is it a boy or girl?!

According to Suzanne Kessler’s book, Lessons from the Intersexed, the current attitudes of the intersex condition has been influenced by three factors.  The first of these is about how easy it is to perform minimal surgeries to make infant genitals to look “normal.”  If it is the case that a baby is born with somewhat androgynous genitalia, it is a quick procedure to “fix” the condition so that mommy and daddy can rest assured that their baby looks “normal.”  Let’s not forget that the first question that people most usually ask after a baby is born is, “is it a boy or girl?”

The second factor is how socially in the United States the valuation of women can sometimes be based primarily to their reproductive functions.  It is true that in the past, women were seen as housewives, meant for making babies and dinner along the way, and not much more.  If a woman can’t reproduce, does this make her not a woman any longer?  But if the categories are decided solely reproductively, and since women who can’t have children are still socially accepted as “women,” why can’t a man who can’t technically reproduce or “have babies” himself not be able to be considered a sterile woman, if that is the role in which he chooses?  Am I making sense? 

The third factor discusses the difference between gender identity and gender role.  She defines the two as follows:

Gender identity: one’s sense of oneself as belonging to the female or male category.

Gender role: cultural expectations of one’s behavior as “appropriate” for a female or male.

According to John Money and J. L. Hampson, this thought of gender identity can be changeable up to 18 months of age.  Basically they claim that you can bring up a child as either sex, and as long as it is within that grace period they should be able to adjust accordingly and “develop a gender identity regardless of the chromosomal gender.”  Furthermore, they claim that the child will not question her or his assignment and request reassignment at a later age. 

However, we have been watching many movies in class that have to deal with this same topic.  For example, recently we watched a documentary about Robert Eads, who was brought up as a girl since birth.  However, even though he was taught to be a girl, and his parents ushered him into such an identity, he could not live up to the gender roles being asked of him because he knew something was wrong.  Therefore, Money and Hampson’s theories were wrong because Eads’s parents followed such criteria mentions by the duo, and yet their child still called for sexual reassignment.

Kessler mentions in her section entitled Genital Intolerance that “although variant genitals rarely pose a threat to the child’s life, the post delivery situation is referred to as a ‘neonatal psychosexual emergency,’ seeming to require life-saving intervention."  In fact, the medical records about such surgeries exclaim that the parents have no choice and that this is a necessary procedure.  Kessler lists a couple examples:

“The size of the enlarged clitoris demanding clitorectomy cannot be stated in exact measurements.”

And…

“The child with hypertrophy of the clitoris will require corrective surgery to achieve a acceptable functional and cosmetic result.”

By making the surgeries seem inevitable, doctors can get away making more money “fixing” problems that would most likely “fix” themselves with time.  In fact, Kessler wrote a paper once titled, “Creating Good Looking Genitals in the Service of Gender” that was highly scrutinized by one reader who claimed, “they don’t create, they destroy.”

In conclusion, I just realized that my computer keeps underlining the word “intersex” whenever I write it.  Upon further investigation I realized that it doesn’t even recognize “intersex” as a word.  No wonder why these “intersex” people can’t seem to find a niche in this world!  Not even modern technology includes them as being in existence.  Thoughts?