The Intersex Documentary 'Me My Sex And I'

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.

“The surgery makes it easier for your child to identify as either a boy or a girl because as of right now, it’s neither.” That was it. The only real reason my child needed surgery was because of an arbitrary cosmetic requirement for classifying genders. I was speechless, livid, and borderline aggressive. I told the doctor I needed to sleep and that I’d think about it the next morning, but truth of the matter is that my constant worrying is keeping me up all night.

The doctors essential pick what gender they want the child to be based on what they observe the child's genitals to be. As discussed in the book, male children with unusually small penises have had operations

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 child is just born like that. AS Judi Herring said in her Ted talk as that we are sacred because “they don’t conform to what is somebody’s idea of what they must look like” is not something we can “fabricate” (Gender Bound). We ae no body to change that person, but that person themselves. I feel that more institutional training should be added, so that medical doctors can try to find a better solution to this situation. I suggest maybe waiting to do anything until the child is at their teens year where they can understand the situation better and let them decide what they want to do. That the doctors give them a variety of options that they can take if they want to change their body to the gender they feel they are. As well as educate the public in this issue, so parents are aware of this and can be paper if it ever does happen to the.

Between the Sexes is a compelling narrative. Through several anecdotes, it illustrates the devastating psychological implications of early surgical intervention on intersexuals. According to the article, the surgery robs individuals of their sexual gratification, their gender identity, and their innocence. It's argument is noble, yet flawed. Authors Christine Gorman and Wendy Cole spin several sad yarns of intersexed people who are upset with handling of their gender assignment. They tell horror stories of people kept in the dark about their intersex, about a child forced to stop acting like a boy and become a girl, a teen who was raised to be a girl, but developed into a male. Gorman and Cole stumble into the fallacy of hasty

Through examining the ways intersex individuals are treated in a medical setting, one can see how science only allows binary bodies to be created. Crawley et al. (2007) discusses intersex individuals and the standard treatment of intersex children, being to alter their ‘abnormal’ genitalia to resemble one of the two genders. This has become the normal treatment as if this is necessary, but the only threat the child is in danger of is not fitting perfectly into the heteronormative standard of correct genitalia. Because surgical intervention proves we alter and change one’s sex, it becomes difficult to claim that sex and gender are solely biological, when clearly one’s gender and sex becomes largely altered the moment they are born into society. Anne Fausto Sterling, outlines her concept of the five sexes, explaining that intersex is a term used to describe any individual that doesn’t fit into the narrow categories of male and female. She explains that the same process that was in play in the Middle Ages is

In visiting the ISNA website, there are many interesting things that one may come across. One of the most interesting and important things on the site was the difference between a “hermaphrodite” and “intersex”. The two terms are commonly confused; in fact, most people don’t know that the two are completely different. Intersex is the politically correct term to use while hermaphrodite is a mythological term.

Due to social conformity, along with the advancement of technology and surgical procedure intersexed persons are aimed to be "fixed" at birth.  Although otherwise healthy, there is a need to perform surgery on the baby in order to remove certain sexual organs that don't fit with the perfect idea of what a girl or boy should look like.  This often leaves scars, and the psychological and emotional confusion along with it.

Gender identity, as defined in Webster’s Dictionary is, “the totality of physical and behavioral traits that are designated by a culture as masculine or feminine” (Webster, 2014). The first words said in the delivery room are often “it’s a boy!” or “it’s a girl!” Intersex children, who fall in between the scientific gender spectrum for male or female, are put through genital mutilation surgery and hormone treatment to abide by one of the two categories. Children who are born with an intersex condition where reproductive or sexual anatomy that do not fit typical females or a typical male’s norms should not have sex assignment surgery performed. This should be decided by the child when they are mature enough to make that decision for themselves. This is morally wrong because the social and cultural need to place intersex individual’s into the category of one sex or the other can have negative impact on their mental and physical health and many of the surgeries done on intersexed infants were done more for the benefit of parents, healthcare practitioners, and society, than for the infant. In the long run, this surgery done at such a young age can cause an unstable quality of life filled with shame and a feeling of exclusion from society along with the possibility of losing sexual functions. I will be mentioning evidence of cases that demonstrate that it’s impossible for intersex individuals who have had sex reassignment surgery that it did not help them identify with the rest

As a parent, I only want what is best for my child. At first, surgery seemed like it would fix everything and give my baby a normal life. After a great deal of research, I learned that surgery did not simply entail removing extra tissue without any consequences. My child could either grow up to be physically and psychologically affected by this one clinical decision, or the surgery could prove to be completely beneficial. Too much uncertainty lies in performing this surgery. No one, not even our doctor, knows which gender he or she will grow up to identify with. I could never forgive myself if I forced my child into conforming to certain gender norms, only for him or her to feel trapped in his or her body later

In general, once these intersex individuals are identified, corrective surgery is suggested to reassign the child within the traditional gender binary so that their gender identity will match expectations. Some scientists have suggested that gender identity is permeable within the first 18 months so that the intersexuality of their bodies can be addressed, while others suggest that identity is fluid throughout childhood until puberty, when the body changes caused will cement their gender identity.

In the United States, "intersexed" is a taboo. Most people don't like to talk about sex, let alone, abnormalities having to do with sexual anatomy. Dreger stated, "1 in 2,000 children [are] born with genitals that are pretty confusing..." That means that being

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