Intersex Narratives

Male and female. Two words, that define our entire lives from the day we are born. Binary classifications of sex and gender have always been the norm in society. The entrenchment of those categories in identification documents, expose individuals who do not correctly fit into the status-quo of these two categories. Among them, intersex people are especially vulnerable. In recent years, the LGBTQ community has had strong pushes for more rights and societal recognition, however there is still one hole remaining that flies under the radar all too often. To this day, people are still predominantly unaware of the existence of intersex people. However, through the striving growth of the number of intersex groups and individual activists, the

The Trouble With Ambiguous Genitalia In trying to decide what to write this last Bio paper on, I solicited the help of some of the girls I eat with in Erdman. They twirled their forks on their plates, bit their lips, scratched their heads. "How about hermaphrodites?" someone chimed in. I lit up. Sure, I thought. Hermaphrodites. That will be interesting. And then: Wait. What's a hermaphrodite again?

Thoroughly discuss the nature vs. nurture arguments as it relates to sex and gender. Typically, sex and gender have been described as a package deal; one reflects the other. However, this is false and has become a popular topic in today’s society. Sex is defined as “the biological characteristics that distinguish males from females” (Henslin, 2014). Therefore, a person’s sex is determined by their physical traits, such as a penis or a vagina. Gender, on the other hand, “consists of whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers proper for its males and females” (Henslin, 2014). Gender norms vary between cultures and are not based off of physical traits.

Sex refers to the physical traits of male and females. Gender refers to the cultural behaviors,social behaviors, and attitudes learned through socialization with being male and female. The two-party sexual system of this article was apart of the nature theory discussed in our textbook. Nature refers to biological, physiological, heredity of an individual which can be fairly fixed. Many teenagers decide that they want to change their gender and become attracted to the same gender. For example, a female who dresses like a boy and dates another female is considered a transgender. Also, a lot of teenagers or older adults start to feel that they were born in the wrong body and decide to have a sex change (transexual). Most families do not accept the new change and therefore abandon their children. There have been many issues with parents wanting a certain gender, and dress the child according to the gender they would rather have. This situation makes the child question their gender/sexuality as they get

Now, that is a lot of power. We often entrust a doctor’s judgement wholeheartedly because they just want the “best” for us, and in the cases of interesexed individuals, the physician simply wants to rid them of all the adjustment horrors that comes with such configuration, but seldom do they question the inadequacies of our role system, nor have they considered the possibility of such individuals developing into a perfectly happy and capable human beings without reassignment. Perhaps this is due to their inability to associate normalcy with anything outside of the binary. Inevitably, problems began to emerge from these reassignments. Some reassigned individuals felt aligned with their prescribed gender, but most did not. Some of these cases are extremely unfortunate, because their genitals had already been mutilated at birth. Such outcomes had prompted physicians to take more precaution when dealing with intersex babies. Sterling’s noble effort in assimilating intersex individuals through further categorization will help them find a classification system where there is a place that they can fall under, but it does not change the views of the masses, nor does it make it much easier for them to appreciate themselves as who they are, although it is a

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

Personal Response on Sexuality Identity Lillian M. Floyd PSY/265 Lauren Lappe February 16.2014 A person’s sexual identity may seem like something obvious, something that should be an essential characteristic of our lives. However as we have found, these things are not always so simple, often finding that our sexual identity, is ever changing most of our lives. I have given my own identity some thought and I find for me it wasn’t easy. In this essay I will be discussing my own identity and my reasons for coming to the conclusions that I have come to, and why I came to them (Rathus, Nevid, & Fichner-Rathus, 2005)

I have worked for a few wealthy influential men who have had indiscretions on the side. However, Dr. Thorn takes things to a completely new level; he only needs a willing partner with an orifice. I have not seen him with a man... yet! But, I

Anne Fausto-Sterling further separates sex from sexual identity by discussing the experiences of intersex individuals. Despite what society expects of those who don’t neatly fit into the binary, intersex individuals generally manage to live happy lives. After this reading, it seems ridiculous that society has been allowed to determine what a person’s genitalia should be. As America begins to become more accepting of homosexuality, hopefully those who genitalia is a mixture of both male and female sex organs will also find themselves being more

Previous to the 19th century, most intersexual individuals led ordinary lives. Their genital difference was mostly accepted as part of the difference which occurs in nature. Intersex was never a health problem (Daaboul, 2000). It was in the 19th century where intersex became a medicalized and individuals born intersex were categorized as “abnormal” and “diseased” (Daaboul, 2000). The drive of medicine in the last century has been to “cure” intersexed individuals by using surgical, hormonal and psychological therapies to make them clearly female or male. However, the practical and psychological outcomes of this approach have been poor. Many intersexed individuals have suffered severe mental and bodily damage from medicine’s efforts to make them

Many cultures and countries, traditionally, have viewed gender as naturally immutable, as biologically determined at birth, and as binary – either male or female. Because gender binary is accepted as a norm in many cultures and countries, many have ideas and expectations toward newly born infants – these infants are expected to fit neatly into either male or female, and their sexual anatomies are expected to be distinct from one another. When infants are born with intersexual condition, however, medical authorities not only consider these intersex births as anatomic abnormality but intervene also to “fix” these intersex infants back to “normal” by performing highly invasive genital modification surgeries. Because they believe that intersex

The second section of the documentary will focus on the aspect of gender identity throughout the history of sexuality. As sexual identity and gender identity are entirely different, it is important to include both topics and, for the issue of gender identity, to highlight its own diverse spectrum and the

Intersex is a term used to describe a person that is born with genital ambiguity. One in two thousand births result in an intersex baby. Children born with this condition were formerly known as a hermaphrodite. When a baby is born the first question parents are asked is boy or girl? Thus the pressure is on for doctors and the parents to identify a sex for the baby. This is an impossible task for the doctor or parent of an intersex baby. The answer that the baby is neither male nor female is not acceptable. Therefore doctors attempt to rectify the situation by assigning gender. Doctors determine which sex they believe the baby to be based on the prominent genitalia. The next step is then surgery to assign gender. Gender assignment surgery is usually done before the age of two years. However sometimes

In the book, The Transgender Phenomenon, a study was conducted of ‘gender blenders’, by Ekins and King in 2006. This combined the ethnomethodological understanding of gender and also the norm of (binary) sex. They demonstrated how medicine has been fundamental for how the sex of individuals is defined.

1. There are important reasons why we should acknowledge intersex people. The most important and defining moment is when an intersex person is born. It is then that families or medical staff (or both) often make the decision regarding assigning a specific gender to the child. As seen in the film and in Thomas Rogers' essay, there are a very few cases in which the intersex person is happy as an adult with the gender that was assigned to them upon being born. Not allowing intersex people to make their own decisions regarding their gender as adults can have damaging and devastating consequences. Secondly, regardless their sex, all human beings should be treated with equal importance and dignity. We all should have the right to make choices and