Cheryl Chase to Natalie Angier

San Francisco → New York · 6 September 1994

Headnote

One of three letters in which the movement reached out to journalism, science, and history in the founder’s own words — here to New York Times science writer Natalie Angier. Writing for the Intersex Society of North America, the founder (signing as Cheryl Chase) asks Angier to report on the medical management of intersex people and offers herself as both a source and a subject.

The item is born-digital: it survives not as paper but as a single Microsoft Word for Macintosh 5.0 file, recovered from a fast-saved copy (see Note on the source).

The letter

6 September 1994

Ms Natalie Angier
c/o New York Times
229 West 43d¹ Street
New York NY 10036

Cheryl Chase
Intersex Society of North America
PO Box 31791
San Francisco CA 94131
Tel 415-695-0975
Fax 415-695-1454
email cchase@ptechwest.com

Dear Ms Angier,

I  have² appreciated your articles in the Times about many aspects of sexual differentiation and,³ biology and gender, and the action of sex hormones. I hope that I can persuade you to write about the human consequences of gender ambiguity.

The Intersex Society is a peer support and activist group for individuals born with unusual genitals or some discordance between genitals and reproductive organs or chromosomes. I know from your writing that you must be familiar with the phenomenon.

However, because the topic is highly taboo, it is little known outside the circle of medical intersex specialists and geneticists. Intersexuals are not at all rare, but are typically so shamed by social stigma and so emotionally damaged by medical objectification and surgical mutilation, that few of us have dared to speak.

There are a few of us at ISNA who are determined to change that. We have found that the path to healing ourselves is to accept our intersexual bodies and to make political identity as intersexuals. We reject the medical model of intersex-as-disease. This model is as culturally biased and unscientific as that of homosexuality-as-disease.

The current climate of discourse about gender and the media fervor over African female genital mutilation, makes the topic of medical oppression of intersexuals a timely one. Intersex specialists claim that their ministrations allow us to live as nearly normal males and females, but they have consistently refused to do long term follow up studies. Based on my interviews with dozens of adult intersexuals, medical intervention allows parents to deny the fact and consequences of their child’s intersexuality. Parental distress is replaced with a “time bomb” for the intersexual patient, who will have to overcome great obstacles without help in order to learn the truth about his/her own nature and history, and live with sexual dysfunction consequent to surgical destruction of genital sensitivity.

If you will write about the “other side” of the story of medical erasure⁴ of intersexuality, I will be happy to act as a resource. In addition to being extremely knowledgeable about the technical issues involved, I am willing to relate my own experience, and can introduce you to others who will also do so.

I have enclosed copies of two recent letters to the editor of the Times, and the ISNA’s Annotated Bibliography. I hope to hear from you soon.

Yours Truly,

 

enc:

Annotated Bibliography

NYT letter Sept 6

NYT letter Sept 15

sample correspondence

Note on the source

The letter survives as one Microsoft Word for Macintosh 5.0 document (6,144 bytes, Mac OS Roman). The file had been fast-saved, so its current text was stored as scattered fragments with a piece table recording their order; read straight through, the bytes yield a truncated, garbled letter. The transcription above is reassembled according to that piece table.

Because fast-save appends revisions rather than rewriting, the file also preserved a trace of the author’s editing. An earlier draft of one sentence read “the story of medical treatment of intersexuality”; it was revised, before the final save, to “medical erasure of intersexuality.” The discarded word remains recoverable in the file and is recorded in the textual notes.

The sender’s 1994 telephone, fax, and email address (at a long-defunct domain) are transcribed as part of the historical document.

Source & citation

Generated to mirror the catalog record, so the two never drift.

Field	Value
Catalog id	letter-angier
Date	6 September 1994
From	Bo Laurent (signing as Cheryl Chase)
To	Natalie Angier, The New York Times
Medium	Letter
Source	sources/letters/angier/ — Word for Macintosh 5.0 file (born-digital)
Rights	Founder is author; third-party reference reviewed and cleared.
Status	Cleared; published 2026-07-03.

Suggested citation. Bo Laurent [as Cheryl Chase], letter to Natalie Angier, 6 September 1994. Intersex Movement Archive, catalog letter-angier. Born-digital; recovered from a Word for Macintosh 5.0 file.

Footnotes

1. 43d Street — the source reads “43d,” the period abbreviation of “43rd” that The New York Times used for its own address; retained, not an error.

2. I  have — the source doubles the space after the opening “I”.

3. and, biology — comma present in the source.

4. erasure — revised in the source from an earlier reading: treatment → erasure. See Note on the source.