Sexual
Assignment: The Unkindest Cut of All?
by Harley Berger, Vice-President
The birth of an intersex child (one born with ambiguous or missing
genitalia)
continues to be perceived as a "social emergency," so much so that medical
protocols call for sexual determination one way or the other within
forty-eight hours of birth. Doctors then do not hesitate to perform
invasive surgery, including removal of sexual organs deemed superfluous,
to forestall anticipated confusion over gender and sexual identity.
An intersexual may be subjected to multiple surgeries throughout
childhood, the effects of which can be traumatic. The parents of these
children are told to raise them without ambiguity and, consequently, many
adults who have had these operations in infancy have never been completely
informed of their medical histories. This management approach, which can
involve a reassignment of sex, has its basis in research done on
hermaphrodites and a single set of identical twins originally tracked more
than two decades ago.
Are these procedures, known as "normalizing surgeries," truly in the best
interest of their recipients or are they simply reflections of society’s
inability to deal with sexual variation? To find out more, join us on
Saturday, September 18, when our guest will be Alice Dormurat Dreger,
Ph.D., Chair of the Board of Directors of the Intersex Society of North
America, an internationally recognized policy and advocacy organization
whose self-described mission is to build a world free of shame, secrecy,
and unwanted genital surgery for people born with atypical reproductive
anatomies.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about this little-known but
fascinating topic.
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