View Full Version : Intersex Bashing on Fox Network
queerunity
02-24-09, 11:29 AM
House is a popular medical drama that can be seen on the Fox Network. The program recently featured a storyline about an intersex child. The terms "shemale" and "freak of nature" were used to make reference to the child. The House character is usually seen as offensive and other characters are disapproving, and while the shows effort to discuss intersex issues is important, this sort of language is unacceptable as it perpetrates misunderstanding and violence against intersex and gender variant people.
Demand that Fox stop bashing sexual and gender minorities, and to provide more positive and accurate depictions of intersex people.
askfox@<hidden>
http://queersunited.blogspot.com/2009/02/intersex-bashing-on-fox-network.html
Greetings, Inter-lectuals,
queerunity wrote,
House...a popular medical drama...recently featured a storyline about an intersex child. The terms "shemale" and "freak of nature" were used to make reference to the child. The House character is usually seen as offensive and other characters are disapproving...Demand that Fox stop bashing sexual and gender minorities, and to provide more positive and accurate depictions of intersex people.
A few years ago there was an episode of "House, MD" featuring a patient with AIS (the condition I have myself). See the links and transcript appended below.
Some in the AIS community objected but not to the way the condition was portrayed, which was actually somewhat favorable as the character with AIS was a sexy, feminine and beautiful professional model. What they didn't like was the way Dr. House spoke to and about her.
Personally, I actually found it a little funny, especially House's remark, ".. a joke would be me calling you a homo...". This scene was an extremely exaggerated parody of what a real-life insensitive doctor with a lousy bedside manner would say to an AIS girl. I understand that's what the "Dr. House" character is supposed to be like.
One needs to remember that neither Dr. House nor his patient are actual people. They can't have experiences or feel pain, and it is pointless to make judgments about their actions as one would about real persons. That would be like calling for the criminals on police TV shows to reform themselves and become nicer people.
I had recently heard that "House MD" was going to have another episode about intersex. It was to air on 23 Feb 2009 with the title "The Softer Side". That must be the episode you saw recently. Supposedly this one was going to be more sensitive because the screenplay writer had consulted with Katrina Karkazis, author of the recently published book "Fixing Sex" and current member of the Advisory Committee of ISNA/Accord Alliance. (Note: I met Dr. Karkazis in 2000 when she interviewed me for her PhD thesis on intersex. In her book I am mentioned as "Claire Halstead".) Evidently they just milked her for interesting material and then used it to put together what they already had in mind - but that's pretty much what most of this recent crop of ivory-tower social scholars do themselves with their interviewees, so she shouldn't complain.
Friendly greetings to all,
Peggy
• • • • • • • • • • •
"When art critics get together they talk about Form and
Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk
about where you can buy cheap turpentine." - Pablo Picasso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGNGpwb8nE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-SkzTLDuPU&feature=related
An interesting detail is the all-glass wall between the hospital room and
the hallway!
Transcript from House MD, Season 2 , "Skin Deep"
(Plot: A beautiful teenaged supermodel collapses (due to drug use) and is brought to the hospital, where she is found to have a number of difficult-to-understand symptoms. There has also been incest between her and her father, who is also her modeling agent. Dr. Gregory House finally figures out her diagnosis. )
House: We found a tumor.
Dad: She has cancer?
House: Technically, no.
Dad: So it's not cancer?
House: No, it's cancer. But, he has cancer, on his left testicle.
Alex: I don't have testicles.
Dad: She's not a guy.
House: His DNA says you're wrong. Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails. You've got male pseudohermaphroditism. See, we all start out as girls and then we're differentiated based on our genes. The ovaries develop into testes and drop. But in about 1 in 150,000 pregnancies a fetus with an XY chromosome, a boy, develops into something else. Like you. Your testes never descended because you're immune to testosterone. You're pure estrogen, which is why you get heightened female characteristics; clear skin, great breasts. The ultimate woman is a man. Nature's cruel, huh?
Dad: This is obviously a joke. This is impossible.
House: No, a joke would be me calling you a homo. See the difference? I'll schedule him for surgery.
Alex: (She gets out of bed.) No, you're wrong. I'm a girl. (She pulls off her gown.) Look at me! How could you say I'm not a girl? See! They're all looking at me. I'm beautiful!
House: Anger, it's just the cancer talking. Put your clothes back on. I'm going to cut your balls off. Then you'll be fine. (She covers up, crying and looks at her dad who turns to look out the window.)
• • • • • • • • • • •
Fiction or not, that's disgusting! :(
TLCTugger
02-28-09, 12:53 AM
I saw the House thing from 2/23 tonight off TiVo. I didn't see 100% of it.
Notably, the parents are very briefly shown "deciding" for the infant to raise him male, before time flashes ahead to him as an 11 year-old with a mysterious illness. The parents have been keeping him male with testosterone meds they tell him are "vitamins."
So I'm ticked that they didn't structure the story so that the idea of letting the child decide could have been seen positively.
At least the parents are demonized for being less than honest with the kid, which was good. Isn't it usually the case that such shielded kids know something's different and they are just dying to know the truth?
As for House telling them their kid is a "freak of nature," at least he says in the same breath that the kid doesn't deserve to be "treated" like a freak. And as was pointed out, he is not supposed to be a role model for tact or political correctness.
C+
Cheers,
In some ways it reminded me a lot of my experiences, took a couple tries to make it through the first time. The first scene had me crying in short order. The first time I watched it, it kind of pissed me off. Especially the mother trying to hide everything and keep it from the boy. Reminds me a lot of my mom.
House is out living life high on methadone or whatever. figures the dr wouldn't give a crap about the patient. Everything they try to do to help makes it worse. That has been my life too, even a few trips to the hospital. No wonder I don't ever bring anything when I go if at all possible and why I hate dr's so much.
Anyways this is probably about as "nice" and "caring" as house gets. The wannabes were looking for a way to help the kid. They still throughout the whole show tried to make the decisions for him and keep him in the dark. That is what I hated the most.
They really didn't go into how different the kid was. I would have to assume that he had had surgery done, ( go bitch mom ). the only thing they alluded to was that he was mosaic or a chimera with female and male dna.
Can't ask for everyhting, but it was ahell of a lot better than "skin deep" with the AIS girl.
Kailana
03-03-09, 12:34 AM
I still haven't watched this episode yet, am waiting tell tomorrow or the next day before its available for viewing from the Fox site. It'll more then likely cut me up a little just as the private practice episode did. Most shows like these do.
I think I actually put my post on the private practice episode in the general health section, because i am more interested in the 30% identify as males that was mentioned. Others have mentioned that its a made up figure and i am guessing it is as well as i have never heard of any statistic on percentages or ratio's other then the 30% likely of being homosexual.
I am sure i'll comment again once I actualy view the house episode. Genetic Mosaicism, not quite clear enough a term to state or clarify what exactly is going on.
Kailana
03-03-09, 08:01 PM
Beautiful TV portrayal in my opinion of a intersexed discovery storyline. even with the few crude remarks made, this was a great piece of art.
http://www.fox.com/community/
just follow the watch episodes menu. Episode 16, The Softer Side:
oh and might help if you actually register.
I actually am gonna see about purchasing this episode. Much cleaner then the AIS episode. the few remarks made arent as traumatic in my opinion. Could also be that i understand this episode better, because of my own anatomy, and experiences.
Now available online at:
http://www.fox.com/fod/play.php?sh=house
Friendly greetings to all,
Peggy
Warning - Plot spoilers included
Hi all,
I finally got to see this episode. Here's my impressions:
Medical inaccuracies:
A 46XX/46XY karyotype would be almost impossible to occur as mosaicism (i.e. 2 different cell lines derived from the same original zygote) it would be much more plausible as chimerism (2 different cell lines derived from two different zygotes).
If the doctors knew the diagnosis already, they would not be speculating about completely different intersex diagnoses like CVAH.
When they did an MRI to determine whether the kid had a "blind uterus" causing pelvic pain (due to retained menstrual blood), they injected contrast medium in through the urethra. If there was an orifice through which contrast medium could get in, then menstrual blood would be able to get out, so it would not be a blind uterus. In any case, the kid was supposed to have already had a diagnostic workup and plastic surgery at an early age, so wouldn't this have already been known?
The kid had recently started testosterone and there was a question that the hormone may have immediately caused life-threatening problems and need to be discontinued very fast - so fast that they put the kid on androgen blockers instead of just waiting for his last dose to wear off. Not sure whether testosterone can cause such problems after short-term use, but if it can, they must be pretty rare, given the number of people who use it.
The parents are then concerned that, not being on testosterone, the kid won't go through puberty. If he was born with ambiguous genitalia, then what about his own testicular tissue and endogenous hormones? Also, if he is 46XX/46XY and born with ambiguous genitalia, then he probably also has ovarian tissue and female pubertal effects would be expected too. I guess the plot was already too cluttered for them to include anything about that - or maybe it would have been too much even for the Fox network.
Objectionable spots:
In a conference, one doctor referred to the patient as a "shemale".
Dr. House referred to him as "Little Boy George". (An allusion to 1980s transvestite rock musician Boy George).
And of course, Dr. House's "freak of nature" remark.
More notes:
Early in the episode, Dr. House shows a somewhat more cooperative and less obnoxious side to his personality than is usual (based on the small number of episodes I have seen). I strongly suspect that this was worked into this particular episode because the screenplay writers heard about how upset some parents were with his extremely nasty remarks in the season 2 "Skin Deep" episode. (See my earlier post to this thread.)
The story line was punctuated twice by an event that seldom happens in real life but does happen in most episodes of this show - the patient has a dramatically life threatening, urgent, cliff-hanging, medical crisis that appears to be completely unrelated to the original condition, and which is resolved within a few minutes of air time (right after a commercial break).
The parts I actually disliked most were the tedious little "soap-opera" scenes
about physician characters' personal life and romantic involvements. That and the general promotion of prescription drug use - frequent medication name-dropping (paid "product placements"?) and Dr. House's pain pill habit, verging on, or perhaps exceeding, abuse).
One thing that was true to life was that the kid's acute medical problems (unrelated to his intersex condition) were actually iatrogenic and would not have even happened if he had stayed away from the hospital in the first place. (All his really bad problems are due to contrast medium from the MRI he didn't (for unexplained reasons) really need. Also the doctors' shoot-from-the-hip attitude towards treatments (''...I'll start him on <medication> stat!...").
TLCTugger wrote,
...I'm ticked that they didn't structure the story so that the idea of letting the child decide could have been seen positively...
I had thought the outcome would be the kid deciding to live female. There actually wasn't much of any outcome regarding his future course in life. As the story ends, he's still a boy and still on testosterone. The only change is that the parents have been sort of forced into disclosure and are now letting him take dance lessons.
At least the parents are demonized for being less than honest with the kid, which was good. Isn't it usually the case that such shielded kids know something's different and they are just dying to know the truth?
Yes, the moral of this story (which they probably picked up from Katrina Karkarzis) is that secrecy is bad, disclosure good. That's a good message as far as it goes, but kind of oversimplified. In real life, most intersex children are unavoidably aware that something is wrong and are told something about their conditions. Their conditions are not completely hidden from them completely because that is usually just not possible. What they are told, though, is often misleading, but not so often because it is untruthful, more often because it is incomplete. Explaining everything in language a child can understand takes more time and effort than most doctors, parents or even counselors want to bother expending.
Kailana wrote,
Beautiful TV portrayal in my opinion of a intersexed discovery storyline...a great piece of art.
Are you sure you saw the same program as me? I thought it was trashy and actually had almost nothing in the story about intersexed discovery. Yes, the kid finds out he has an intersex condition, but nothing really happens as a result. It's, "Ho hum, I'm a true hermaphrodite, now my parents will let me take ballet lessons and play basketball, what else is new?". Maybe the plot was already cluttered enough and/or maybe Karkazis/ISNA/Accord Alliance do not want to promote the idea that intersex is "...about gender ". (The ISNA website pontificates, "Intersex is not about gender.") This episode does seem to bear their thumbprints.
Friendly greetings to all,
Peggy
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
"When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine." - Pablo Picasso
Hi Peggy,
Yes, the moral of this story (which they probably picked up from Katrina Karkarzis) is that secrecy is bad, disclosure good. That's a good message as far as it goes, but kind of oversimplified. In real life, most intersex children are unavoidably aware that something is wrong and are told something about their conditions. Their conditions are not completely hidden from them completely because that is usually just not possible. What they are told, though, is often misleading, but not so often because it is untruthful, more often because it is incomplete. Explaining everything in language a child can understand takes more time and effort than most doctors, parents or even counselors want to bother expending.
Thanks for saying this. It is very true about how I was raised. What you say really captures the awkwardness that often prevails between an intersex child and our parents. In my case, sometimes my father would take pity on me for the small size of my penis, and he would explain it. In an awkward fashion, he would talk about infant genital surgery and undescended testicles. I can't say that I was a gender radical as a kid, and I had many of the same insecurities as other boys who were reading the ads about how not to be a 98 pound weakling on the back of comic books. I actually bought one of the exercise straps once, and was very disappointed with what I got in the mail. One of the mysteries of my life, is why the doctors performed surgery for undescended testicles, but did not correct the odd "lip" appearing folds of my perineum. Even at the age of twelve, when I was sent to a local clinic by the school district for further evaluation, they told me very little of what was going on. The gave me "special vitamins", which only years later my mother confirmed were for promoting my sexual development. My parents were generally careful not to lie to me about my condition, but the half-truths and awkwardness of the discussion were often equally disturbing.
Also, half-truths offer little protection from bullying by other kids.
Peter
witchy_woman
03-06-09, 05:33 PM
Well finally managed to watch the entire eppisode, which i found rather interesting.
purely imho
Although it falls short of truely exploring the intricates and complexities of the intersexed life, IS people and all issues involving such, we couldnt really expect it to delve so deeply. Granted, it would be wonderful if it did, but it did about as much as any house eppisode does for any other issue, group, condition ect ect.
I think Dr. House himself using the terms that were deemed "offensive" was pretty much common of the character and not reflecting the overall opinion of the show, network. If anything he characterized the parents and general populous considering IS "freaks of nature" in a totally sarcastic way.
One thing the eppisode did do was bring up intersexuality in yet another vien of public eye. Maybe it at least sparked a few people to do their own research and gain some understanding? I know small mentions of things like that on TV have driven me to google again and again in my curiousity and desire for knowledge.
What would be ideal i think would be a movie or show that VERY ACCURATLY and COMPLETELY shows end-to-end the "gender spectrum" as i like to call it and explores all sides with IS as the main focus.
Anywhos im getting away from topic.
Eppisode, not perfect, but not a tragedy imo.
Blessings!
Witchy_Woman
Kailana
03-07-09, 11:11 PM
and what I liked or got from the episode or at least from the ending is that the parents were going to let the kid, do what he wanted to do. ie dance lessons.
I am happy to see that the storyline is incomplete, unfinished. in it's own way leaving it open as it is made me feel that the kid, is gonna be treated as a kid and who cares about what gender he/she actually is. There is plenty of time later for the kid to figure that out for himself/herself. I do not think the overall importance of disclosure should be meared down by questions of what gender the child actually is. That is why i liked it so much. Let the kid be a kid.
Also the use of the word Genetic Mosaicism, is actually a much older reference, and it is also likely being missused as Peggy pointed out. The word Chimerism is actually still fairly new terminology ie first used to describe a person who is genetically XX/XY in the early 90's, first documented case. Or at least that is what I remember being stated. But i am sure there are or were many who were Chimeric years and yes decades earlier. Some missdiagnosed, or incorectly labelled as Genetic Mosaicism, inaccurately, or perhaps it is accurate usage, but has been replaced with Chimerism too describe what having two separate genetic cells lines in one persons body is.
Hi all,
Kailana wrote,
...what I liked or got from the episode or at least from the ending is that...the kid, is gonna be treated as a kid and who cares about what gender he/she actually is. There is plenty of time later for the kid to figure that out for himself/herself...
Keeping in mind that neither the doctors nor the patient are real people, only television characters, and that (thank God!) this program is probably not going to be used seriously to aid decision making in any similar real-life situations...
...the main problem I see here is that the kid is on the verge of puberty and whatever happens is going to have an impact on his current life and/or narrow his options for the future. As it happens, he is on testosterone, which is going to have strongly virilizing effects that are difficult to reverse. The other thing that is not true-to-life is that evidently they did such a good job on his masculinizing surgery when he was an infant that his genital configuration is not even an issue for him as a boy.
...The word Chimerism is actually still fairly new terminology ie first used to describe a person who is genetically XX/XY in the early 90's, first documented case...
I'm sure you know how much I hate to be a know-it-all, but...I read literature describing cases of 46XX/46XY chimerism (described using that name) in the 1970s. These were all naturally occurring cases. Maybe what you read about was the first documented case of iatrogenic chimerism (caused by in vitro fertilization with implantation of multiple embryos) which was unknown until the late 20th century.
Friendly greetings to all,
Peggy
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
"When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine." - Pablo Picasso
Kailana
03-12-09, 04:42 PM
I'm sure you know how much I hate to be a know-it-all, but...I read literature describing cases of 46XX/46XY chimerism (described using that name) in the 1970s. These were all naturally occurring cases. Maybe what you read about was the first documented case of iatrogenic chimerism (caused by in vitro fertilization with implantation of multiple embryos) which was unknown until the late 20th century.
Friendly greetings to all,
Peggy
but that is what is current publication, try finding information in the early 90's, like I was looking for and all I could ever find was that by 93, only 5 cases of Chimerism had ever been medically documented, the first of which was in 91. <---that information is just what I could find in 1993. That is what was published. Somewhat easily found, took alot of research and time, honestly very little was available.
in 2000. Only 30 cases of Chimerism were medically documented. Right now currently I believe its closer to 350 cases of confirmed chimerism. <--- that is i believe what was written last time I actually went looking for information on Chimerism.
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