[lbo-talk] Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Fri Nov 18 16:52:32 PST 2005


boddi satva wrote:


>I dare say that most of these individuals would very much like not to
>have the problems they have.
>
>To define male and female as XY and XX karyotypes, respectively, does
>not deny any significant number of people a gender identity. First,
>people can claim whatever gender they want, as far as I'm concerned.
>Second, there is no reason to characterize people who suffer from
>genetic disease as anything but people who suffer from genetic
>disease.
>
>
No, that's just the problem, people cannot claim whatever gender they want. What happens now is that a lot of people are so uncomfortable with a gray area of gender that they aggressively decide on a gender and then enforce their decision with a scalpel. I have a friend who was born with both sets of sexual organs. That was not OK so, as a very small child, he underwent some fairly traumatic surgery, which made him a "boy." This was followed up with hormone therapy etc. As a result he had many, many years of pain, health problems, sexual problems, etc. Now, that he is on the other side of fifty, he has become very active in agitating for the right of children born with ambiguous genitalia to make their own decisions about their sexual identity when they are old enough to understand.

It is also the case, for example, that normal sexual characteristics are enforced by scalpel. For example, little girls whose clitorises are larger than one centimeter are routinely circumcized to the "normal" size in the U.S. right now.

I dont' know whether intersex people "don't want to have the problems they have." I do know that one of the reasons why what they have is called problematic is because labels are more important to us than reality. And when reality doesn't fit the label, butchery is required. Not good.

Joanna



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