Cheryl Chase Five Sexes Analysis

In this section of chapter 3 Georgian Davis talks about the power the medical field had on the topic of the intersex body. Georgina set up an interview at a pediatric medical center with Dr. I who was a well-known expert of the intersex body. After the publication of the “Consensus Statement of Management of Intersex Disorders” intersex language had been replaced with the terminology DSD (Disorders of Sex Development) in the medical profession. As mentioned in chapter 2 she reiterates critiques that the medical field have undergone based on their inability to diagnose honesty to people with intersex traits. She noted that the medical profession can either do harm or good to the intersex community based on its position in the level of gender structure. In the medical profession, there was not always a form of naming abnormalities. It began with the Greeks and continued into the 18th century until they created a classification of the many medical traits. Sociologist Phil Brown argues that for there to be diagnostics there has two be two parts to complete it. One the diagnosis is technique which includes forming the classification by using various tasks and techniques. While the work diagnosis includes clinical evaluations and task. By using this form of diagnosis, we can better understand intersexuality.

The documentary that I watched this week is called Intersexion. This documentary talks about different people who are intersexual. Intersex can be define as a abnormal condition of being intermediate between male and female. The individuals share their stories about growing up being intersex. Mostly all of their stories are the same. The individual is born and doctors do not know what they are because the individual as both male and female sexual anatomy. It depends if the individual grows up looking either like a male or female that they decide to do surgery. Many of these individuals were not aware of having this condition until later in life. A doctor called John Money had a theory that gender was the product of “nurture not nature”. In

In her article "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough," Anne Fausto-Sterling describes why male and female gender identities are not sufficient in identifying the sexes of every individual. While “Western culture is [still] deeply committed to the idea that there are only two sexes" (20), Fausto-Sterling challenges this viewpoint by determining that there are more than just two sexes, but “at least five sexes– and perhaps even more” (21). According to Fausto-Sterling, these five (or more) sexes lie on a much wider sexual spectrum, where male and female are not the only biological sexes. It so happens that there is a small number of people who are born intersex: having both male and female sex organs or other sexual characteristics

2. In light of this newer research on gender identity, what advice would you give parents who are considering gender re-assignment of a male infant who lacks a penis, but has functional testicles?

The documentary Dr. Money and the Boy with No Penis depicts the tragic experience of a young boy and the psychologist who attempts to “treat” him after an unfortunate accident. In a time of little knowledge of sexual variation Dr. John Money proposed the theory that a boy could be raised as a girl, but after years of failed attempts this theory would be shattered. This story began when twins Bruce and Bryan went in to the hospital to have a routine circumcision operation at 7 months of age. On the 27th of April 1966 Bruce was the first of the two twins to be operated on, but the procedure would not go as planned. The boy’s parents were soon informed that their son’s penis had been fully burned off in a nontraditional attempt to burn the foreskin away from the penis. In a position of great confusion the Reimers became hopeful in light of such tragedy as they later became aware of the work of Dr. John Money, a man who was becoming a pioneer in the field of sex change surgery. In meeting with this man the Reimers were informed that their baby boy could live a normal life as a girl.

In this Ted talk, Mr. Norman Spack talks about a very sensitive issue prevalent in the whole of the world, an issue which affects a substantial population of the world yet people find it difficult to address it. He talks about how sometimes when a child is born the doctors find it difficult to specify the sex of the child because of either the discrepancies among the externals or between the internal and external organs of the body. I agree with his statement that many times our feelings and sexual orientation differ from our gender identity. We also feel something which is not a normal thing for our gender but is a common trait with the opposite gender. The speaker rightly points out that whether the sexual orientation is in harmony with

With the establishment of these gender identity clinics, and the financial backing of philanthropist Reed Erickson, a transsexual man, the health care needs of transsexual people gained increased attention and support. Despite this new attention, the clinics used Benjamin’s model of “true” transsexuals. This differentiation between “true” transsexuals and other gender variants became a serious and highly important diagnostic decision as gender affirming surgeries were irreversible. This resulted in many transsexual individuals to be denied access to hormones and surgery. Specifically, transsexual men encountered difficulties, as transsexuality was primarily seen as a male-to-female only transition. In fact, during the late 1960s the United States leading UCLA Gender Identity Research Clinic debated whether trans men should be considered transsexuals. Many trans men themselves did not label themselves as transsexuals as they only knew about other transsexual women (Meyerowitz, 2002; Beemyn, 2014).

In “Intro-How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States,” Joanne Meyerowitz writes about the beginnings of transsexuality. She beings the article by defining cross-gender identification, as “the sense of being the other sex, and the desire to live as the other sex” (Meyerowitz 432), while transsexuality, “being the quest to transform the bodily characteristics of sex via hormones and surgery” (Meyerowitz 432). According to Meyerowitz, transsexuality began in the early 20th century. Experiments on changing sex, began in europe on animals. Then in 1920, on humans. Joanne Meyerowitz writes that “the debate on the visibility and mutability of sex” began after Christine Jorgensen, an american who went to Denmark to get a sex change in 1950, became a media sensation in America. While professionals were figuring this out, people “who identified as transsexuals, transvestites, lesbians, and gay men” (Meyerowitz 433) were having the conversation and creating the language within themselves. This conversation on sex change, occurred alongside the sexual revolution in the 60’s, opening “the movement of the organizing of programs, clinics, conferences, and associations to promote study of and treatment for transsexuals” (Meyerowitz 434).

Discussion of issues related to non-normative sexual and gender identities as related to mental health began in the 19th century (Drescher, 2010). Initially medical and psychiatric providers viewed issues related to gender identity as resulting from delusional thought processes (Drescher, 2010). As a result the concept of surgery as a solution to gender identity differences was viewed as unnecessary and ultimately an incorrect form of treatment (Drescher, 2010). In 1952 the first gender reassignment surgery was performed in Denmark on an American citizen (Drescher, 2010). The publicity in the American media that followed this surgery brought the concept of gender identity to the public eye. During the 1960s research about gender identity started to develop and it was the work of Money, Stoller, Benjamin, and Green that ultimately change professional and public concept of Gender Identity (Drescher, 2010). These four individuals were among the first to conduct clinical and academic research on gender identity and gender roles (Drescher, 2010). As a result of their research beliefs about non-normative gender identity shifted from a problem of the mind to a biological disorder that was fixed and should be treated with

Bradley et al., also mention a similar case in which a 2-month year old male was injured during an electrocautery circumcision and his entire penile shaft was burned and the penis eventually sloughed off. At 7-months the rest of the penis and testes were removed and the parents made the decision to reassign their son to a female and to raise him as a girl. The patient was interviewed at two separate times. The first time was at age 16 and the patient stated that she had been living a female life and had no uncertainty about being a woman. The patient mentioned that during her childhood she viewed herself as a “tomboy” but she still maintained her circle of friends to mainly girls. She wanted to have sexual intercourse with males so she arranged a vaginoplasty. She was interviewed once more at age 26 and reported that she had been attracted to women in fantasy, and enjoyed experiences with both women and men. She now

The five sexes that are being discussed are male, female, and intersex. Intersex is described as a catch-all category for the subgroups that share both male and female characteristics. That creates the term hermaphrodite (herms), which are people who have both male and female parts. The second subgroup is called male pseudo hermaphrodites (merms) which are people who are born with mostly male parts. The third subgroup is called female pseudo hermaphrodites (ferms) who are those who mainly have female organs. The article focuses on the structure of how hermaphrodites are classified. Ferms, which are the females, are mainly female because they still develop a menstrual cycle during puberty but if they do not take any medication for their disorder, they would develop traits as a

In conclusion, if gender was really like that, we should see a lot more overlap. But we don’t, and we never will, because its instinct, not custom. For instance, the article mentions how the mother recalls a time after John had the surgery and was told by doctors to treat him as a girl. She states, “I put this beautiful dress on him…I think he knew it was a dress and that it was for girls and he wasn't a girl.” Joan likewise had favored boy’s activities and games to those of girl’s through childhood. Making that one of the many reason she understood between the ages of 9 and 11, that she was not a girl but rather a boy. John states, “There were little things… I began to see how different I felt and was, from what I was supposed to be.” Joan

The case study written by Keith K. Schillo of SUNY College at Oneonta gives a brief argument of how the nurture theory could possibly be the cause of gender identity based on the struggles one boy had to endure during his life. The case study goes on to describe how a twin boy went from being a boy to a girl and then back to being a boy again back in 1965 to determine if gender identity was based solely on the nurture theory, or if nature was the cause. Due to the inability of both boys being able to urinate properly, it was decided to circumcise them in hopes that they could live normal healthy lives, but due to the use of unconventional methods, one boy was severely mutilated and forced to live without a penis. Based on the nurture theory of development, one psychologist from John Hopkins University believed if the child was completely castrated and reassigned gender, the parents could raise him as a girl and that she would grow up healthy and happy. While he was treated as a female, he still maintained the desire of being male and acted accordingly by refusing the many variables given to him such as clothing or activities that often reflect female instead of male characteristics. After many years of being trapped in a girl’s body, he underwent a double mastectomy to remove his breasts, and had a penis reconstructed so that he could once again live freely as a male. After all this, he eventually married and lived a happy life until one day he was consumed by

Gender: a word society uses far too often without realizing its true complicated meaning. Children are born every day and the golden question becomes “Is it a boy or a girl?” What would a person do if they heard their child was neither or both? According to the National Institutes of Health, “One out of every 2,000 kids is born with genitals that cannot be clearly identified as male or female.” These types of children are called “Intersex”, and they break the boundary of gender identification. Intersex is a broad category for many situations where an individual’s genital or reproductive anatomy, or chromosomal pattern, lies between the normal standards of both male and female. The prefix “inter” stands for between; therefore, the simple definition of intersex is “between the sexes.” Intersex conditions usually result from a genetic