Intersex 101
Kiira Triea
current treatment modality for intersex neonates. I am an intersexed
person. I am involved both as a researcher and as a researchee - I
am a former client of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns
Hopkins Hospital. Though that experience was completely traumatic I am
now furnishing my history to ethical researchers in an effort to
educate the medical community on the traumatic sequelae of neonatal
and childhood genital surgery and insensitive, "othering"
medicalization. Because I am a trusted long time member of the
intersex community I am also in a position to know what most "medical
professionals" conversant in the field cannot divine... the actual
outcomes of adult intersexuals.
Some urls...
http://www.isna.org - the web site for the Instersex Society of
N. America
http://www.qis.net/~triea - Intersex Voices
All other educational sites on IS are available from these two web
sites.
Some comments on the discussions I've read:
Intersexuality is a "cultural disease" that is characterized as a
bio-social emergency. The treatment methodology treats as males those
witha phallus > 2.5 cm. and treats as females those XX neonates whose
clits are < .9 cm. To quote Suzanne Kessler "Those in the middle are
unaccptable". Neonatal surgery in the form of clitorectomy/phallectomy
and also vaginoplasty is the goal of the the current treatment
modality.
Intersexed people are not particularly rare... the most accepted
statistic is 1:2000 (Anne Fausto-Sterling np). This number does not
include men with wide hips, hirsute women or transsexuals... it means
the number of neonates born per year whose genital and/or
endocrinological varience places them at risk for traumatic medical
intervention. One becomes an intersexual when one is labeled an
intersexual by this culture's medical caregivers. One common profile is
that of a biological female whose clitoris was called "too large". She
becomes an "hermaphrodite" *after* clitorectomy. If asked, most of
these intersexuals will say "i feel like a woman who had her clit cut
off". The most common manifestation of intersexuality is in
biological males who have an anomoly of metabolism which compromises
androgen site receptivity... partial androgen insensitivity syndrome.
Intersex surgery has occurred regularly since the
mid-fifties. However, no long term follow-up of intersex children has
ever occurred. As has been pointed out, when doctors are queried about
the outcomes of their intersexed clients, they can only answer
truthfully that they do not know. This does not disturb most of them
however... in the words of an AAP spokesperson "We have faith that
these treatment methods are beneficial to intersexed children". They
have faith but they do not have data. For over 20 years the write up
of one case, an iatrogenically intersexed boy referred to as "the
twin" or "John/Joan" in the literature, served as the canonical
example of how sex identity and "gender" could be surgically imposed
upon a child if peformed early enough. This boy was also a client at
the PRU in the 70's - we shared the same medical team. The only
problem with this research was that it was a complete
confabulation. This child had an extremely difficult time and at age
14 refused treatment requesting re-re-assignment as a male. he has
lived as a male since but this was not disclosed until the paper
written on the case by Diamond/Sigmundson made national news last
year. What does this mean? It means that the medical
profession... with a few notable exceptions like Mickey Diamond,
Justine Schoeber and a few others, knows next to *nothing* about the
outcomes and needs of intersexed people.
Intersex surgery is androcentric in ideology. 90% of all intersexed
people... and XY IS people are more common than XX IS people, are
assigned as females. The surgery is very ineffective - common problems
are recurrent vaginal stenosis, clitoral atrophy (when a clitoris was
constructed), lifelong problems with UTI, etc. More profound is the
degree of surgical and psychological traumatization which renders many
many IS people anorgasmic, confused and too insecure to attempt sex or
relationships. What the imposition of this cultural imperitive on
non-standard genitals emphasizes is that in our culture,
non-functional "female" genitals are deemed more acceptable than
erotically functional but differently configured male genitals. A
second component is the embedded biological essentialism in the
culture which equates queer genitals with queer identity. Surgery may
prevent sexual queerness in one sense... many IS people are simply too
traumatized over body and sexual issues to attempt sexuality (my
situation until age 36. I am 38. But for those who do express
sexuality... most of us are lesbians or bisexual. Some are not.
A common argument (the one proferred by the medical profession) is
that early genital surgery saves children from the social and familial
stigmatization which results from "ambiguous sex". First ... intersex
does not automatically equate to "intergendered" and intersex
activists do not advocate raising children as neutral. We advocate a
"best guess" as to future identity (based on our shared experiences as
IS people) and forgoing all cosmetic genital surgery unless requested.
Second... surgically modified genitals may be acceptable as
children, but they are not acceptable as adults. They do not look like
"normal" genitals nor do they function as "normal" genitals. A vagina
is not simply a recepticle large enough for a penis. Even when surgery
is in the "right direction" as in my own case, the after effects of
not having control of ones body and life, of being used for
psychological and surgical experimentation and of being photographed
and displayed to medical personel as an "interesting case" in teaching
hospitals, are so dehumanizing that any theoretical advantage which
could be derived from having a genital configuration vaguely congruent
with one's sex and social presentation is completely annulled. Several
notable researchers have recently stated that they are angry that
their writings have been used to justify intersex genital
surgery... their academic work with intersex children was meant only
as a mechanism for gathering data on sex and gender etiologic
processes. Unconsented surgery does not bequeth normalcy upon
intersexed children - it replaces their sex organs with a physical and
psychological scar... a wound which is a constant reminder that they
were too unacceptable to the people who they looked to for care and
love and protection.
Kiira Triea
Coalition for Intersex Support
Activism Education
scott...@my-dejanews.com
tr...@qis.net (Kiira Triea) wrote:
[long and interesting post]
Thank you for posting.
--
Scott
http://www.telerama.com/~corwin (Netscape only)
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Timothy F. Mulligan
> Intersexed people are not particularly rare... the most accepted
> statistic is 1:2000 (Anne Fausto-Sterling np). This number does not
> include men with wide hips
I've always suspected Henry Hyde of being intersexed, based on his
extreme pear shape. Maybe this is what makes him so fair and tractable.
Tim Mulligan
tmul...@central.uh.edu