Imagine you’re a parent, and your child is born with atypical genitals or sexual organs. Perhaps your baby girl looks completely normal but the doctor informs you she doesn’t have a uterus. Or maybe you can’t tell if your baby is a girl or a boy because it has ambiguous genitals. The doctors tell you the process to correct your child’s condition and create a male or female — usually female — gender appearance is desirable and most parents choose to place their child in surgery almost immediately following birth to minimize potential social and physical harms later in life. What should you do?
Personally, placing a baby on an operating table to escape social ridicule doesn’t seem like such a good idea. But this is the norm for dealing with individuals with intersex conditions in our society, and other forms of physical abnormality. However, the problem rests not with people with intersex conditions, who are simply born with atypical chromosomes or developmental differences.
The issue lies within society’s inability to accept deviations from the norm. The entire issue of gender reassignment can be easily resolved — by simple recognition and acceptance of alternative appearances in current society.
Intersex refers to the presence of atypical combinations of physical distinguishing sex features. Some people who are intersex , like those with androgen insensitivity disorder, appear completely like one gender but lack some of the physical reproductive organs of the gender that they appear. Other people have atypical sexual organs that are identifiable both internally and externally.
Cheryl Chase, an activist for intersex rights, was born Brian Sullivan and later renamed Bonnie before she identified herself later in life as Chase. She was born with ambiguous genitals and her parents chose to perform surgery on her to correct her genitals and create a more feminine appearance.
Chase’s childhood was spent in extreme unhappiness. She said she knew she felt very different. When she was 19 years old, she was finally told about the surgery to remove her abnormally large clitoris and she investigated her medical records.
Learning about her condition didn’t make Chase feel any better. She contemplated suicide in her 30s . Prompted from her own experience, Chase began a humanitarian movement to protect the rights of people born with intersex conditions. She created a documentary film called Hermaphrodites Speak. In the documentary, the only intersex individual who appears content is the one who was not subjected to surgery as a child and was allowed to develop with the atypical sexual condition.
Chase’s point brings an ethical question home. Should parents be allowed to subject their children to corrective surgery because of their own discomfort, or should the fate be left up to the individuals with intersex conditions?
The choice of an individual, in the sake of personal happiness, should rest with the individual, not in the intolerant society that persecutes them out of discomfort.
Society has made significant strides toward acceptance in the GLBT community. However, individuals born with intersex conditions are regarded as individuals with birth defects rather than individuals who simply do not fit the dichotomous sex roles. Gender reassignment surgery comes with unnecessary risks and parental consent to these extreme measures simply to adhere to societal conformity is disgusting.
About 1 in 1,500 to 1 in 2,000 children, depending on the study, is born at a medical center with intersex conditions. Statistically, this means a significant number of students at N.C . State were likely born with atypical genetilia or sex organs and were subjected to many years of discomfort, potential treatments with various risks, and an intolerant society that dictates conformity to dichotomous sex roles. The lives of these students could have been so much simpler if such rigid conformity was not mandated and deviance from sex roles was allowed.