Speaking about Intersex to Interfaith Group

[RGMCjim]

Hi Everyone,
Rochester, NY has an Interfaith counsel of churches that has been alive and well since the late '80's and bosts members from a large range of denominations. One of the initiatives of this group is religious and community support of LGBTI people and issues.
I've been asked to speak for 40 minutes to counsel leaders about intersex on 11/21/04!! The result of this will be very far reaching in my community and beyond and may result in more invitations to speak within religious circles - maybe even at the Colgate Divinity School here.
I can't wait.

Jim :happy45:

[Jules]

I'm glad your speaking up. I'm proud of you. Doesn't it feel great to talk

about our past to a younger crowd. You have the chance to educate a lot of

people. :wink:

And I'm sure you will do well.

I have been asked to speak again at the Newton North High School on the

gender and sex panel. We should compare notes.

[RGMCjim]

Jules,
I'd love to compare notes! E-mail me at jcostich@rochester.rr.com
You've been speaking to High School students!! That's fantastic! When I went to visit Curtis Hinkle in S.C. we spoke to 2 large groups of college students - one at a state U. and one at an all-Black U. It was very refreshing, very productive and I felt like I'd really done something worthwhile.
Thanks for the prayers and vote of confidence!

Jim

[Betsy]

Hey Jim,

It's a super bad idea to post your email address in the clear unless you like lots and lots of spam. I blog a ton of spam bots but I know for sure I don't get all of them...a quick look at the stats on the forums home page shows 155 guests at 1:30am the other night...probably 150 were spiders, and some of them are looking for email addresses.

Betsy

[ptrinkl108]

Hi Jim,

I just returned from presenting an Intersex 101 workshop for UC Berkeley's
Transgender & Intersex Awareness Week. So, I have a couple of fresh tips. I screened the ISNA video "Total Patient Care: The Child With An Intersex Condition". Being able to screen one of the great ISNA intersex educational videos is definitely a plus. I covered the basic definitions of intersex and its frequency. I then covered the main specific intersex conditions. Although the material is not intersex specific, I related the story of David Reimer from the John Colapinto book "As Nature Made Him". People find the topic of gender assignment and John Money very interesting. After that I covered the emergence of organizations like ISNA, Bodies Like Ours, and the Intersex Initiative as examples of groups working on intersex issues. In the end, we had an interesting discussion of emerging topics in the realm of intersex rights, and a discussion of how the UCB Gender Equity Resource Center could work more closely with established intersex organizations to improve intersex education. (My having a stack of the latest Bodies Like Ours flyers is always appreciated.) I am sure that you will be able to reach many people through your outreach efforts, and people really appreciate the effort that we put into community education.

Peter

[Jules]

Hello Peter, as I'm sure you have read I'm speaking in a few weeks myself.

Your post brings up interesting questions. Did you use your own intersex

condition as a example of what can go wrong when early surgey is done

without consent?

In my speech I will most definitely cover the basic definitions

of intersex and its frequency. My condition was called penile agenesis

and it happens in one and twenty million births. Did you know

that they are a lot of other intersex conditions that are just as rare? Also the

word intersex was once used to define bisexuals and bisexuals were

once thought to be transgendered.The word intersex has become very sloppy

now in its meaning. The medical term of intersex still only includes

1. Female pseudohermaphroditism...
2. True hermaphroditism...
3. Male pseudohermaphroditism...
4. Gonadal dysgenesis...

Tell me, what are the IS conditions that are one in two thousand that

need early surgery,so I can include that figure accurately?



I also think that using the John/Joan case is a bad example to bring into

intersex 101 here are my reasons why:
1. John did not have a intersex condition.
2. His sex change happened after he had been raised a male for sometime.
3. He had a male twin, and twins often have parallel identities.
4. He grew up in a very troubled family, which plays a big part in the
psychological development of children and adults.

Now, if you want to know the whole story about penile agenesis I will tell

you. First it is classified under male pseudohermaphroditism.

Second, its term means absence of a penis in a genetic male.

Thirdly, there are about thirteen cases of penile agenesis well known. Nine of

those cases had a sex change done at a few months after birth. In all nine

cases the child, and later the adult, identified as female. Keep in mind, I am

one of the nine cases.

In the other four cases, the sex change did not happen untill the child was

older, most of these cases come from India. In the past, females from India

have had less social standing then males. So the parents of these children

resisted the surgery at first. When the sex change operation was done after

a year of age, male imprinting had already taking place. The psychological

health of these children was very poor. In fact the sex change even when

done only at a year old failed in many cases.

Hormonal imprinting is now thought to be the reason why sex changes can

fail when they are not done right at birth. This imprinting takes place when

the gonads start putting gonadal testosterone into the body at about six

months of age. It is called the critical period. Doctors have been studying

this phenomenon for over fifty years. I'm not saying that the nurturing part

of raising children in a consistent sex role does not play a big part. It does

but it is not the sum of the whole picture.

This is why you cannot have a one answer fixes all intersex conditions.

You must go case by case. Clearly, letting a child decide what operation it

should have, could seal the fate of that child, in some cases. In cases years

ago, I agree that children were being mutilated. Is mutilation still happening

as much now as it did then? We can thank ISNA for that side of the story. I

can thank BLO for getting me in touch with other intersexed adults and they

gave me a great friendship. ( You know who you are) if any other IS adult

wants to find a another IS adult I can be found very easily. I have BLO to

thank for that.

Every coin has two sides. when teaching about intersex, both sides of the

coin are important. If ISNA's side to the story is all that is seen, I don't think

that is very subjective.

Now you know the REST of the story!

Jim, I sent you a email did you get it? I would love to hear what you plan on

saying, it could be very helpfull to me.

[ptrinkl108]

Hi Jules,

Thanks for your reply. Good luck with your upcoming intersex speaking engagement. Here are some quick thoughts.

On the question of frequency of intersex conditions. I don't use the 1 in 2,000 figure that you mention without extensive explaination. In terms of frequency, I give figures that are generally much more conservative. I have posted these numbers in other posts, but frequencies of 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 40,000 are common for many major intersex conditions. As I have written elsewhere, without including hypospadias, the overall figure for ambigous genitals reguiring surgery seems to be about 1 in 4,000. Surgical hypospadias interventions occur in roughly 1 in 2,000 births. I covered all this in my talk. Although I don't have hypospadias, I try to cover the topic with some sensitivity to the problems that "normalizing" surgeries can cause, including the frequent need for repeated hypospadias surgeries. Whether or not hypospadias that is severe enough to require surgery is an intersex condition, is something that we apparently disagree on. You apparently do not include severe hypospadias as an intersex condition.

I read your remarks about penile agenesis with interest. The question remains that even if the outcomes of "sex change" operations on infants with penile agenesis have various outcomes in terms of personal satisfaction, I would still like to know the personal satisfaction of people born with penile agenesis who were allowed to grow up without surgical intervention. Also, I have many questions about the "critical period", and it seems that increasingly critical metabolic processes are seen as happening in the womb. These early processes appear to render many involuntary surgical gender assignments after birth problematic. The recent "Nature" article on intersex animals and the brain comes to mind.

It does seem that early infant "female" gender surgeries are increasingly being advocated in this forum, whether for CAIS or penile agenesis.

Peter

[Dana Gold]

increasingly critical metabolic processes are seen as happening in the womb.

Excerpt (from link below it)

Background: Intersex conditions are among the most fascinating conditions encountered by the clinician. The ability to diagnose infants born with intersex conditions has advanced rapidly in recent years. In most cases today, clinicians can promptly make an accurate diagnosis and counsel parents on therapeutic options. However, the paradigm of early gender assignment has been challenged by the results of clinical and basic science research, which show that gender identity development likely begins in utero. While the techniques of surgical genital reconstruction have been mastered, the understanding of the psychological and social implications of gender assignment is poor. This article focuses on newborn evaluation and the differential diagnosis in children with intersex conditions, including children with ambiguous genitalia

http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic1492.htm

Another article; intersex conditions discussed at bottom of page

http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic2789.htm

My thoughts and feelings below:

However, "nurture" and pre/post-pubertal hormonal "influences" (extrinisc or intrinsic) may both or singularly "provide" additional developmental factors in gender development resulting in either adaption (and relative satisfaction) or incongruence (inner conflict or unease with respective "assigment).

The individual's own psycho-social (derived in the above and inborne "essential self") make-up adds to the "mix"....i.e, a relatively happy person with support from the "environment" will adapt better (even with mild incongruence) as opposed to an unhappy person raised in non-supportive ( secretive, "amorphous" environment or even cruel one).
Anybody "raised" in the latter case, will exhibit extreme dissatisfaction.

All of the above adds to the importance that a "case-by-case" ( as in individual human being) approach (with a knowledgeable, informed, and supportive "treatment team" and parents) is essential to the happiness and well-being of the child "in question".
A "cookbook/menu" approach, although not insinuated in this thread, is a "recipe" for a " bad moon a-risin' "


PS: I emphasized the case-by-case concept when speaking as part of a Panel (on Nov 2nd ...Election Day :biggrin: ) here at the University in front of appx 50 1st year medical students. The BLO flyers (as well as some ISNA material for parents/caregivers) were very useful)...initially I was nervous as hell, but the audience was very receptive and I got good "vibes" from them overall. although I did stumble over some of my words (Norm Crosby "syndrome")....Betsy helped me along too, prior to and after that.

Dana :pizza:

[Dana Gold]

It is called the critical period.

Excerpt (from link below it), although not specifically related to intersex gives insight into brain "imprinting" taking place during post-natal development.

The link is very interesting.....and the source material is derived from an institute near your "neck of the woods", Julanne :wink:

Are there critical periods in the development of every brain function?

Probably not. In the case of visual development, certain abilities are more at-risk than others when a young child's vision is impaired by eye-crossing or other visual problems (such as congenital cataracts). Thus, two visual abilities--acuity (the perception of fine detail) and binocularity (the coordinated use of both eyes), which is especially important for depth perception--do depend on normal visual experience as a child, whereas two other visual abilities--color and peripheral vision--are not impaired by visual problems in early life. A similar distinction holds for language development: certain skills (including grammar and phonology--the ability to perceive and produce individual speech sounds) are more sensitive than others (such as vocabulary size) to a child's experience with language in the first few years of life.
We know much less about the development of other mental skills, such as emotional functioning, mathematical ability, or musical skill. If their development is comparable to vision and language, we may expect that some features will be subject to a critical period while others are not. One musical skill known as "perfect pitch"--the ability to identify a musical note without reference to a tuning note--seems to develop only in musicians who began their training before the age of seven (and then, not in all professional musicians). Similarly, a child's social-emotional development depends on a positive, nurturing attachment to a primary caregiver, based on the higher frequency of serious behavioral problems among children who were severely neglected during the first year or more of life, (such as the thousands of Romanian children reared in state-run orphanages). Comparable problems emerge among monkeys who are reared in isolation, and neuroscientists are beginning to understand how the lack of attachment in infancy alters development of emotional areas of the primate brain.
[back to questions]

Why does the developing brain undergo these critical periods in its development?

Neuroscientists do not yet fully understand the biological basis of these critical periods. One theory is that they correspond to a period of synaptic excess in the brain: between infancy and the early grade school years, the brain actually over-produces connections--some 50 percent more than will be preserved in adulthood. During the critical period, a child's experience--sensory, motor, emotional, and intellectual--determines which of these synapses will be preserved, through pruning of the least useful connections. In this way, each child's brain becomes better tuned to meet the challenges of his or her particular environment.
A related theory holds that learning itself creates critical periods in a child's brain. That is, the longer a child has been exposed to one type of experience or environment, the less likely he or she will be able to reverse the synaptic learning that has already taken place. Animal studies provide some support for this theory. For example, kittens that are deprived of all vision (as opposed to the vision in just one eye) in the first few months of life show a delayed critical period for visual experience, beginning from the time their deprivation ends. Similarly, songbirds normally learn their species-typical songs early in life, by listening to adults of the same species. However, when newly hatched birds of certain species are isolated, permitting them no song exposure during early life, their critical period for song learning is delayed, even as late as adulthood.

http://www.zerotothree.org/brainwonders/FAQ-body.html#parents

http://www.zerotothree.org/brainwonders/

Dana :pizza:

[Sunshine1]

Do any of you get paid for your speaking engagements?

Aimee

[Dana Gold]

Hi Aimee,

No, I didn't get paid. It was voluntary on my part in response to an invitation from the organizer of the event...a member (doctor/PhD) of the University's Dept of Family Medicine (Academic and Clinical) staff....she did, however, give each of Panel members who offered/shared their time, a $25 Starbucks gift card....and I love coffee.....so that was nice.

Dana

[Dana Gold]

Whether or not hypospadias ........... is an intersex condition,

Didn't want to "interrupt" content of thread "Speaking about Intersex" any further, so the continuance of my reply etc. is under new post in General Health Issues.

Dana :pizza: