Intersex Identity as Something Other than Male and Female

For all of America’s history, we have attempted to “correct” intersex children and adults. This history is given an overview in Elizabeth Reis’s “Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620-1960”. With the advancement of medical science, infants can be assigned to a sex ever more convincingly, and without ever having the child know or realize. In the case of adults in the last few centuries, intersex people have been forced to choose a sex, consistent with only one of the usual groupings of genitalia, and stick to it. This illusion of choice is offered by James Parsons in A Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites in 1741, and Aristotle’s Master-Piece in 1806. Many doctors refused to listen even to adults’ interpretations of their own bodies, and chose a sex for them. Reis points out that “no one ever suggested that hermaphrodites switch back and forth between the sexes” (Impossible 422).

            Even Reis brushes past what, to me, seems like the most obvious conclusion. Since intersex bodies exist, intersex bodies are good, true, and valuable. We need to stop thinking of intersex bodies as where they fall on the spectrum from male to female, and begin to embrace intersex bodies as they exist. The vast majority of intersex conditions are not physically harmful to the rest of the body. Instead of thinking that something has gone wrong when we see an intersex body, we should just accept, and perhaps even celebrate, the infinite diversity of the human form.

Some countries have begun to make progress towards this goal. Australia, Bangladesh, Columbia, Germany, India, and Nepal all have laws on the book regarding the un-binary identity of intersex people. This TIME article reports on Germany’s recent birth certificate and passport law change. Parents now have the option to fill in an X for their child’s sex at birth. Germany still allows sex assignment surgery at birth, but the author seemed hopeful that Germany would start to see a decrease in the practice after this law was passed. Since there is now no legal motivation for assigning a sex to a child, perhaps the social reasons will not be far behind.

Columbia’s laws are the most progressive, and have been in place since 1999. Columbia restricts the use of unnecessary sex assignment surgery on infants, even at the parents’ request. An infant does not have the ability to consent to sex assignment, and a child’s parent shouldn’t be able to override that for unnecessary surgery.

            In Australia, the law enacted in 2011 allowing the X sex marker to be chosen for children and adults on passports also came with a lowered restriction on people who are transgender changing their sex marker on their passport. Before, they had to have proof of surgery to change the sex marker on their passport. Sex-reassignment surgeries are expensive, and are just as medically unnecessary, dangerous, and possibly unwanted for transgender adults as sex-assignment surgeries are for intersex individuals. Now, transgender individuals simply need a “doctor’s note” to change their sex marker in Australia.

            Two years after “Impossible Hermaphrodites”, Reis wrote “Divergence or Disorder?: The Politics of Naming Intersex” in which she makes a case for no longer classifying intersex as a disorder. In this work, unlike in her previous one, she addresses intersex people identifying as intersex, and not just male or female.

“Some intersex people have benefitted from the feminist understanding of the complicated relationship between gender and sex. Some have corroborated the feminist supposition that we should think of sex, like gender, on a continuum, as something more flexible than strictly female or male. Some have felt more comfortable identifying not solely as female or as male, but as intersexed.” (Divergence 539)

These are grounds that I very personally agree on. As someone who identifies as genderfluid, I am very ingrained in gender politics from a transgender viewpoint. I try to actively reject the gender and sex binary at every opportunity. However, I understand that not everyone is comfortable identifying outside of the binary, and that extends to intersex and trans individuals.

Many trans individuals would in fact disagree with my statement that sex-reassignment surgeries are medically unnecessary. Laverne Cox said “It is not elective, it is not cosmetic, it is life-saving” about sex-reassignment surgery. This is not only because dysphoria is so horrible that people have committed suicide rather than handle it, but also because the society we live in is not friendly to people outside of the binary. Society isn’t even friendly to people who try to live as their authentic selves inside of the binary, if their presentation doesn’t match certain expectations. But I do believe surgery, assignment or re-assignment, is only an option if a person knows the risk of surgery and can understand their gender identity and dysphoria.

            The intersex body is not automatically a place of dysphoria and shame. Sex assignment surgery comes from a good-natured place that an intersex person will be a social outcast with a low quality of life if surgery is not done to “correct” them. “Scientific” findings that gender will follow the sex assigned at birth encourage medical professionals to do what they believe is best for children. However, the trauma of sex assignment and follow-up testing and surgeries is not what is best for a child, even if they do end up identifying with their assigned sex. The current system isn’t working, and intersex people end up traumatized and dysphoric anyway. However, ending sex assignment surgery at birth is only the first step. Our society must move beyond the assumption that sex and gender exist in an inflexible binary system. Changing this, however, will take more than studies, more than testimonials, more than education. It will take active revolt, and it will take time. Destroying the sex/gender binary is worth the struggle.

“Culture, rather than the body, needs to be changed.” (Divergence 539)