to provide Chinese-speaking intersex people with information created by intersex people and to bring intersex people together for peer support. Oii-Chinese’s mission is to raise awareness in the general public, reframe the meaning of intersex from traditional stigma and superstition, advocate for intersex human rights, and help intersex people develop self-understanding and support each other.

In this video, Hiker Chiu discusses intersex activism in China and Taiwan and what it’s meant to receive support from Astraea’s Intersex Human Rights Fund.

Learn more about Oii-Chinese here.

***

Video transcript:

Nowadays, activism depends a lot on the internet, on computers, on social media.

Discrimination on intersex people in Chinese society is still very strong. We are seen as neither male nor female, which puts it much like a “human monster.” And many intersex people are hiding, so that was a real empowering experience to find the OII international website. And I started to be in contact with people there and read their stories, and in the process I gradually identified: “Oh, I might be one of the intersex people.”

I started Oii-Chinese from translating the OII website into Chinese because I found there are so many other languages but there’s no Chinese, so I really want to look for people who can speak Chinese and share experience.

For me, Astraea’s Intersex Human Rights Fund is very important because I have to support people in Taiwan and China and also all Asian people. I have a general grant, so that I can use freely. I just started to have a computer, a very basic thing. And I tried to travel to China to have a meeting with intersex people who had contact with me.

I really want to help the general public know about intersex people. We are human beings, and we have love and we need to love and to be loved.

Intersex Asia Network

Intersex Asia works for/with intersex activists, organizations, and communities in Asia.

Intersex Asia was established as a network by all the participants of the first Asia Intersex Forum on Feb 10, 2018. Intersex Asia works for/with intersex activists, organizations, and communities in Asia. The network aims to be a leading and sustainable intersex human rights advocacy organisations in Asia, that will strengthen the capacity of all Intersex Asia members to advocate and promote intersex human rights in Asia while becoming an intersex resource hub for intersex human rights education, advocacy and research in Asia. They are progressing in their goal of sustainability with the recent hire of a full–time coordinator, and are in the process of registration. They are currently preparing a survey for intersex people in Asia. During covid–19, they created a Urgent fund which allowed them to support more than 100 intersex people in six Asian countries.

Organization Intersex International-Chinese (Oii-Chinese)

Oii-Chinese was established in 2008 to provide Chinese-speaking intersex people information created by intersex people and to bring intersex people together for peer support.

Oii–Chinese was established in 2008 to provide Chinese–speaking intersex people information created by intersex people and to bring intersex people together for peer support. They provide support for Chinese–speaking intersex people through an online group, especially with the pandemic and its impact on mental health. They also wrote an article as part of the calling on “advocate, protect and ensure the LGBTI rights to be respected” from the UN human rights experts for the CEAW review invited to Taiwan. They produced a 20,000 words document about intersex human rights issues that was then included in the curriculum for civil servants in Taiwan. They then gave a lecture on the topic to civil servants at a national level as well as high school teachers. Check out a video interview with Oii-Chinese’s Founder Hiker Chiu: Hiker was also featured in our 2016 Intersex Awareness Day video: