What if It's (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?

[nonie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/magazine/24intersexkids.html?ref=health

Article about Cheryl Chase of the Intersex Society of North America and her quest to see genital surgery on infants halted...  Just thought it was interesting.

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When Brian Sullivan — the baby who would before age 2 become Bonnie Sullivan and 36 years later become Cheryl Chase — was born in New Jersey on Aug. 14, 1956, doctors kept his mother, a Catholic housewife, sedated for three days until they could decide what to tell her. Sullivan was born with ambiguous genitals, or as Chase now describes them, 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 (gonads containing both ovarian and testicular tissue) and told the Sullivans they'd made a mistake: Brian, a true hermaphrodite in the medical terminology of the day, was actually a girl.

[tinkerbell]

What if a person is (sort of) a boy and (sort of) a girl?

I would just let them be.  I'm one of those people who strongly disagrees with corrective surgery among intersexed children.  No one has the right to decide for a person what sex you are or what sex you will be.  If a baby is born intersexed, just let life run itself, let that person decide for themselves what they are when they are old enough to know..and then if that person decides to have the so called corrective surgery, they shall have it, and if they don't want any surgery, they should have the right to choose that also.


tinkerbell

[Mario]

I am with you on this one Tink

                         Marco

[cindianna_jones]

What if a person is (sort of) a boy and (sort of) a girl?

I would just let them be.  I'm one of those people who strongly disagrees with corrective surgery among intersexed children.  No one has the right to decide for a person what sex you are or what sex you will be.  If a baby is born intersexed, just let life run itself, let that person decide for themselves what they are when they are old enough to know..and then if that person decides to have the so called corrective surgery, they shall have it, and if they don't want any surgery, they should have the right to choose that also.


tinkerbell

It has to be a special problem for the parents however.  Wouldn't it be nice if the gender could be determined before any secondary sexual changes occur?  I truly feel sad for individuals who finally figure it out, but it's too late in many ways to lead a normal life.  I was not born intersexed, but I sure wish that I could have killed the T before I grew so many male characteristics.

Cindi

[nonie]

What if a person is (sort of) a boy and (sort of) a girl?

I would just let them be.  I'm one of those people who strongly disagrees with corrective surgery among intersexed children.  No one has the right to decide for a person what sex you are or what sex you will be.  If a baby is born intersexed, just let life run itself, let that person decide for themselves what they are when they are old enough to know..and then if that person decides to have the so called corrective surgery, they shall have it, and if they don't want any surgery, they should have the right to choose that also.


tinkerbell

(I think the author was just rephrasing the traditional "It's a Boy!" or "It's a Girl!" declaration...  My mom has never had an ultrasound to determine her babies' sex beforehad and I remember referring to my two younger brothers as Its before they were born...  Not meant to be mean or anything.)

I agree with your view on surgery, for sure.  I think "corrective" surgery on infants is horrible - there's no way at all for them to know whether they are picking the right sex or not, and shouldn't even try until the kid can decide for themselves.

[Melissa]

There are way too many cases where they got it wrong, to say it is best to choose when they are babies, regardless of the number of successes.

Melissa

[LostInTime]

It would be difficult at best trying to raise someone gender neutral.  Hopefully further research into intersex conditions and transsexualism will yield better diagnostic tools.

[nonie]

I don't think you would even need to raise them as entirely gender-neutral.  That's kind of impossible in today's society.  I would think the important thing would be to tell them it's okay to be themselves and to ask them how they feel often...  Just being there and being nonjudgemental about their behavior and *not* surgically intervening until the kid is old enough to consistently feel one way or the other about it, that seems reasonable enough to me.  It'd be nice if people raised all kids with that kind of openness and communication.