Kitty Anderson | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Icelandic |
| Occupation | Community activist |
| Known for | Intersex activist, co-chair of OII Europe |
Kitty Anderson is an Icelandic intersex activist. She is a co-chair of European intersex organization OII Europe, a co-founder of Intersex Iceland, and chairman of the board of the Icelandic Human Rights Centre. [1] She has been described as a "leading voice of the intersex movement in Europe." [2]
Kitty Anderson was born with androgen insensitivity. She found out when she was 13, but only found out she was born with internal testes when she was aged 22. [3] [4] Anderson has reported that her "mother was told to lie" to her until she was aged 13. [5] [6]
Anderson co-founded Intersex Iceland in 2014, [7] and currently serves as its chairperson. [3] She is co-chair and spokesperson [8] of OII Europe and chairperson of the board of the Icelandic Human Rights Centre. [1] She has also served on the board of Samtökin '78, Iceland's national queer organization, and the national Ministry of Welfare Queer Committee from 2014 to 2016. [3] Anderson has spoken against secrecy and shame associated with intersex:
When I found out I was 13 and I completely freaked out. There can be a lot of secrecy and stigma related to being intersex and it was something that had been kept from me. But when my cousin – who is also intersex – was born a couple of years later, my family didn’t keep it a secret and it was a healing process for all of us [4]
She also campaigns against intersex medical interventions. [9] [10] In an interview with NIKK, Anderson has stated that "surgeries will continue until we get a law that prohibits them". [11]
Anderson has presented to the Council of Europe Committee on Bioethics, [12] and speaks at a range of conferences, [2] [13] media, [14] [15] [16] and human rights institutions across Scandinavia and Europe. [17]
In 2015, Anderson campaigned to change terminology in the biology curriculum in Icelandic schools, and dictionaries, after finding out that the word intersex was being translated into Icelandic as "freak". [18] [19] The publisher of the school text later apologized. [20]