Intersexuality

According to Anne Fausto-Sterling’s research, she estimates that around 1.7 percent of the population is born with some form of sexually ambiguous genitalia (20). When this happens, many physicians who specialize in treating intersex babies rely on the case-management research done by psychologist John Money and the psychiatrists Joan G. Hampson and John L. Hampson (20). Fausto-Sterling (2000) states that “Money believed that gender identity is completely malleable for about eighteen months after birth. Thus, he argued, when a treatment team is presented with an infant who has ambiguous genitalia, the team could make a gender assignment solely on the basis of what made the best surgical sense” (p.20). The doctors would then suggest to parents to raise their children based solely off whichever gender was assigned at the reassignment surgery (20). John Money and his team believed that with this process, intersex children would adjust well to their gender reassignment. However, the author goes on to tell the story of John Colapinto. John Colapinto was born genetically male, but due to an accident during a circumcision surgery he lost his penis. As a result, his parents decided to raise him as a female and called him “Joan” (20). Joan grew to like things that are normally associated with being “girly”, like wearing dresses and having her hair done (20). Money believed this gender reassignment story to be a success; however, Joan rejected his female assignment as an adult and now lives as an adult male named David. He decided to live as a man despite not having a penis or testes (20). Cases like David’s have encouraged intersex activism which call for the reexamination of the current practices when confronted with intersex babies or children. Anne Fausto-Sterling concludes her article discussing alternatives to gender reassignment surgery. Some of these alternatives include not performing reassignment surgery right away, focus more on a therapeutic approach, and if surgery is performed to make it so that it is reversible.

Complications that many intersexed individuals face as a result to gender reassignment or “corrective” surgery is also addressed in Martha Coventry’s article “The Tyranny of the Esthetic Surgery’s Most Intimate Violation”. Martha Conventry describes her own experience of receiving a clitorectomy at the young age of six, because she had a larger than normal clitoris. Her parents kept her in the dark for the longest; it was because of this she was unsure of her gender. She describes feeling uneasy about her identity and fearful of her sexuality. She even contemplated suicide. She learned eventually that her parents did not want her to be mistaken for a hermaphrodite and that she was a female. Martha Conventry also tells two heartbreaking stories of two other individuals named Annie and Angela, who like Conventry had horrible experiences due to clitorectomies performed on them as well.

Martha Conventry wants people to stop looking at children with sexual ambiguous genitalia as wrong, but to instead focus on the way people view them. She compares clitoral surgery to mutilation and is against performing surgery on a child with atypical genitalia.

Like Anne Fausto-Sterling, Martha Conventry also discussed Doctor John Money, and his controversial case studies on sexual ambiguity in babies and children. She states that … “the controversial research into sex and gender roles by Johns Hopkins' John Money, Ph.D., led doctors to believe that by changing that body, you could make the child into a "normal" male or female, both physically and psychologically. Children could be made "right" if they were born "wrong." And American medicine, and our society at large, sees "imperfect" genitals as wrong”. Like Anne Fausto-Sterling, Martha Conventry believes that performing surgical reassignment surgery can have devastating long-term effects on patients.

I believe that a child born with sexually ambiguous genitalia should not have surgery performed on them right away. This is a decision that the child should grow up to make on his or her own. The belief that an individual born outside of the dimorphic species male or female, should not be looked at as wrong. Instead society should be more open minded to sexual ambiguity. The long-term effects of gender reassignment surgery appear to be more devastating than anything. The focus should be more on therapeutic approaches.