Gender Binary In Intersex

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.

Each day, over one-hundred and eighteen million babies are born worldwide. According to the biological sex binary male and female, every infant has the possibility of being born with sex chromosomes female (XX) and male (XY), which causes differences in their biological anatomies. There are also individuals with disorders of sex development or more commonly referred to as being intersex. Intersex is an umbrella term for people whose sexual or reproductive anatomies, sex hormones, or sex chromosomes just do not fall neatly into the definitions of male and female. Examples of this disorder could include ambiguous genitalia, androgen sensitivity, or abnormalities with how the rest of the body responds to sex hormones. The majority of cultures around the globe give merit to and recognize the differences in biological sex (male/female binary), what roles they have played in their traditions/histories, and their current position in framing politics or societal structures. Some Non-Western countries such as China, India, Taiwan, and Pakistan, include cultures that exhibit a strong sex-preference, or more specifically son-preference. More than simply preferring the births of sons to daughters, son preference develops from instances of gender inequality where outside parties often question basic human rights. Non-Western

I snapped out of my trance as soon as I heard the word “surgery.” He recommended corrective surgery to “fix” the baby’s genitalia so that I could raise my child as a normal girl. In that moment, I couldn’t help all the questions spilling out of my mouth. How bad was the deformity? Is the surgery obligatory? What are the potential repercussions of opting out of the surgery?

John was born an identical (non-intersex) twin boy in 1965 to Linda and Frank Thiessens. At 8 months old, John and his brother had a minor medical problem involving his penis, and a doctor decided to treat the problem with circumcision. The doctor screwed up the circumcision on John, using a method involving an electrocautery needle leading to the doctor accidentally burning off all of John’s penis. John would never engage in any sexual activity let alone have “normal heterosexual relations” (Colapinto, 1997); John was going to be alone his whole life. Frank and Linda were frantic at the least. They visited several medical experts who guaranteed them that putting

Sexuality and gender identity issues have had a long history in the fields of mental health and public policy. There has been much debate surrounding the inclusion of issues related to gender and sexual identity in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual since its initial stages of development (Drescher, 2010). Debates in this field of interest have been fragmented between several stakeholders (Ehrbar, 2010). This fragmentation has created complications in the process of developing United States policies that are inclusive of individuals with gender identities that do not match the gender to which they were assigned at birth. Specifically, policies surrounding gender reassignment surgeries have been difficult to develop and

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

Society demands strict imposition of gender expectations and must constantly be reassured of the traditional gender and sexual binary. A gender binary is a biopolitcal regulation of masculinity and femininity identity while the sexual dimorphic system theorizes the existence of only two bodies distinguished by their reproduction capacities. However, the “regime of ‘sperm and egg cell carriers’ is going astray” (Preciado 105). In As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, John Colapinto reports David Reimer’s frustration of gender identity as a result of faulty and unethical medical procedures. Born as Bruce Reimer, David is accidentally circumcised, deprived him of a functional male reproduction system. In regulation of imposed societal guidelines of masculinity, he “is incomplete, physically defective, and that he must live apart” (Colapinto Chapter 1).

Because of the difficulty in defining what it means to be intersexed, it is difficult to produce accurate statistics. It has been approximated, however, that one in one hundred people are born with bodies which "differ from standard male or female" bodies (3). Furthermore, the number of individuals receiving "normalizing" surgery on the genitalia is approximated to be one or two in every one thousand births.

Money had not been completely successful in trying to prove his theory of gender neutrality due to biased reports and outcome of David Reimer. Dr. Money obsessed over the possibility to show gender neutrality a possibility to test his theory. This study took place long before anyone can fully understand the outcome of changing a child's gender at a young age and with new transgender surgeries and being uncomfortable for the lack of gender appendages, the ignorance of the outcome of the child's botched circumcision and forced gender reassignment without knowledge of the long term effect lead to unknown affects to the child. Looking at the time period that this events had occurred the many ethical violations had been seen from the parents and the Psychologist seeing that the innocent child had been forced to have a sex change and later reinforced gender traits without letting the child know was a complete violation to his rights.

The two biggest categories that set many apart and many same, is our gender. Gender has been a thing in society where if you act outside your gender norm, it is considered taboo. Gender being either female or male, is what society sets our certain paths to be straight from the womb. Our society has created roles for each gender; for example, a male is portrayed with strength, and if he is not he’s gay. A female is portrayed with being the weaker sex, and that if they show any type of strength they are considered manly. But there are so many categories other than just female and male; you have intersex and different groups of transgenders. Intersex is where an individual is born with both physical characteristics as a male and female.

Babies are assigned genders at birth, if they don’t fit male or female they’re ether killed or hidden away( Assignment, Coming Out). They’re hidden away because they’re seen as bad omen.The only reason they’re considered bad omen is because they “can’t be cleansed”. Intersex people make up 2% of the world's population( Duggan). Having to hide away just because of how they were born can take a very heavy mental toll them.Even their families will start avoiding them and acting like they aren’t there.

Intersex Society of North America’s principle is that “one’s genitals are primarily for one’s own use, not for the comfort of others.” therefore, the patient should be allowed to choose for their own body and not have to stand by their parents preferences. There have been numerous cases, where an infant was given unnecessary surgery to "normalize" them to fit society’s standards. The family of the children were told to keep their condition a secret, sometimes even keeping the condition a secret from the child as well, just like Davis’ story. Today Intersex adults stand up against the medical treatment they were given as children to say the treatment they received was “harmful, lead to sterility, ongoing pain, scarring, and incontinence, loss of genital sensation and sexual function, and depression.” (The Interface Project) Through support groups members have discoursed their views and opinion of surgery performed on infants through their own personal experience advocating that child should be able to have a say in their

Although many western cultures denounce these practices as being barbaric and unfair these western cultures actually practice genital surgery on children. For example, many baby boys in the United States are circumcised at birth for both aesthetic reasons and for health concerns. Children born with both male and female genitalia are seen as medical emergencies and surgeries to correct this anomaly are done as soon as possible.

I found that the reading, Teaching Intersex Issues, was incredibly interesting because the topic of gender and sex can be so tricky to teach along with feeling like a person is walking on eggshells, nervous that they will offend someone. The main information I took away was that respondents had made a comment that intersex would not stand out because transgender issues and other gender issues are also discussed. I found this interesting because I truly feel as though I have never actually taken the time to think about intersex individuals, the only thing I had ever heard about them was in the form of jokes, which pains me to even say. Though after reading about some of the cases in As Nature Made Him, and the parenting book that was also assigned,

Background Ambiguous genitalia is not an unusual abnormality in pediatric surgery practice and this term is used frequently to describe wide spectrum of ambiguity of the external genitalia in a child, from undescended testis, hypospadias, to serious and complex variety of autosomal disorder category, or even more the co-existence of two categories, where the diagnosis and sex assignment decision is considerably challengeable.