Intersex and the Ambiguities of Identity

Gender and Sexuality ANTH 2301 Intersex and the Ambiguities of Identity "My sister just had a baby last night!" a friend informs you. "Is it a boy or a girl?" you reply. To which your friend answers, "Well, they're not sure. Perhaps neither, perhaps both. Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) came to the conclusion that in around 1.7% of births, a baby's sex cannot be accurately ascertained by looking at their genitalia. This conclusion was based on a thorough review of a large amount of data. (Note: This material uses the most commonly acknowledged and adopted research; you may notice different percentages or other variances in information owing to various or changing factors of sex determination.) The word intersex refers to a broad category of individuals who exhibit one or more of a variety of differences in chromosomal patterns or sex traits that defy conventional ideas of what it means to be male or female. The prefix inter-means "between," and in this context it refers to an apparent biological condition that falls "between" male and female. A person might become intersex for a variety of reasons. The infant could have a different number of sex chromosomes genetically. Babies are occasionally born with a different number of sex chromosomes, such as XO (just one chromosome) or XXY (three chromosomes), instead of two X chromosomes (associated with females) or one X and one Y chromosome (associated with males). In other instances, the baby's anatomy may be impacted by hormone activity or even by random events that occur inside the womb. Granted that most people exhibit biological traits linked to one sex or the other, 1.7 percent of the population is not negligible. Over two million of the approximately 140 million kids born worldwide each year may be intersex if that proportion were applied to the whole. More locally, in any municipality with 300,000 residents, that proportion may translate into over 5,000 intersex individuals. Beyond biology, a great deal about the cultural mechanics of gender may be learned from the category of intersex. One can detect intersexuality at any stage of life, from early childhood to far into maturity. When a parent finds out their child is intersex, it's usually in a medical setting, such at delivery or on a follow-up visit to the paediatrician. Parents could be perplexed and worried when a doctor informs them that their child is intersex. When a kid has biological sex ambiguity, some doctors may request tests to measure the child's genitalia and ascertain the child's hormone levels and chromosome count. They could advise parents to give their infant a gender and to make arrangements for hormone therapy and surgery to give the developing kid that designated gender. Medical care is a method of allowing the infant's "natural" (meaning unambiguous) sex to emerge. Doctors are frequently trained to present the selected gender as the "real" underlying sex of the newborn. The idea that intersex newborns are "really" either male or female runs counter to the complex blend of characteristics that most intersex bodies exhibit (Fausto-Sterling 2000). Fausto-Sterling disapproves of the practice of giving intersex newborns a sex as soon as possible through surgical procedures. She contends that parents or medical professionals cannot assign or control how gender identity develops since it is a result of the intricate interaction between biology and culture. She clarified her stance in a New York Times interview: Medical professionals frequently make incorrect assumptions. "We think this infant should be a female because the sexual organ it has is small," they would remark. The testicles and penis are then removed. Years later, the child declares, "Give me back my penis, please. I'm a boy, and that's what I want to be. I don't want to take oestrogen." When the children are old enough to make their own decisions, we ought to listen to what they believe to be correct. Until then, parents can assign a temporary gender to the child, communicate to them in a way that allows them to be different, and give them a name that is gender-neutral. (SterlingFausto, 2001) Intersex genital mutilation, or IGM, is something that many intersex persons are in favour of outlawing. Hida Viloria (2017), a Latinx intersex novelist and activist, draws attention to the hundreds of intersex persons who have come out to claim that they have suffered because of IGM. Viloria notes that the fundamental purpose of sexual assignment surgery is to develop bodies capable of engaging in heterosexual sexual relations. Medical ethicist Kevin Behrens (2020) contends that medical intervention should typically wait until the intersex individual is old enough to provide informed consent and should only be performed when surgery is in the child's best medical interests. Behrens further stresses that kids and parents should be informed about the real diagnosis of an intersex child and the potential side effects of any recommended therapy. Important biological and cultural lessons may be learned from intersex ambiguity and the hasty attempts to conceal or eradicate it. Finding out what an intersex person was "meant to be" frequently requires a complex web of biological factors, many of which are changeable throughout time. These parameters are different for everyone, not only intersex individuals. Males and females are not created by chromosomes alone. Instead, a complicated continuum of gender is produced by the interplay of hormones, environmental variables, and genetic makeup. Many gender academics view gender as a multifaceted spectrum of distinctions rather than a binary of male and female divided by a sharp border. Within the cultural categories of male and female, there is significantly more biological variance than there is between the two. This complicates the ideas of sex and gender, allowing for the normality of ambiguity and the tolerance of variety, rather than negating the fact of biological distinctions.