List of AIS Support Groups around the world - the AIS Support Group (UK) maintain a list of AIS Support Groups from all over the world. Please visit their site for details.

AIS Support Group (UK) - has a very comprehensive website for all things AIS. Please visit them for more information.

AIS/DSD Support Group for Women and Families (formerly known as AISSG-USA) is dedicated to helping women and children with AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) and other DSDs (Disorders of Sex Development).

Intersexuelle Menschen - a German self-help group for XY women.

GrApSIA - a Spanish self-help group for AIS.

AIS Links

CAIS Booklet by Professor Garry Warne (Honourary Life Member, AISSGA) - also in French and German languages!

John Hopkins website on Sex Differentiation

Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome GeneTests Link - a publicly funded medical genetics information resource developed for physicians, other healthcare providers, and researchers.

AIS in the Media

Phoebe Hart produced an excellent autobiographical documentary on the subject of AIS called Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. Orchids was broadcast on ABC1 in Australia in 2012, appeared in more than 50 film festivals internationally and has since been broadcast in Switzerland, Sweden, Israel, Spain, France, Russia, Poland, Germany and the USA.

Antoinette (Tony) Briffa featured on 60 Minutes in a story called "Crime Against Nature" in 2000. This was aired not long after a 60 Minutes story on David Reimer entilted "Boys wil be Boys".

Transcript of Tony Briffa's story "He's the Man" on 60 Minutes - the follow up to the 2000 story which included a Live Q&A after the screening in 2005.

Choosing the right gender - a great story about Tony that appeared in the Age newspaper in 2005.

AISSG Australia Vice President Andie Hider appeared in a 2005 ABC Four Corners story called "The Gender Puzzle" which details how the scientific world may be on the cusp of discovering the origins of gender.

Tony Briffa and Christy North were interviewed for a Sydney Morning Herald article entitled "It Takes More Than Two".

MRKH Links

Beautiful You MRKH Foundation - promotes self-esteem, and empowers girls and women with MRKH to embrace their beauty, just as they are. They welcome members from around the world, and believe that through our differences, to "find our greatest strengths".

MRKH UK Website

MRKH Organisation, Inc.

Sisters for Love MRKH - to reduce a year of grief by one day or more, to connect women to women by an invisible bond and to learn the mastery of seeing and accepting beauty just as it is.

Turner's Syndrome Links

Turners Syndrome Association of Victoria Inc. - Local support group founded by Dr Garry Warne in 1984.

xy-Turners, the Mixed Gonadal Dysgenesis Support Group - xy-Turners provides information, advocacy and networking for parents, patients, physicians and researchers to promote the health and welfare of xy/xo patients and to improve patient-physician relations.

Congenital Adrenal Hypoplasia (CAH) Links

Congenital Adrenal Hypoplasia - Local support group founded by Dr Garry Warne in April 1985.

47XXY Links

Klinefelter's Syndrome Support Group (KSSG)
Contact: Stuart & Karen Yates
Postal Address: PO Box 3, Glendenning M/C, 2761 Queensland, AUSTRALIA

Klinefelter Support Group (Victorian based group)
Contact: Kieran
Postal Address: PO Box 652, Templestowe, 3106 Victoria, AUSTRALIA

Klinefelter Syndrome Website

Non-AIS Specific Intersex Links

OII Australia - promotes human rights and bodily autonomy for intersex people, and provide information, education and peer support.

Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)

Bodies Like Ours (US) - an intersex community forum.

Intersex Initiative - a US-based activist and advocacy organization for people born with intersex conditions.

Hypospadias and Epispadias Association - a non-profit organization founded for the education & support of people born with hypospadias or epispadias and their families and loved ones.

InterAct - a youth group for young people with intersex conditions or DSD, sharing their stories with the world.

Advocates for Informed Choice - preserving the rights of children born with variations of sex anatomy.

The Interface Project - features stories of people around the world living with intersex traits - or variations of sex anatomy - under the banner: "No Body Is Shameful." 

Disorders of Sex Development Research Website - a team of Australian biomedical research scientists who pool our expertise in human genetics, developmental biology and molecular biology with the aim of identifying genes important for sex determination and development of the gonads, and discovering how they contribute to DSD.

dsdfamilies - information and support resource for families with children, teens and young adults who have a DSD

Genetic Support Groups

AGSA - The Association of Genetic Support of Australasia

Genetic Support Network of Victoria (includes list of support groups in Victoria, Australia)

NSW Genetics Education Program

Human Genetics Society of Australasia

Medical Ethics Organisations

Journal of Medical Ethics

Miscellaneous Links

Andrology Australia - A federally funded group that aims to assist Australian men with a range of reproductive health problems by undertaking programs to improve knowledge and provide much needed education in specific areas of male reproductive health.

Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland

David Reimer interview - Link to interview with David Reimer and John Colapinto (subject and author of As Nature Made Him - see our Recommended Readings page) on the Listen page

Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission - For information on discrimination on basis of Gender Identity (including identification as intersex) please contact the support group or see the EOCV website.

Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) - Government body overseeing the application of federal legislation in the area of human rights, anti-discrimination, social justice and privacy.

Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - site managed by the Federal Department of Health and Ageing and Medicare that includes a listing of the medicines subsidised by the Australian Government.

Queensland Health Freedom of Information Website - information on obtaining medical records in Queenlsand.

The Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Intersex Legal Service Inc. - provides free legal service and referral to the Queensland LGBTI community.

Positive Living Centre, Adelaide - a peer driven incorporated community organisation that in the past decade has grown to be the major provider of services and support for people living with HIV/AIDS in South Australia.

Self Help Queensland Inc (SHQ) is a not for profit community organisation comprising a network of self help and support groups in Queensland.

The National LGBT Health Alliance has been established by a number of organisations from across Australia that provide health-related programs, services and research targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexuality, sex and gender diverse people (LGBT). 

Cool Clinics & Counselling Services

The Centre Clinic is a community health service for positive people and the GLBTI community, but open to all in St Kilda and Northcote, Victoria.

Stonewall Medical Centre, 52 Newmarket Rd, Windsor, QLD 4030. (07) 3857 1222.

Gay and Lesbian Switchboard (Victoria) Incorporated is a volunteer organisation which provides a telephone counselling, referral and information service

Intersex in Pop Culture

There is a storyline in Footballers Wives that extends across Season 1 & 2 of a baby born to Jackie Pascoe and Jason Turner, called Paddy who has an intersex condition. In it, the father of the child has a very negative, macho attitude to the child saying "just cut out all the girlie bits" and "it belongs in a pickling jar".

In an episode of the cult-status series Freaks and Geeks entitled "The Little Things", it's revealed that one of the character's has an intersex condition. There's an interesting discussion on the episode here.

An online version of the 2000 short documentary "XXXY" can be viewed on Planet Out. It focuses on Kristi Bruce and Howard Devore, who were both born intersex, and who talk eloquently and straightforwardly about their experience of a medical model based upon shame, secrecy, and forced normalization. Physician Jorge Daaboul (Director of Pediatric Endocrinology at Oakland Children’s Hospital in California) joins their call for an end to secrecy and mutilating genital surgery on intersex children.

A feature film from Argentina was released called XXY. The synopis reads: "For just about everybody, adolescence means having to confront a number of choices and life decisions, but rarely any as monumental as the one facing 15 year-old Alex (Ines Efron,) who was born an intersex child. As Alex begins to explore her sexuality, her mother invites friends from Buenos Aires to come for a visit at their house on the gorgeous Uruguayan shore, along with their 16-year-old son Álvaro (Martin Piroyanski.) Alex is immediately attracted to the young man, which adds yet another level of complexity to her personal search for identity, and forces both families to face their worst fears."

A rollicking family epic like no other, Middlesex follows three generations of the Stephanides family from 1920s Greece to Detroit in the mid to late 20th century to contemporary Berlin. This book by Jefferey Eugenides won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In the Season 2 premiere of MTV’s Faking It, which explores the spectrum of sexuality, a main character reveals that she was born with an intersex condition, namely AIS.

Many more pop culture references to intersex mentioned here, here and here.

For Fertility, Adoption, Foster Care and Surrogacy links, click here.

For Osteoperosis links, click here.

For links specifically about the Management of Infants with Ambiguous Genitalia click here.

Note: People affected by intersex conditions are not transgender and transsexualism is not an intersex condition, but we include links to transgender/transsexual sites to help TG/TS people find appropriate support and information.

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