While reading Reis' piece, "Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620-1960," the examination of human hermaphrodites and where they fit into society stood out to me the most. Reis states, "one in every two thousand people is born with a questionable genera status. Our gendered world forces us to put people into one of two categories when in fact, we need to consider 'less frequent middle spaces as natural, although statistically unusual.'" This made me question gender status as a whole. I was shocked by the high number of people who are born with characteristics of both males and females. Everything we have read so far has discussed cases in which a child is born with a "questionable gender status" and doctors insist the parents agree to performing "corrective" surgery on the infant. In the cases we have read, the parents said yes. We formed the question, why is correctional surgery needed for an infant who is unable to make their own choices?
I starting asking myself what if I had a child who had the reproductive organs of a female but showed the physical characteristics society views as male. And vice versa; what if I had a child who had male reproductive organs but the physical characteristics of a female. What would I do as an adult, as a parent? While thinking about the question, there are two choices I could choose from. The first would be to keep my child the way it is born. By doing so, I would begin to raise my child as having the label of gender neutral. I would provide my toddler with toys that are socially categorized as being masculine and feminine. Then when my child reaches the age of social awareness, I would allow them to decide which toys they liked best and if they wanted correctional surgery or not. Honestly it would be difficult to raise a transgendered child as a transgendered child in today's society. This meaning it would be challenging for me not to resort to what society has embedded in my brain, social life, behavior, and self-awareness.
The other choice I would have as a mother would be to allow "correctional" surgery on my transgendered child. The only reason I would have for doing this is because I would not want my child to endure the harsh judgements of societal labels. I would be scared of my child becoming socially awkward and depressed to the point of becoming suicidal. After all, we are all raised as a male or a female and are forced to learn gender roles by our parents and the media because it is society that has formed itself around our differences.
Contemplating the choice I would make as a mother, as for now I would be more willing to have correctional surgery performed on my transgendered child. HOWEVER, if society is more open to the middle spaces of labels when I have a child and transgendered people are no longer grouped and judged as having deficiencies, I would most definitely NOT perform correctional surgery.
Your ideas of raising an intersex child as gender neutral are good, but I think you're using the idea of transgender incorrectly. Even if your child isn't intersex, they may still be transgender, and come to you later in life wanting SRS (sex reassignment surgery), just as an intersex child might. Given this, I think raising any child with the awareness of being able and open to deciding their own gender identity is worthwhile. That's not just an intersex issue. It is challenging to raise children that way in our society, you're right about that. But I think it's worth considering.
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