When a Person Is Neither XX nor XY: A Q&A with Geneticist Eric Vilain

[LostInTime]

Scientific American
By Sally Lehrman

About one in 4,500 babies show ambiguous genitalia at birth, such as a clitoris that looks like a penis, or vice versa. For the Insights story, "Going Beyond X and Y," appearing in the June 2007 issue of Scientific American, Sally Lehrman talked with noted geneticist Eric Vilain of the University of California, Los Angeles, about the biology of sex determination, gender identity and the psychology and politics behind both. Here is an expanded interview.

[Thundra]

Nuh-uh. Not buying this BS. He is still trying to pathologize intersexed people at birth.
Yes, he is calling for caution in performing after-birth "corrective" surgery for the benfit of the parent, but he does not call for a moratorium on those surgeries.

I don't know anyone that will label themselves as a "disorder of sex development."  WTF is that? Like most scientists, he is obsessed with defining the human condition in one way only, and labelling any kind of diversity as a pathology.

I say, "phhhhfffftttt!"

[Seshatneferw]

The way I read it, his calling it a disorder is geared mainly towards the medical community: if it is a disorder, it's much harder to refuse treatment. Also, for a geneticist what he is talking about is a disorder, however one should consider it from, say, a social point of view. The thing is, for us words like 'pathology' or 'disorder' are quite strongly loaded, and from the interview it may be hard to see that he's using them in a somewhat different manner than how some of us are hearing them.

Of course the interview wasn't perfect. Still, saying "phhhhfffftttt!" is a bit much.

  Nfr