I applaud Chase’s efforts here, I’m just saying that this is an enormous obstacle, even if you find parents willing to give it a shot.

The one thing that does gobsmack me completely is using anything other than chromosomal results (yes, I’m aware of XXY, XYY, etc permutations) to determine m/f… Might as well use height and weight for the definition…!

Because otherwise it wouldn’t pass, as the practice is rather closely tied to some religions

And that’s a good excuse to perform surgery on someone against their will? “My God said I should cut off your dick?”

Ambiguous genitalia, sticking-out ears, extra fingers, outy belly buttons – you know where this ends up? It ends up with two one-year-old babies in an operating room, with an incredibly high probability that at least one will die, because it is better to kill both of them, than to force them to grow up sharing a few internal organs.

It doesn’t end there, either. Because they could put tubes in the ears, take out the adnoids, remove the tonsils, and hell, while we’re at it, why not a nose job to remove that little bump there, or some jaw surgery to correct that overbite. There are a lot of surgeons who no doubt mean well, but there is only
one tool they have for fixing everything. So you end up with adults undergoing continual operations to make them look a little more perfect every time.

There are parents who would have their infant son circumcised because up until, what, 10 years ago, all baby boys routinely were. People who didn’t get the memo that it is now cosmetic surgery. They wouldn’t necessarily agree to other more invasive surgeries.

We need to dispel the myth of “informed consent”. When the doctor tells you that there is something wrong, that it will cause problems later on, that it is fixable now, with minimal pain and a short recovery time, and you’re a brand new parent who hasn’t even recovered from childbirth yet, then even though the odds of something very bad are spelled out, you’re still going to say “yes”.

There has to be a better way. Maybe a reflection period before a decision can be made for anything other than immediately life-saving techniques. Surgeons need to learn that it is not ethical to push parents into surgeries, and they could sure use a lot of education about acceptance. Parents and patients need to be supported and reinforced and reminded of their rights and maybe there are cases that require someone outside the family to speak for the child that is too young.

I think it’s great that people are talking about it.

This is, in fact, what I’ve done (in mostly subtle ways, and without much of the “friends and family” part) with my three-year-old (cisgendered and not-intersex as far as I can tell) daughter. We’ve always treated gender identity as fluid — we never corrected her, for instance, when she said she was going to grow up to be a daddy.

You always hear “hurf a durf, it’ll confuse the children” arguments against accepting gay people, transpeople, intersex people, whatever else people as, y’know, people. Bullshit. Kids have a wonderful ability to accept what’s in front of them as normal. Kids aren’t hung up on gender stuff like adults are.

But then, I suspect “it’ll confuse the children” really means “it will teach the children tolerance”, which scare the shit out of that crowd.

Aw, hell. Let’s pass a law saying that doctors can’t fuck with a child’s phallus (penis/clitoris) until the age of fourteen. The only exceptions will be male circumcision and anything having to do with physical, NOT “psychological/mental/gender identity” health.

Sounds good to me. But I wonder why male circumcision is exempt, even though in most cases has nothing to do with physical health.

– ACS

While I accept Piny’s apparent thesis (and please correct me if I’ve abused your intention, Piny) that transsexuality and intersex are distinct conditions that only share superficial similarities {and therefore only limited “political commonality”}, I do believe that in both cases, the ultimate decisions are up to the affected individual. If an intersex person, as an adult – or at least teenager – requests surgery to make their genitalia more congruous with one particular gender, it should be made available to them. Similarly, should a transsexual request treatment and (eventually) surgery as part of a gender transition, it should be made available.

Hmm. I’m getting into a similar* discussion over on Alas, so maybe I’ll try to spell out my thoughts here.

I think I’d say “broad” or “initial” similarities, which isn’t quite the same thing as superficial. There are problems and needs common to both groups–and, like you say, objectives such as self-determination. For example, the idea that an ambivalent identity and ambiguous place must follow from an incongruous body is something transsexuals are very familiar with; some of us struggle daily with the official disjunct between “trans” and “man” and “woman.”

However, it’s possible to overfocus on those similarities and forget differences to the detriment of both groups. One of the biggest, most immediate pitfalls is appropriation. Transpeople fit “corrective” surgery into the SRS narrative and end up denying the trauma and coercion that intersex people feel as a result of “corrective” surgery. Conversely–and I’ve seen this, albeit not as frequently–intersex people can fold SRS back into their revised model of “corrective” surgery and end up concluding that SRS is coercive and damaging. These coalitions are valuable, but it’s important not to turn your allies into mirror-images.

*But not exactly the same.

I’d really like to raise any kids I have as free of gender roles as possible anyway, and the thought of surgery to “correct” something that I don’t see as a problem weirds me out. I mean, we all have to match some picture of an ideal woman/man now? Even in the privacy of our own heads? Even naked, with people we love/ who love us?

any developmental biologists out there? I’m not sure if this is possible. I don’t have my reference text with me, and I am not googling “developing vagina” at work.

There is such a thing as an imperforate hymen which is a hymen with no opening. Girls with late menarche will be checked for this. Presumably the menstrual blood goes somewhere, so the body has some way of dealing with it

I thought that “uterus but no vagina” was what the original article was describing, along with the oversized clitoris.

with genitals that looked “like a little parkerhouse roll with a cleft in the middle and a little nubbin forward.” Sullivan lived as a boy for 18 months, until doctors at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan performed exploratory surgery, found a uterus and ovotestes