"The Five Sexes," by Ann Fausto-Sterling, brings to light the complexity of how to deal with intersex individuals. Nearly all of these issues arise from the result of social constructs like the existence of only two very different and recognizable sexes. Ann Fausto-Sterling recognizes this, but her idea of a utopia is (at least for now) too idealistic. Even in today's society, the idea of homosexuality is not universally accepted and the fight for gay rights and such has been occurring for longer than intersex awareness. In addition, the idea of creating a spectrum of sexes would create many difficult issues since for so many years, society has revolved around the idea of only 2 sexes existing. How would bathrooms be created? How will college dormitories be divided? Of course, creating a separate "intersex bathroom may seem to solve this problem, but, is it fair to lump all intersex individuals into a group? Or should there be five different bathrooms created? Although this issue is complicated and opens up a new world of delicate topics that must be addressed, that is not an excuse to not afford rights for intersexed individuals. Still, I'm unsure of the best way to approach this issue.
The video that we watched in class provided some thought-provoking testimonials from intersexed individuals. The first segment was quite shocking. The doctors were portrayed as having a mysterious agenda was so determined to perform the "reconstructive" surgery on the child. This example seems like an isolated incident, but I cannot say that with any certainty.
In contrast with Ann Fausto-Sterling's article, the second segment of the video provided much more current life-experiences from real intersexed individuals. Although it seemed very biased, the video's purpose (at least the second segment) was to raise awareness around the potential harm "reconstructive" surgeries may have on intersexed individuals, not particularly an objective documentary. After viewing the video though, like others, I wonder how many intersexed individuals (that are aware of it) appreciate the surgeries done on them? The effects of being an intersexed individual seems like an area that should be studied and documented much more. This would be a difficult task, though, since many intersexed people, seemingly forced by society, are reluctant to reveal that they are intersexed or are not aware that they are. Even then, some individuals in the second segment expressed anger over the lies their parents told them, raising another issue of the complexities of how a parent should handle an intersexed child. It is nearly impossible to wait until the child is an adult to tell them since they tend to know that they are different and will ask questions. On the opposing end, how are parents going to explain to their children that they are an ambiguous sex?
It seems that the only way for society to be aware of and address the issues regarding intersexed individuals are for more of these individuals to go through life declared as intersexed. This is difficult due to policies like the concealment-centered model and parents whom are forced to lie due to the constraining views of society as a whole. This seems to only perpetuate the lack of awareness regarding intersexed individuals.
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I am very curious about this idea that Fausto-Sterling is too idealistic. It was not that long ago that women and men could not attend college together or that segregation was the norm. I think we have seen society change in rather dramatic ways.
in answer to your questions, some societies (not just non-western societies) have unisex bathrooms meaning that anyone can use them. I wonder what the motivation is behind separate bathrooms for men and women in the first place?
I am interested in the use of the term "bias" too. What makes the video biased? And if it is biased what does that mean about the arguments made? Are they no longer valid?
I too wrote in my blog that Fausto-Sterling was too idealistic. I believed that her vision of a utopia was too progressive since society still does not even accept the marriage of two men or two women. However, after receiving a comment on my blog, I realized that every movement or thought was once considered too progressive. For instance, desegregating schools, allowing women to vote, or birth control for women. While I still think her ideas will not be fully accepted for some time, I should not have discounted them as too idealistic.
In addition, I too thought that the first video we saw was biased. It portrayed the doctors as dark villans. However, after tonights reading from "Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood" I came to the understanding that this is an extremely common practice (surgeries kept secret). People told of stories in which their parents took them in for surgery without being given a reason. I believe since I was completely oblivious about this practice and very supportive of advancements in the medical field, the TLC clip came off as extremely bias.
Perhaps I wasn't too careful in writing my blog, but for clarification, even though I said the videos were biased I was not discounting the messages from the videos. In fact, I was attempting to convey how I felt that despite my position that the videos were biased, I did not view the bias in a negative light (at least in the second video). I attempted to explain my view that since the video had a set agenda, it inherently was biased but at the same time I felt that they almost have a right to be biased since they are trying to raise awareness regarding the issue. I definitely feel that the arguments made in the second video (not the TLC one) were quite reasonable and logical. Perhaps I should have been more clear on that in my blog!
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