As noted in my last post, each additional explanation or opinion I hear, the more complicated I find the issue of gender and sex categorizations and constructions. Further, I have begun to wonder what I would do, as a potential future mother, if doctors told me my newborn baby were not “normal.” I would have an extremely difficult (probably more accurately, impossible) time picking the “right” gender for my child. However, I must admit, that I don’t think I would want my child to remain somewhere in the middle of what I do consider normal-male or female. I feel guilty about my own part in perpetuating conventional beliefs of what is “normal” in the biology of a baby, however, despite our readings, I cannot seem to abandon my deeply-seeded beliefs of what a “typical” baby looks like.
Obviously my concern is not for myself, but rather, for the baby and the obvious disadvantage he/she could experience through out life. Disadvantages such as reproductive abilities are obviously of primary concern. However, I would also admittedly worry about social repercussions of being “abnormal.” Somehow, society has created two extreme categories so strongly rooted in our culture that, despite my readings and education on the subject, I cannot manage to overcome. While Fausto-Sterling’s statistics of the number of intersex babies born are certainly staggering (and more than expected), I still cannot bring myself to see an intersex baby as normal and easily acceptable in society.
According to dictionary.com, normal means “conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.” In other words, being “normal” suggests an effort in order to fit in or fulfill a certain guideline or expectation created or judged by those around you, or society. Therefore, technically, people must exert an effort, above and beyond what is natural, in order to conform to this normal state. To me, this suggests that being normal is not so normal after all as people have to try to become something they are not.
Despite these technicalities, however, some sort of “normal” vs “abnormal” dichotomy still exists and these standards dramatically affect every individual’s life. How these constructions were formed, however, is much to be debated. Doctors seem like they are partly to blame as they are so intent on “fixing” intersex babies to fit the “true” sex that “nature intend[ed],” (Fausto-Sterling, 50). Doctors aim to apparently correct nature’s shortcomings or mistakes in order to make the newborn fit traditional societal standards. As Fausto-Sterling indicates, doctors use specific medical terminology that “indicates that intersex children are just unusual in some aspect of their physiology, not that they constitute a category other than male or female,” (Fausto-Sterling, 51). Doctors are often unwilling to admit or even acknowledge the fact that intermediate sexes can exist. In doing so, doctors promote the male-female sex dichotomy, thereby making “intersexuality” even more alien than it really otherwise may be.
Doctors, however, are clearly not solely to blame for the perpetuation of societal constructions of normal sexes. Fausto-Sterling holds that whatever treatment they choose, doctors “who decide how to manage intersexuality act out of, and perpetuate, deeply held beliefs about male and female sexuality, gender roles, and the (im)proper place of homosexuality in normal development,” (Fausto-Sterling, 48). Therefore, doctors are influenced by other societal pressures that push them to envision a world with just two sexes-male and female. As noted above, I am certainly partly to blame for these constructions as I can’t say that I would have a child who was “intersex” and not support a surgery to make him/her what I considered normal. In supporting this surgery, however, I am promoting the dichotomy that exists in our society. Therefore, it is doctors, as well as parents, creating this social construction. No single party can be blamed. As in a chicken-egg scenario, the root of the issue is impossible to pinpoint, and everyone works to perpetuate the problem leading to a never-ending circle of what may be a detrimental construction. But who, I wonder, is willing to stop this as I, admittedly, would rather take the path of least resistance rather than have a child go through life considered medically and socially “abnormal.”
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