Mistreatment of Intersexed People in the USA : 1620-1966
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2011/01/mistreatment-of-intersexed-people-in.html1/21/11
The official title is Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620–1960 E.Reis Journal of American History Sept 2005 pp 411-441, but it's a sordid tale of consistent mistreatment over centuries. In fact, Intersexed people were in many ways treated more humanely in 1750 than 1950.
This essay explores the changing definitions and perceptions of "hermaphrodites" from the colonial period to the early twentieth century.3 Over the course of the three centuries, most medical observers would have agreed that hermaphrodites did not exist in the human species and that patients with confused or ambiguous external and internal reproductive organs were not really hermaphrodites, but cases of "mistaken sex." Indeed, by the mid-twentieth century, "corrective" surgery for such anatomical ambiguity became routine in this country, to make infants' genitalia look "normal" and match their supposed "true sex."
