Male or Female: Should we Choose?

Imagine you are about to become a new parent. You are awaiting the precious moment when the doctor returns with child and you are overwhelmed with love and content. The door opens and the doctor brings your baby to you but something he says throws you for a loop: the sex of the baby cannot be determined. The child seems to have a combination of both male and female sex organs, and the doctor wants you to decide what the next step is. You can either have the child undergo surgery to make their sex organs appear either male or female, or you can let the child grow up with the sex organs they were born with. Some would think this is an obvious decision and say you should just assign the child to a gender and raise them as if the kid was born that gender to avoid the child growing up confused and being discriminated against. I feel it is important that we avoid jumping to this conclusion and instead consider other options.

                The infant described above has a divergence of sex development, or DSD, a term coined by Elizabeth Reis in “Divergence or Disorder?: the politics of naming intersex” (541). Often we hear terms such as “hermaphrodite” or “intersex” to describe individuals born with both female and male sex organs. The problem is that these terms can be demeaning or have negative connotations, especially in a nation where we so desperately want to stick to the two gender binary. Few people realize just how common divergences of sex development are, when at least 1 in every 2,000 infants are born with this condition (Reis, 539). Chances are you know at least one person who was born with DSD, probably without even realizing it.

                The more I learn about divergences in sex development the more prominent two questions are in my head: How/why do we decide a gender for these individuals?  If you are a parent or a doctor and you determine someone else’s gender for them is that wrong? There is not one easy answer for these questions. If you let someone other than the intersex individual decide their gender there is no way of ensuring that the right choice is going to be made. Although doctors typically encourage parents of intersex children to get the surgery for their child many of these kids grow up never feeling right in their own body. No parent wants their child to feel uncomfortable being who they are.

               

 Not everyone fits in to one gender or another, as the dinosaurs in this comic show us

The only way to know for sure what gender the individual wants to be is to ask them. Now this is clearly a problem because you can’t just ask a newborn what gender it recognizes itself as. It is understandable that since our society tends to view divergences of sex development as something to be ashamed of, parents of these individuals often feel the need to have their children assigned to one gender or the other. They don’t want their child to grow up to be considered different and have a hard time fitting in or feeling accepted. This is completely understandable, but we also have to think of the consequences of letting a doctor choose a gender for the child. It can be more difficult for a child to grow up looking a gender that they don’t identify as if the doctor chooses wrong.                                                                                                                    

                The ideal situation would be one where people where accepting of others regardless of the gender they identify as and what sex organs they were born with, but having the freedom to choose their own gender if they so please. Although the United States only recognizes two genders on birth certificates and other legal documents, other countries are taking steps towards accepting intersex individuals as they are. In 2011 Australian government made a change to their passport, where individuals can choose from three genders: male, female, and indeterminate (CNN). Then in 2013 Germany declared that if a child’s gender is ambiguous, then the parents can leave the gender blank on the child’s birth certificate (Bendavid). Other countries are also taking action to try and stop discrimination against those with divergences of sex development and to have it be more widely accepted to not identify as either male or female. For more information on what other actions countries are taking to help DSD individuals look here. If we could show this kind of improvement in the United States then doctors and parents can feel more comfortable having their child grow up intersex.  

References

"Australian Passports Now Offer Gender Option "X" for Intersex People."LexisNexis Academic. CNN, 15 Sept. 2011. Web. 8 Sept. 2014.

Bendavid, Naftali. "Countries Expand Recognition for Alternative 'Intersex' Gender." Wall Street Journal Online. Wall Street Journal, 30 Oct. 2013. Web. 8 Sept. 2014.