Main Post for 2/23

I found Anne Fausto-Sterling’s chapter, “Of Gender and Genitals: The Use and Abuse of the Modern Intersexual”, to be extremely interesting. I know I have been saying this every week in my blog posts, but I truly feel I must reiterate all the time how I have never thought of intersexuals, and gender/sex in this light before. This book especially has opened my eyes to a whole new world of gender and how our traditional two gender foundation of society can be seen as completely arbitrary in light of what is currently going on in the world of intersexuals. Before I get into the meat and potatoes of the issue, I just want to say that I found it incredibly intriguing that intersex births are more common than albino births, yet albinism is more acceptable in society overall. That just goes to show that even something such as a publicly visible physical defect such as albinism, is not looked down upon as much as the idea of intersexuality, which is not even something that can be seen by the average person.
I think the issue of “fixing” intersex babies is an extremely contentious one. One thing that I thought about quite extensively when I read about “fixing” babies is the idea of how a doctor could make that decision on whether the baby should be a boy or a girl. It seems, according to Fausto-Sterling, that it is quite a difficult decision that a doctor must make. In terms of penis size, Fausto-Sterling says, “even our ideas about how large a baby’s penis needs to be to guarantee maleness are fairly arbitrary” (58). I understand that this size rule is currently seen as the most reliable theory behind it all but it seems to me that it might be not be the most reliable approach one can take. A doctor could remove a small penis that could have easily matured to be of normal size when the child reached puberty. How does one decide when it is such a close call? Doctors are concerned when a phallus is less than 2.0 centimeters, but who’s to say that that penis will not mature into an average size when a child grows up? Fausto-Sterling states, “Physicians’ ideas about the appropriate size and look of female genitals thus sometimes leads to unnecessary and sexually damaging genital surgery.” (60) After reading and understanding all the facts, I can say it all seems extremely capricious and arbitrary to me.
Another issue that I had with this idea of intersexuality and genital surgery performed on young babies after birth is the idea of truth. I understand that patients need to have a “clear-cut gender identity” (65), but I also understand how important it is for doctors to disclose important medical information to patients as they become older. An intersex girl must understand that the surgery she underwent as a baby did not make her into the gender that she is currently, but it simply eliminated parts of her that did not belong. Without this understanding, a child may not be able to live life normally. But, I think that currently, proper medical practices are at odds with truth. Doctors don’t want to reveal the truth to their patients about their genital surgeries as it might alter the patient’s psychological health. I think that doctors must reveal this information to patients rather than distort the truth or even worse, blatantly lie. If they are going to perform these surgeries then it is only right that they follow the laws of medicine as well.
I have found that there has been a lot of overlapping in terms of our readings that all stem back to the foundational question of gender vs. sex. Are we “predisposed and biased to interact with environmental, familial, and social forces in either a male or a female mode?” (70) Does it come down to nature or nurture? Clearly there are issues with genital surgeries at young ages because as people grow up they feel more attached to the sex that they were intended to be, such as in the case of John/Joan. Are surgeries even worth the risk if nature is all that it comes down to? I think that as a society we have too strict of rules on what makes one female and what makes one male, which consequently places a strain on those that are somewhere in between the spectrum. As we have mentioned before in class, we need to “call into question our system of gender” (76). I think that Fausto-Sterling’s hope at the end of the chapter is comforting in that we could potentially be at the forefront of a revolution in terms of our traditional gender systems, but it seems to me that we have a lot of ground to cover before that occurs. We need to include all people, or we need to include nobody, but how can we even go about doing so? Our society is stuck on fitting people into categories, so the idea that this could be totally overturned seems a bit outlandish to me at this point.