Betsy
03-31-04, 05:29 PM
http://www.gaysouthflorida.com/weeklynews/Featurearticles/intersex.htm
“Bodies Like Ours”
by Donald Cavanaugh
Each year, in the United States of America, some 2000 babies become victims of surgical mutilations performed with the patriarchal arrogance of modern medical practitioners. Since the mid-1950s when Dr. John Money, a world-famous psychologist, proposed the theory that gender identity is the result of nurture, not nature, the 1 in 2000 live births, in which the child’s sexual organs don’t conform to expected standards, have created potential victims of genital mutilation and unwarranted sexual assignment surgery.
“Basically they started doing these surgeries when they learned how to anesthetize babies without killing them,” said Betsy Driver, co-founder and executive director of Bodies Like Ours (www.bodieslikeours.org). “The attitude was and is that, if the surgeons shape the genitals to conform to the gender that they decide for the child and then reinforce the gender training through the child’s life, theoretically the child will grow up to be that gender. But it doesn’t work that way.”
In fact, Money’s most famous case of gender assignment surgery, Bruce/Brenda Reimer, was a spectacular failure. Born Bruce, the boy’s penis was removed in a botched circumcision. Money proposed that the child be castrated and his body be reconstructed to make him a girl. This was done and the family raised the child as Brenda. After 14 years of growing up girl, the child reverted to his male genetic nature and lived anonymously until a few years ago when he went public and the nature vs. nurture issue once again became a hot topic for discussion.
Intersexed people, like everyone else, arrive on the planet in a wide range of variations. Unfortunately for many of them, they, like everyone else, arrive as natural infants, unable to defend themselves or make decisions about who or what they want to be when they grow up. But that doesn’t stop doctors and parents from taking nature into their own hands and “fixing” the child’s genitals, even to the point of gender reassignment, as in the case of Bruce/Brenda Reimer.
“It’s not a crime if a woman has a big clitoris,” said Driver, who was surgically mutilated herself when she was subjected to a complete clitorectomy at the age of 3 months. “Nor if a man has a small penis, Society thinks ‘a woman shouldn’t be able to penetrate another woman with her clitoris so chop it off.’ Or ‘a man can never be a normal man with a small penis so let’s make him into a girl.’ We talk with rage and passion about genital mutilation in other countries in the world but it happens right here in the United States to five children a day and no one is making laws to stop it.”
A Google search on the words “intersex” and “intersexed” returned some 120,000 pages but that’s misleading according to Driver. “There are basically three intersex organizations in the US today,” she said. “There’s Intersex Society of North America (ISNA – www.isna.org) which is doing medical advocacy; there’s Intersex Initiative (www.ipdx.org) which is doing a lot of activism stuff; and there’s Bodies Like Ours which provides peer support.”
According to Driver, ISNA was founded about 10 years ago by Cheryl Chase, its current director. That event marks the beginning of the intersex movement aimed at helping individuals overcome the silence and shame of having different bodies and being perceived as different by the rest of society. In 2001, ISNA started focusing its energies on medical advocacy to end the genital mutilation of babies. This left a gap in the peer support arena ,so Driver and fellow activist Janet Green (who is no longer affiliated with the group) co-founded Bodies Like Ours to provide a vehicle for people to communicate with one another and to begin the process of coming out.
“The Internet has been very responsible for the growth of the movement,” said Driver. “It certainly helped me. Before I got on the Internet I really thought I was the only person like me in the world.” But don’t get the impression that all the people who connect through Bodies Like Ours or other intersex site are eager to come out. “A lot of us just want to be left alone,” said Driver. “Like LGBT people, intersex people can ‘pass’ and society encourages us to pass and stay in our closets and too often we collude with them.”
Driver asserts that there are many intersex people who identify as heterosexual and enter heterosexual relationships and don’t want to be identified with the LGBT community. She noted that many LGBT organizations have started adding an “I” for intersexed and that has made a number of intersex people uncomfortable.
“The whole reason for coming out,” said Driver, “is to gain visibility for intersex babies so doctors and parents will stop the mutilation of these children’s bodies. When the surgeons look around and only see a few of us they think that everyone else is okay with what they’re doing but in fact, these people are frightened into silence. The more of us who come out and say ‘stop’ the sooner we can hope to end the procedures.”
Although there may be resistance from some in the intersex community to joining forces with LGBT people demanding civil rights and protections, they may well play a significant role in the discussion of the proposed amendment limiting marriage to “one man and one woman.” There are many intersex conditions that fly in the face of simple definition of what is a man and what is a woman.
There’s a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). The individuals are born with female appearance; are raised as a female; identify as a female but have XY chromosomes. Will the US prevent these females from marring men because they have male genetics?
Or, as Driver asked “What about a male born with a micro-penis? He’s got XY genetics but surgeons remove his male genitalia and replace them with an artificial vagina. Essentially they have created a lesbian but will deny her the right to marry a woman even though she is genetically a male with a male heterosexual orientation.”
A lesbian, as well as an intersex victim of genital mutilation, Driver well knows the issues of oppression from sexism and heterosexism and concurs that sexual assignment surgery more often results in creation of female genitals than male. She quoted John Gearheart, a nationally recognized surgeon who performs these surgeries as having said at a national conference: “It’s easier to dig a hole than it is to build a pole.”
“A child is given an artificial vagina that has to be kept open by essentially penetrating the child with a dildo and then she doesn’t menstruate. Essentially she’s just a receptacle for a penis. It’s all about penetrative sex. You’re assuming that the person is going to want to have heterosexual penetrative sex. You don’t know that.”
“Bodies Like Ours”
by Donald Cavanaugh
Each year, in the United States of America, some 2000 babies become victims of surgical mutilations performed with the patriarchal arrogance of modern medical practitioners. Since the mid-1950s when Dr. John Money, a world-famous psychologist, proposed the theory that gender identity is the result of nurture, not nature, the 1 in 2000 live births, in which the child’s sexual organs don’t conform to expected standards, have created potential victims of genital mutilation and unwarranted sexual assignment surgery.
“Basically they started doing these surgeries when they learned how to anesthetize babies without killing them,” said Betsy Driver, co-founder and executive director of Bodies Like Ours (www.bodieslikeours.org). “The attitude was and is that, if the surgeons shape the genitals to conform to the gender that they decide for the child and then reinforce the gender training through the child’s life, theoretically the child will grow up to be that gender. But it doesn’t work that way.”
In fact, Money’s most famous case of gender assignment surgery, Bruce/Brenda Reimer, was a spectacular failure. Born Bruce, the boy’s penis was removed in a botched circumcision. Money proposed that the child be castrated and his body be reconstructed to make him a girl. This was done and the family raised the child as Brenda. After 14 years of growing up girl, the child reverted to his male genetic nature and lived anonymously until a few years ago when he went public and the nature vs. nurture issue once again became a hot topic for discussion.
Intersexed people, like everyone else, arrive on the planet in a wide range of variations. Unfortunately for many of them, they, like everyone else, arrive as natural infants, unable to defend themselves or make decisions about who or what they want to be when they grow up. But that doesn’t stop doctors and parents from taking nature into their own hands and “fixing” the child’s genitals, even to the point of gender reassignment, as in the case of Bruce/Brenda Reimer.
“It’s not a crime if a woman has a big clitoris,” said Driver, who was surgically mutilated herself when she was subjected to a complete clitorectomy at the age of 3 months. “Nor if a man has a small penis, Society thinks ‘a woman shouldn’t be able to penetrate another woman with her clitoris so chop it off.’ Or ‘a man can never be a normal man with a small penis so let’s make him into a girl.’ We talk with rage and passion about genital mutilation in other countries in the world but it happens right here in the United States to five children a day and no one is making laws to stop it.”
A Google search on the words “intersex” and “intersexed” returned some 120,000 pages but that’s misleading according to Driver. “There are basically three intersex organizations in the US today,” she said. “There’s Intersex Society of North America (ISNA – www.isna.org) which is doing medical advocacy; there’s Intersex Initiative (www.ipdx.org) which is doing a lot of activism stuff; and there’s Bodies Like Ours which provides peer support.”
According to Driver, ISNA was founded about 10 years ago by Cheryl Chase, its current director. That event marks the beginning of the intersex movement aimed at helping individuals overcome the silence and shame of having different bodies and being perceived as different by the rest of society. In 2001, ISNA started focusing its energies on medical advocacy to end the genital mutilation of babies. This left a gap in the peer support arena ,so Driver and fellow activist Janet Green (who is no longer affiliated with the group) co-founded Bodies Like Ours to provide a vehicle for people to communicate with one another and to begin the process of coming out.
“The Internet has been very responsible for the growth of the movement,” said Driver. “It certainly helped me. Before I got on the Internet I really thought I was the only person like me in the world.” But don’t get the impression that all the people who connect through Bodies Like Ours or other intersex site are eager to come out. “A lot of us just want to be left alone,” said Driver. “Like LGBT people, intersex people can ‘pass’ and society encourages us to pass and stay in our closets and too often we collude with them.”
Driver asserts that there are many intersex people who identify as heterosexual and enter heterosexual relationships and don’t want to be identified with the LGBT community. She noted that many LGBT organizations have started adding an “I” for intersexed and that has made a number of intersex people uncomfortable.
“The whole reason for coming out,” said Driver, “is to gain visibility for intersex babies so doctors and parents will stop the mutilation of these children’s bodies. When the surgeons look around and only see a few of us they think that everyone else is okay with what they’re doing but in fact, these people are frightened into silence. The more of us who come out and say ‘stop’ the sooner we can hope to end the procedures.”
Although there may be resistance from some in the intersex community to joining forces with LGBT people demanding civil rights and protections, they may well play a significant role in the discussion of the proposed amendment limiting marriage to “one man and one woman.” There are many intersex conditions that fly in the face of simple definition of what is a man and what is a woman.
There’s a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). The individuals are born with female appearance; are raised as a female; identify as a female but have XY chromosomes. Will the US prevent these females from marring men because they have male genetics?
Or, as Driver asked “What about a male born with a micro-penis? He’s got XY genetics but surgeons remove his male genitalia and replace them with an artificial vagina. Essentially they have created a lesbian but will deny her the right to marry a woman even though she is genetically a male with a male heterosexual orientation.”
A lesbian, as well as an intersex victim of genital mutilation, Driver well knows the issues of oppression from sexism and heterosexism and concurs that sexual assignment surgery more often results in creation of female genitals than male. She quoted John Gearheart, a nationally recognized surgeon who performs these surgeries as having said at a national conference: “It’s easier to dig a hole than it is to build a pole.”
“A child is given an artificial vagina that has to be kept open by essentially penetrating the child with a dildo and then she doesn’t menstruate. Essentially she’s just a receptacle for a penis. It’s all about penetrative sex. You’re assuming that the person is going to want to have heterosexual penetrative sex. You don’t know that.”