I don't wanna get drafted

This week’s on gender by taking into account the minority of intersex persons has been both eye-opening and frustrating. First and foremost, I believe that it is important to note the policy of concealment either by doctors or parents so that many intersex people are unaware of their biological status. I definitely believe that this is a travesty on the part of our society. I also side with the at times idealistic author Ann Fausto-Sterling who in her “The Five Sexes…” article hopes for social acceptance in the future. She does make several points, however, that demonstrate issues with this happening any time soon. One of the most prominent examples is simply our society’s obsession with the two sex mentality. When you fill out an application for a job, school, ticket purchase, you must specify gender. In the English language there are sexes associated for every third person pronoun. What are parents of a newborn intersex baby supposed to refer to the child as, no matter how open to the concept of intersex? It? This term has been associated as something out of the Adams Family and no better serves a title for a tiny baby.
After more research driven by the somewhat unnerving comments made in class about hermaphrodites being defects, I came across the scientific explanation that “Most often, but not always, the chromosome composition is 46,XX, and in every such individual there also exists evidence of Y chromosomal material on one of the nonsex chromosomes (autosomes)” (Britannica). Our survival as a population depends on mutations which add variation to our genotype and I see the existence of intersex people as nothing more than, not a mutation, but a variation that exists in our species. The fact alone that intersex people have not only been naturally selected out of existence, but have survived since ancient times should say something.
A criticism with this theory that was brought to light in the class period today where we viewed two videos, one for TLC and another both advocating for intersex, is that there are health issues that intersex people may face in the form of growth and maturation. I admit that I don’t know much about this subject and hope to learn more concerning statistics about intersex babies born that face growth and development issues or other health concerns that may be connected to their special genetic status.

Readings and Videos from Class

After pondering what it means to be "normal" I couldn't help but recognize the incredible extent to which the conceptual definition is determined by culture and society. By setting standards for different criteria we separate the normal from the abnormal. In doing so, however, we frequently muddle the definitions with our own opinions and assumptions. Our predecessors divide normality from abnormality and we strive to fit into their classification of normal (just as we strive to live up to myths regarding our sexuality). From generation to generation we reevaluate and adjust the boundaries between the two within our particular cultural settings.

The human mind loves to categorize. When trying to understand complex ideas and emergent perspectives the easy alternative is to simplify things by dividing them into groups (in this case the male and female genders). Anne Fausto-Sterling emphasizes in her writing the continuous, not discrete, nature of gender. As with color there is a spectrum of gender. And just as we typically categorize colors across the spectrum so do we categorize gender.

The medical position, as portrayed within the videos and as embodied by the concealment-centered model, seems to have replaced natural with normal. They cannot accept natural events across the gender spectrum if they do not fit within the normal categories. Within the name alone, the concealment-centered model does not seem ethical. They basically propose to solve the problem by ignoring it and withholding information from intersex individuals. I found one response from the Shifting the Paradigm of Intersex Treatment sheet particularly ridiculous. They supposedly believe that "parents...should consent to 'normalizing' surgery so that they can fully accept...their child." In this quotation it is obvious that normal has replaced natural in their eyes. If they truly wanted to "fully accept" the intersex individual then they should not perform any surgical alteration without the individual's informed consent.

The medical community behind this model claims that society cannot handle sexually ambiguous individuals. But their decision to adhere to this societal "norm" does nothing but enforce these cultural regulations.

Response to "The Five Sexes" article

I would first like to state that until I read this article, I had never thought about the difficulties intersexual people and their parents/guardians face. For example, at birth, how do parents decide what gender their child should be if he/she is born a hermaphrodite? Upon choosing a gender, how extensive should the surgery and hormonal therapy be? Should the child be told he/she was born a hermaphrodite and if so, at what age? As the child develops, what if he/she begins to favor the other gender? To what extent can past surgeries be reversed? The life of an intersexual person is extremely daunting and complex.

After my initial shock (upon learning about the numerous problems intersexual individuals encounter on a daily basis) wore off, I quickly noticed that Anne Fausto-Sterling's article "The Five Sexes" was extremely bias. Fausto-Sterling presents a one sided argument in which she bashes "Western culture," for being "deeply committed to the idea that there are only two sexes". She also preaches about her ideal utopia in which all gradations of gender should be able to live side by side in perfect harmony. I find it extremely hard to sympathize with Fausto-Sterling's argument that hermaphrodites and pseudohermaphrodites are not accepted in today's society. While this is in fact true and not okay, how can one expect for society to embrace intersexual people when two men aren't even allowed to marry? I believe that Fausto-Sterling is pushing too hard for acceptance among intersexuals when the world is still trying to learn how to respect one another for much smaller differences. Baby steps must be taken before one can learn how to run. In addition, Fausto-Sterling fails to provide evidence for her arguments. For example, she refers to a study in which children, who grew up knowing they were intersexual, adjusted to their different lifestyles. However, Fausto-Sterling does not provide the name or date of the study and concludes her argument with the broad statement that there was not one psychotic (referring to the children) or suicide in the group. Proof of such a study is needed for further investigation.

In addition, I felt as if Fausto-Sterling unfairly criticized the medical world for their role in "allowing" intersexual people to "slip quietly into society as 'normal' heterosexual males and females." While I agree that individuals and diversity make this world unique, what is wrong with letting a person, who was born as a hermaphrodite, enter society as peacefully as possible? What is wrong with acceptance? After experiencing high school first hand and the miseries many face for being just a little bit different, why not let an intersexual person "fit in"? While I know very little about the topic, today's medical discoveries have improved the lives of countless individuals. Without such technology, many might still be living in great despair.

Five Sexes history and Intersex Activism

Hey WS 100,

I’m a neuroscientist and I’ve been active in feminist and particularly intersex politics for some time now, so I’m pretty interested in your blog. I’m currently working on a book chapter about science research and gender. I hope you don’t mind me chiming in to your discussion.

I’m not sure what else you have read and I see that some of you have done additional research (the link to the ISNA website is a good reference). I think this is important – Some background on the article you read: as far as I understand, Fausto-Sterling wrote the article without the advising of any intersex persons. It did pique the interest of Cheryl Chase (who someone mentioned in an earlier post) who is now a very well known intersex activist. Cheryl Chase responded to Fausto-Sterling’s arguments and both agreed and brought up problems with her article. This in turn was the start of the current intersex movement led by intersex activists. Interestingly, Fausto-Sterling has published a second article called The Five Sexes Revisited in which she discusses many of the important changes that intersex activism has brought about (to the medical field and broader cultural ideas) and she changes her point of view on her choice of language and analysis (seemingly in response to Cheryl Chase’s initial letter although she does not say so). I think this history is significant and continues to be a problem. For instance, there are still no books published on the topic of Intersex identity/Intersexuality written by intersex persons. Think about this for a second – let’s make a simple analogy here and think about what it would be like if all books about “women” were written by men. (This analogy is only meant as a thought exercise not as a totalizing analogy of the two groupings.) I hope this adds to your discussion. I think that it is important that we challenge the medical “experts” because their opinions and protocols are constantly changing. The fact that historically, intersex persons have been treated very differently (including not being “fixed” or “dealt” with at all) is important in thinking about what kind of world is possible. In just 14 years since Fausto-Sterling’s article was published, the medical protocols for “treating” intersex children has been changed and has been hotly debated within medical, academic and social circles. The fact that Cheryl Chase was featured in the Sunday NY Times Magazine is evidence of changes and the impetus for more changes to take place.

Being trained as a scientist and growing up in the United States, I have had a hard time getting my head around the idea that “differences” are created by scientists, culture, doctors, etc. and not “truths” inherent to our bodies. But then again being able to rely on my experience as a scientist and someone who was brought up in this culture, I have been able to see the ways in which “difference” is constructed by us.

I hope that in this discussion, everyone will keep in mind that we are talking about procedures that are done to real people. Please be mindful of how you discuss this topic, as I don’t think you would want a discussion to take place about your body in your absence. Also, as is true with many of the socially/medically/culturally created categories of difference you will learn about, you can not usually tell who is intersexed and who is not. Even in class you probably don’t know what someone’s (or your own!) internal and external genitals or chromosomes look like – on this blog you definitely can’t tell, so please be respectful.

Discussion of The Five Sexes

I really enjoyed the article “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough” by Anne Fausto-Sterling. It sparked a query within my own mind as well as in our classroom discussion today. As I battle with the contrasting views on intersexuality myself, I am humbled to think of the inner struggle that must exist within intersexual individuals. Towards the end of class today, I began to formulate thoughts on the difference between a person’s gender and their sex. While most people believe that these two terms are interchangeable, I believe that a distinction exists between gender and sex, and it is one worthy of our academic analysis. By understanding the difference between gender and sex, Sterling’s utopia where “the sexes have multiplied beyond currently imaginable limits” may begin to appear more realistic.
I believe that gender should be defined as the sexual identity of an individual. The way a person views their own sexual existence should be associated with gender. Sex, on the contrary, I believe should be defined as either the male or female division of a species. By taking these two definitions as given from this point forth, an examination of human sexuality is far more productive.
Sterling describes the embryonic gonad choosing to follow a male or a female pathway early on in development, but according to Sterling, for intersexuals “this choice is fudged.” Not knowing what exactly Sterling meant by “fudged” I decided to research the causes of intersexuality. From my research I found that the three primary causes of intersexuality can be categorized as chromosomal, hormonal, and environmental. Sterling takes the perspective throughout the article that intersexuality should be embraced and that being intersexual should be accepted as a normal occurrence. However, I disagree with this standpoint. I believe that being intersexual, while it should not be stigmatized, must be recognized as an error in development. In order for intersexuality to occur in a person, something must go wrong in the development of the embryo. Whether the mistake is chromosomal mutation (as in the case of Turner Syndrome and Klinefelter Syndrome) a hormonal imbalance (as in the case of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and 5-Alpha-Reductase Deficiency) or due to environmental factors (such as exposure to radiation, certain medications, and chemicals), something must happen to a fetus before birth to cause intersexuality to occur. This is an essential point that was conspicuously absent from Sterling’s article.
My belief in only two sexes, male and female, is not meant to be close-minded or to express the idea that an enormous diversity does not exist within human sexuality. Instead, I propose that the diversity of sexuality is found within the idea of gender. There seems to be an infinite number of possibilities when discussing a person’s sexual identity. For example, a person can be born a male (an individual possessing male genitals) and enjoy sexual relations with females (individuals possessing female genitals). On the other hand, a person can be born a male and enjoy sexual relations with other males. Moreover, a person can be born a male but believe themselves to be woman. This belief in being a woman may cause a person to desire a sex change through surgery or medication, but that is not always the case. There are plenty of males who view themselves as women even though they have fully functioning male genitalia. In conclusion, I believe that Sterling’s continuum of sex is completely unrealistic; however, efforts should be directed at creating the wide range of human gender possibilities. I am curious to hear my peers thoughts on the difference between gender and sex (if they even think that one exists), and I look forward to future discussions on this topic in class or as responses to this blog.

Learning about intersexuality

When I led the discussion on Fausto-Sterling’s “The Five Sexes” today, I tried to emphasize certain factual qualities of the article over her opinions such as the “utopia” that appeared near the end of the article. However, I thought that several discussions that we had in class today were very socially relevant such as the debate over how to raise an intersex child and whether to take any medical action, if necessary.

For my discussion in class, I did some brief research about intersex individuals on the Internet. One of the most compelling intersex advocates I found was Cheryl Chase, an intersex individual who helped found the Intersex Society of North America, or ISNA. Chase’s story was so interesting, and as her parents had selected her gender for her, and she had had a clitoridectomy at a young age. Because of this surgery, Chase says her genitalia is “scarred” and “numb.”

Hearing Chase’s story really got me thinking about Fausto-Sterling’s “utopia” and how doctors and parents should help an intersex child. I cannot even begin to fathom an age of consent for a child to make choices about his/her body, but hearing Chase’s story made me more inclined to consider letting children make the choice for themselves. This proposition raises many issues such as the psychological well being of the parents, the environment the child would be raised in, and how growing up intersex has its own unique health problems. I think that Fausto-Sterling’s gender “continuum” is a bit unrealistic, but I know that as I learned more about intersexuality by reading “The Five Sexes,” I became more sympathetic and understanding about the issues that intersex individuals face. If anyone is interested in learning more about this controversial (and contentious) issue, visit www.isna.org.

The Five Sexes

While I certainly admire Anne Fausto-Sterling's idealist beliefs regarding the inclusion of hermaphrodites into modern society, I have doubts that her suggestions would ever work in practice. Her statement "But if the state and the legal system have an interest in maintaining a two-party sexual system, they are in defiance of nature" is completely true: obviously people exist who do not fall under one of the two specific gender distinctions. I agree with her belief that Dehwhurst and Gordon's description of intersexuals is appalling: to say that a newborn is "doomed to live as a sexual freak" or a "hopeless psychological misfit" is beyond cruel. And yes, in a utopian society, there would be no need for concern about intersexuals functioning socially in society as well as any other person. I do, however, disagree with the lack of emphasis Fausto-Sterling places on the legal reasons why intersexuality is not more widely accepted. While she does breifly note some legal concerns, for the most part it seems that Fausto-Sterling believes the answer to all the "why" questions regarding gender classification lies in "a cultural need to maintain clear distinctions between the sexes." I would argue that this need is not so much a cultural one as it is a legal one. In the laws that we so desperately need to keep order in our society, there is no room for gray area. Fausto-Sterling, herself, brings this point into question. Should a "ferm" living as a woman be, in the eyes of the law, any less a woman than one who is born completely female? What about a "merm" living as a woman; is s/he any less a woman than one born "ferm" or female? And if we are willing to stretch the boundaries that far, then doesn't the question have to extend to cover transexuals? There can be no blanket answer to these questions; these cases must be dealt with individually. As Fausto-Sterling points out, the differences in state laws determining how one's sex is determined examplify the lack of clarity regarding how gender can be classified.
Ultimately, Fausto-Sterling arrives at the same idealist society that I visualize, one where gender classifications are no longer necessary at all. I would completely support the realization of such a state, however, I do not think that simply ridding ourselves of "cultural" stigmas against hermaphrodites will get us there.