Sterilization or Genocide?

http://ejht211012.blogspot.com/2012/03/forced-sterilization-of-native-american.html

Being assigned the reading “Better Dead than Pregnant: The Colonization of Native Women’s Reproductive Rights” written by Andrea Smith, informed me of the horrors of sterilization happening to Native women all over the world. The truth behind sterilization terrifies me now and I am in disbelief almost at how atrocious I found some of this article.

I chose two sections from the article because I thought they tied together nicely, and play off of each other. The two sections I chose are found on page 85 and 93. The first section outlines how sterilization abuse is still happening today, not only in Indian Health systems, however in societies around the world, for example the reading mentions Haiti using similar practices. Indian women said they were forced into sterilization and did not offer consent, neither written or oral. Smith writes, “ Sterilization abuse, while curbed, is certainly not dead, either in IHS or society at large. One woman I know went into IHS in the 1990’s for back surgery and came out with a hysterectomy… ‘They shut me up in a room and forced me to get undressed. Everything that happened was because they used force. I didn’t want to go through with it.’ Several women died during sterilization operations, which were carried out under non-hygienic conditions” (87). Immediately after reading this particular portion i felt sick. I guess that is why it stuck out to me at first, however once I analyzed for some time I felt more angry and disturbed with the reading. I do not know everything about IHS, however I do know that the indian population is not what it used to be because “we” came over and killed off many of them. The issue of sterilization to me seems like the opposite of what should be happening to indian population, because of the lack of population they have already. This absence of respect the doctors or those performing the sterilizations have for the Indian women is what kept sticking to my mind while reading, which leads to the other section of the article I chose to highlight.

Here is an cartoon image of a woman being dragged into a room unwillingly to be sterilized. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2384/were-40-of-native-american-women-forcibly-sterilized-in-the-1970s)

On page 93 Norplant was brought up, which is a contraceptive that is a small bar placed under the skin and can have some scary side effects. Starting in  the late 1980’s in Bangladesh women were using this contraceptive unknowing of the adverse side effects, Smith writes, “women receiving Norplant in Bangladesh without their informed consent were not able to have it removed when they developed side effects. Furthermore, when they reported side effects, doctors scolded them and refused to record the information. One woman attempting to get it removed told her doctor, ‘I’m dying, please help me get it out.’ Her doctor responded, ‘OK, when you die you inform us, we’ll get it out of your dead body’” (93). This paragraph illustrates perfectly the complete disrespect the doctors have for women and their bodies. These women who received the contraceptive went into it blind because they had no idea of the side effects which could occur from using it. If a doctor ever said something such as stated in the quote, I would sue, personally (if possible, I am in the dark about legal matters and if that could actually happen). Women have rights, and they also have choices. Both the sections from the article I chose displayed the rights being stripped from women both Indian and those in Bangladesh. I believe the doctors should have informed the women the contraceptive was going to be irreversible before they performed the surgery for it. Sterilization/contraceptive abuse is prevalent in society, and I can’t help but wonder, what if that was me?

Many, many women today use contraceptives, and are uninformed about the issues that come with them. If something is going to be done to fix this issue it needs to be carried out “up-steam”. Both the contraceptives with deadly side effects, and the sterilization of Indian women is a women’s right issue, and also an issue of race. While browsing online I found many images and articles relating sterilization to the creation of a superior race. This idea of a “superior race” is ridiculous and out-dated in my opinion, however clearly many (including the doctors performing surgeries) believe in a super race. It scares me that a part of society cares so much about not having colored people around that they are willing to perform deadly surgeries without consent, and in the case of contraceptives are willing to let women suffer for the sake of them not reproducing.

I came across an interesting article online about forced sterilization, and how women were having the surgery performed on them unknowingly, and how the nurses also did not know all the information pertaining to the forced sterilizations. The woman interviewed in the article, who was a nurse at the time many more un-consented sterilizations were happening (1930-1970’s),  confesses that she was only doing what she believed was the right thing to do because those above her in authority had told her to. I can reason with the woman in some respects because I as well am a pushover and do whatever I am told to whenever, however putting yourself in the shoes in those being sterilized would have been enough for me to stand up and say no. Recently holding my sisters newborn baby, and watching her interact with her child as a new mother I could never agree with the idea of ending the opportunity for a woman to have a family of her own. When women are stripped of the right to be a mother of their own child, that is a red light for society. We should not care about race, or how many kids one has had or wants to have, because the right to have children is the right of women, and women’s bodies. They are our own, and are not to be tampered with in such horrific ways.

Why incarcerate single mothers?

After  reading "How to End Criminalization of America's Mother's" written by Jaffe, Kaba, Albelda, and Geier, I had an intense feeling of curiosity. My curiously stemmed mainly from the blunt fact that I am a white female, who has grown up in a "well off" family, where privilege was almost handed to me. All of my life I have always had a hard time relating to friends and peers about financial issues or money situations, and that is why I was confused about the topic of poor mothers being thrown in jail. However, after reading this particular article, and more specifically the section suggesting poor women to not have children, I can say I feel a little more personally towards those of us who are not “well off” in today’s society.

The section from the article that I chose to analyze is under the subtopic “Our public policy suggests that women shouldn’t have the audacity to parent while poor”, which at first I could almost agree with before proceeding to read the rest of the article. I thought to myself, maybe poor people shouldn’t have kids if it is going to lead them to continuous poverty, or more debt. However, after reading the rest of the article, thinking about the issue on a personal level, and putting myself in the shoes of these poor mothers, I had completely shifted my gears. The author Jaffe writes, “[I] cannot write about inequality without writing about the vast criminal punishment system. Putting people in jail and violently policing their communities, is a substitute here in the United States for social policy...Policing did nothing to help Lesley McSpadden raise her son. All it did was ensure that she found him dead in the street on his way to visit his grandmother” (3). After having read this section, I thought a lot about the racial discrimination within the criminalization system we have in the US, and having read The New Jim Crow, it ties together with this reading very well. This section also mentions the death of Michael Brown who was shot for no “good” reason, AKA because he was an African American, and the police feel entitled to do whatever they please.

The article as a whole discusses the Ferguson issue with Michael Brown being shot down by police officers on his way to visit his grandmother. This correlates with the single, African American mothers who are doing all they can to protect their children, because they are also being targeted as Michael Brown was, yet they are being thrown in jail to die for their actions. Single mothers are targeted by authorities because they are considered “welfare queens”, who do not do enough to stimulate the economy. The pressing issue with this skewed picture of single mothers however, is that they can try as hard as they can to get a job,  but if there is no good place for them to have their children stay while they work then they are not being quality mothers. I broke the issue down into two pressing questions: should single mothers care more about their children at home and try to live off of welfare/childcare (if they are even applicable for it), or do they risk not “caring” about their children at home, and get a job so that they can provide for their children? In my opinion there is no good decision between the two options, however those are the choices the government offers to society today. The reading gave some options that could make this issue easier for single mothers, however there is still a long wave of action that has to occur for some real changes to arise.

The article brings up childcare services offered for single mothers to place their children, however the issue with that is a lot of the time they simply cannot afford said services. Another issue with children being separated from their mothers, if mothers are thrown in jail for such incidents, is that once a child is no longer with their primary caregiver, the outcomes for their future does not improve, as the government would like to think it would.

I personally believe this is an issue that has been around since slavery was abolished. Instead of making African Americans white people’s slaves however, the government simply rigged the justice system so they can throw them in jail with ease. If you check out websites with data from jails and reports of violence and drug use, it is clear to see that white people are as guilty as black people for using drugs (if not more so), yet they are incarcerated at a far less rate than black people. The system is unfair and unjust. Another case brought up in the article pertained to a black single mother signing her kids up for a school district she didn’t reside in. She was put in jail and got parole for 3 years because of this. I know many cases as such that happened in my school district where white students were never taken from the school, and also never got fined for such a large amount of money either. This was so ridiculous for me to read, yet so relevant to the article content.

All in all, the issue of single black mothers being incarcerated for such misdemeanor crimes, which in most cases were to better they/their children’s lives, is something that needs to be dealt with now before the matter gets worse. In my opinion we need to change the system so poor mothers have more help with childcare assistance so they can get a job and therefore provide for their kids. I believe a step in the right direction would be universal free childcare as mentioned in the article, however knowing that my sister works in a day care and makes little money to begin with, could hurt other people's lives financially. However, making it cheaper could be a first step. 

https://trggradio.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/93-hands-mother-child.jpg

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/category/crazy-fact-of-the-day/

This chart displays the incarceration rates by race and ethnicity...Black having the highest number of people in jail shows that there is something wrong with out criminal justice system.

Why do we stare?

After reading the article written by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson titled, “Staring- How We Look”, I was deeply moved, and also felt as though I received a serious reality check. As a human being, it is easy to relate to staring at people/things we find unusual, different, or even disturbing, and we can all relate to being stared at, at some point in our lives. I also connected this article with the video interview we watched in class about Kevin Conneley, which after analyzing, seemed to be a messed up interview, and I will tie these two together more later. The passage I specifically chose from the reading was, “Consequently, our eager stares often quickly shift to uncomfortable looking away. Our ocular id, in other words, jerks our eyes toward a stimulating sight and our ocular super-ego guiltily retracts them. We may withdraw a stare in simple deference to propriety or parental prohibition. Charges of rudeness further encourage us to cut and run. Sometimes, however, truncated stares come from our distress at witnessing fellow humans so unusual that we cannot accord them a look of acknowledgement” (79). This section of the article is within the first paragraph of chapter seven: “Looking Away, Staring Back”. In this particular chapter, author Johnson discusses Doug Auld and his portraits of burn victims, which is so eye opening.

This man, Doug Auld, painted ten portraits of burn victims, so that whoever views the images would be able to stare without feeling uncomfortable, and so that the viewer may also see how deep the beauty goes beneath the surface of these people who have been severely burned. The look on the burn victims faces “invite us to stare” (80), as we continue looking we get a better insight into what these burn victims really look like without feeling rude, as one would feel if staring at somebody who has been severely burned in person. These pictures also give the viewer time and encouragement to “see more than scars” (81). These portraits also gave the burn victims a chance to display how they look, and in some cases the pain and anguish behind the looks they show, without them having to feel bad about how they look; the burn victims do not feel bad because they do not see the reactions of peoples faces having stared at them for a long period of time. The other portion of the chapter discusses similar instances of portraits of disfigured people, however from a different artist, Chris Rush, and the images are of disabled adults as well as children. Johnson in this later part of the chapter addresses how “looking away is an active denial of acknowledgement rather than a tacit tipping of one’s hat to ordinary fellow citizens expressed is simply not noticing one another” (83).  Similarly this is as if one observes someone in a wheelchair, and can’t help but look and think to oneself “what happened to this person? Why can’t they walk? “ etc, but in this case the viewer questions, “why is this person disabled” etc. All of this background information behind the chapter really helps to tie together the introductory paragraph with the rest of the chapter, and how society agrees staring is rude and shouldn’t be done when people look “different” for lack of a better term, for the sake of hurting one’s feelings.

I found the particular section of the reading meaningful because it is so very pertinent to every single person living and affects everybody all the time. There is no way to avoid seeing and perhaps accidentally staring at somebody, unless of course one is blind. I personally am guilty of having stared at someone who looked “different” in a way where I was unsure as to why they looked that way, or I caught myself thinking about what could have happened to them to make them look the way they are, and starting scenarios in my head. On the other hand, I also am well aware that I have had my fair share of instances where I have caught people staring at me, if I was in costume and had drastic make up on my face, or if I was just goofing around in a public area where people think it is unacceptable. Although the stares I have received could be interpreted differently than those stares that people who are disabled, or burn victims receive, being stared at all the same still feels uncomfortable and the person being stared at feels insulted in a way. In both cases, everyone can relate in some way, and that is the main reason why I chose this section of the article. It is so relative. There are countless memes of “don't stare it’s rude”, or quotes that say something along the same lines as that.

To dive deeper into the chapter that precedes the paragraph I chose to analyze, I want to say that if people were taught more about disabilities and also facial obscurities that make others look different, I believe people would not seem as shocked, or would not even care to stare (as much at least). We as a society would need to understand that these “different” people are the same as us, they just don’t look identical to us, and we would not want to shun them with our stares as heavily. A very interesting article I found online, was about people standing at intersections staring at people driving by, or being stopped at the intersection. The people driving would take off much faster when the experimenters stared at the drivers of the cars, rather than when the experimenters did NOT stare at the cars. This proves how uncomfortable staring makes people. It ties right into the article, chapter and video about Kevin Conneley. Conneley, who was born with no legs, and in the interview was treated as a different race of human being because he was stared at and still is stared at so frequently. Even the interviewer treated him differently in the interview process.

(http://www.jantoo.com/cartoons/keywords/social-etiquette)

Here is a cartoon comic I found where a new employee is being told not to stare at a boss because it is simply understood to be rude.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/state-of-grace-doug-aulds_n_852381.html)

This image of a woman, who is a burn victim, appears in the 10 portraits of burn victims made by Doug Auld.

"Should fat be revered, or is it flawed, and thus easily attainable?"

In chapter one, LeBesco writes a question not many people think about everyday, "is fat something to be revered, or is it flawed and thus easily attainable?" (26). I broke this down into terms that made the question sound easier, or in some ways stupid. Should fat be admired and respected, or is fat imperfect, damaged, and "flawed", because it is easy for almost anyone to get, or become, fat; and often times when something is too easy, it is not desired. This method of thinking applies to many instances in life, not just physical appearances but also in everyday situations, such as the prices of food. When you can get a lot of something very easily, or in some instances cheaper, because cheap is easier than expensive, it is not as valuable or desired. For example corn; it is easy to make corn, and it is mass produced so there is always so much of it, therefore it has a cheaper selling price. Not many people desire corn too often simply because they can have it all the time, and that's just how we as humans act. Another example relating to food is the price of meat. It is easy to produce mass amounts of chicken, therefore prices of cow, or more specifically steak, are higher than prices of chicken.
The metaphor I am implying about the question LeBesco addresses concerns the latter end of the question. Cheap food in most cases is bad for you, and losing weight for most women is not exactly easy, therefore the population jumps to thinking if a woman is overweight she should not be as desired, or they think fat in general is revolting, as the title suggests. As a regular human being I can say I am guilty of thinking this way at some times, however the book definitely pushes the readers mind further than just everyday thinking. The argument opposite of this which tries promoting health, or the desired "thinness", while at the same time discriminates against those who are overweight is the way of thinking that "nothing worth having comes easy". Although this could just be implying fitness does not come easy, I personally believe in many instances it means that being thin and fit does not come easily. I broke the quote down further to mean "being thin and fit does not come easy, so you have to work very hard to achieve such thinness and fitness". The hard work it takes to attain this ideal image is what makes the image so desirable.



http://healthybodyhappyspirit.blogspot.com/2014/03/three-weight-loss-facts-food-industry.html

I found this picture glancing through the web browser with "why being fat is easy" in the search box. It furthers to support the notion that most of the population desires to become thin, or wants to go on a diet. Not only does this quote enforce that idea, but also the thought that diet supplements support one way to attain the "desirable", thin body, and to lose weight, and diet supplements are not cheap. Since they are pricey, it makes it that much harder for people who desire to lose weight to lose weight, and especially hard for people who are poor and overweight to lose weight. It leads back to the question asked, "is fat 'revolting'", because many do not have to money and will power to stay in shape or as thin as many desire women to be in today's culture.

I found this question in the reading interesting, and also a paragraph after this question is asked LeBesco brings up another great observation. Heavy people are discriminated against so harshly today, one could compare it to the discrimination African Americans suffered in the US (and still suffer from). Society at large discriminates against over weight people, refers to their bodies as "revolting", and hates them in some cases for the reason being that they are over weight. It does not make sense when you take the time to think about how silly it sounds.. people don't think being over weight is acceptable in society. It sounds similar to not being liked because of your skin tone. (this metaphor might be somewhat extreme but I believe it help makes a point). LeBesco states in the book, "when fat people are not recognized as fully functioning persons, sexual persons, truly happy persons -- they do not aggregate among themselves. They not only do not belong to a 'normal' state or set of cultural conditions, they do not generally band together to mobilize in political action" (27). I thought this sentence alone was really deep and hard hitting. I never thought about over weight people as being a group alone discriminated against until now. Why don't they have a political organization? They seem to be oppressed, and definitely marginalized. Doing some searching online I found many websites that discriminated against heavy people from "How to Look Sexy if you are Big: 9 Steps", to "10 Frightening Ways We Discriminate Against Fat People". The first website, already assumes that "big" is not sexy, and the second website has some concerning statistics about how "thin" people have the upper hand  not only in the work force but also with legal situations, welfare, and boy scouts! The facts are quite shocking and relate nicely to how over weight people are separated into a group that is discriminated against, however they do not unite together to solve any of the public issues with discrimination against the obese.



http://www.themilitantbaker.com/2013/12/what-autocomplete-will-tell-you-about.html

I found this picture to be pretty relevant along with the link to that website. Here in the picture is a woman, who appears to be heavier than the "ideal" body image in today's culture/society. On her face is a Bing search I believe that says "fat people are..." and then the most used search categories, which under the search engine says, "gross; disgusting; annoying". The search engine is used to describe how our country and culture views fat people (gross, disgusting, etc.). There is also a quote on her chest that then reads, "It's not about the weight; lose the hate", which I think is an awesome quote. Everything is always centered around looks, and if they do not fit what people want they are not good enough. Society needs to stop "hatin", and start appreciating all the other wonderful things there are in the world ASIDE FROM BODY IMAGE. I liked this picture and how it correlates with my original question.."is fat revered, or flawed and thus easily attainable", because it screams fat is not either (or personally I do not think either of the options are good answers). Fat is just a thing, and society blew it out of proportion..imagine that. I want to know if you guys take a side on the question or if you believe it is neither revered or flawed as I do.

Keeping the secret of "The Crying Game"

I had a hard time finding picture directly related to my blog because it focused mainly on the gender reveal in the movie The Crying Game, so I found this picture intriguing because it gave a sense of where transgender people stood in the US, which is not too promising to our culture today. 

From the readings assigned over the past few classes, I gravitated more towards Bornstein's, Gender Outlaw. This reading as a whole focused on some key concepts such as gender defenders, gender outlaws, and gender terrorists. Bornstein writes as a transgender herself, so the reader sees through the eyes of a transgender person, about why the public is afraid of breaking the gender binary, and just how strong the gender binary is in culture today still. The section I particularly found enthralling was that pertaining to the movie The Crying Games and how secretive the movie became because of its content. This portion pulled me in because it really had me asking the question “why”. “Why” questions came in my head for almost every sentence I read from the reading, but these ones stuck out more to me. The part of the reading that also goes along with the whole secret of the movie is the vomiting of the character Fergus when he finds out the woman he was attracted to had a penis and was actually ttransgender This section can be found on pages 72-74.

While reading through this, I had a lot of ideas and thoughts racing through my mind. The first question I asked myself was, why keep this part of the movie a secret, for the reasons that people did? If the character in the movie was transgender why did the public not want people to know about it? Were the viewers themselves so repulsed by the thought of a transgender person that it was worth keeping the whole movie under the radar to the public? This thought process by the people watching the movie at the time just confused me. However the reading cared to explain the “secret” in words of transgender people as a whole, Bornstein writes, “I think the ‘keep the secret’ response on the part of the public was more a reflection of how the gender defenders of this culture would like to see transgender people: as a secret, hidden away in some closet” (page 74). In a way this made clear sense to me, because we as a culture are uneducated about anything or anyone that lies outside of the gender binary, or even still people who are gay confuse the majority of the public today (although I personally believe we have come a long way with that from where it started at). However, once I put more thought into it, and broke down what it was that Bornstein was saying, it made more sense to me. Not in a good way, but in a way that made me disappointed in the public, and our culture back when the movie was popular, and even now.

To further understand this quote I’d like to try and define gender defender as Bornstein does. After finishing the reading I thought that gender defender is any person, group of people, or anything particularly in general that keeps the gender binary. For example, a few gender defenders we named in class were gay bashers, some religious organizations, pop culture, family heritage, etc. Each one sticks to the idea that there are two genders and no more, and if you do not fit into one of those genders you are truly an outcast. This helps the reader to understand the quote more because now they know that “gender defenders” of this culture do not want to see transgender people at all, because transgender people threaten the binary that they all know and have known their whole lives. This correlates with the movie in a sense that the majority of the public were gender defenders, and for the most part still are gender defenders, and they did not want to spread awareness of the transgender people by addressing the movie to anyone. My thoughts on this are that if they had in their minds that if they were to address the movie to friends or family it could possibly bring awareness to the public at the time, about transgender people, which could POSSIBLY lead to the acceptance of transgender people, and that would just be far too much for anyone to handle, especially the gender defenders. Because if they public knew more about transgender people alone, this could start to shatter the gender binary, and too many people today in culture are afraid of change, small or large, and to people this would be too big of a change.

I honestly think change is the main reason we as a whole are in the dark about those who do not fit within the gender binary, because as a people we are afraid of change and new things. New means we do not yet know what it can do to harm or hurt us, and we are less educated about it. The public likes to know exactly what is going on all the time, which is just how it works, or at least my opinion on how I believe us as a culture handle change. Especially since this change which has been occurring for a long time but no one cares to surface, is about a subject matter which has been around since the beginning of time: boys and girls. Something that has been so solidified (at least we thought), and this change could completely destroy that sense of comfort for our culture of something we know and are used to. Another contributing factor to the lack of change in our gender binary is that most men would feel threatened if women were to become men and have the same power as a “real” man. Or vice versa, if a man becomes a woman it is more so downgrading because why, if you are born a man and have powers and dominance as a man has and is born with, would you want to become submissive and lose all the “power” (for lack of a better term) that you have? It does not make sense in the eyes of people who disagree with change, or who do not understand that people are born the way they are, and they cannot change that.

My question is, does anyone think we as a culture will we ever be accepting of not only transgender people, but to everyone who disrupts the gender binary? And if so, why has nothing been done to change the harsh negativity towards these “gender terrorists”, since they have been around forever almost (based off of previous readings we learned transgender people have been around for as long as time)?

The article I found online to contribute to my blog is based off of the movie The Crying Game, and I found it interesting because it says the "secret" was kept for the hype of the movie... and that "the secret is something that has caught on in a way in America", which I believe is a discrete way of agreeing with the fact the world is not ready to break the gender binary. I could be wrong though, just my opinion I thought it was interesting because it addressed "the secret" directly. 

I also really liked this cartoon because it hits home for the fact that our culture has not yet accepted transgender people, and how against it the US really is. 

Pictures: 

First one- http://jmuwomensstudentcaucus.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/trans-characters-take-the-mainstage/

sccond one- http://wtfpoliticalcartoons.tumblr.com/post/21708993637/tw-transphobia-this-comic-can-be-read-in-two

Gender Change, is it ethical?

(Cartoons relevant to subject matter, children having their sex changed, in the left the little girl has the desire to be a boy, on the right the mother looks angry at the doctor for changing the sex of her child as an infant)

I am considering a passage from the reading, "Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620-1960" written by Elizabeth Reis. Although the whole journal article was very compelling, I felt most moved by the section of the journal entry relating to changing the gender of children. Found on page 414 from the reading, a quote to engage in is, "Once their bodies were surgically shaped to approximate typical male or (usually) female figures, the children would develop personalities happily matched to their assigned sex, Money claimed, if the assignments were supported by proper rearing and a parental commitment to the chosen gender. Money was wrong. Many children thus altered never felt at home in their assigned sex." This section reviews how gender change in children at such a young age has not only serious consequences medically but also mentally. I found it meaningful because it could happen to anyone and it just really made me think more in depth about the fact of "hermaphrodites".

After reading this section from the passage I personally was confused on how to feel about gender change in children. John Money, the doctor who pretty much reached the highest most advanced point in gender change, states in the section that gender identity was "malleable", or in other words changeable, until the child is eighteen months of age. To me this made sense, since at 18 months of age a child is only a little over a year old; they aren't too sure of what is going on...how would they know, remember, or care if they had their gender changed? However, the passage conveyed a point that once the sex of a child is changed, it is irreversible, and many children who have this procedure done are unhappy in their bodies later in life. Also, the surgical procedure risks "sensation, fertility, continence, comfort, and life", and for what reason? The reason to "fit in" to society.. there is certainly no medical reason behind removing genitals to make the child more healthy. The same paragraph also made a point about the child's happiness as an adult once they find out what had happened to them when they had the sex change. Apparently in some cases, when the child grows up and their parents finally explain to them what happened, they decide to change their gender (again), or they develop a deep sense of shame in who they are because of how society treats people with such gender "differences". Here is a medical example of this. Once I had read that part my opinion started changing.
All of this information relates directly to the binary system of gender we have as a society. People and doctors would not be as inclined to change children's sex at such a young age, or even at all, if our society could handle the fact that there are more than 2 genders, and that one out of 2000 people are born with a "questionable gender status". This brings me back to my original thought on the subject matter of this paragraph: is it ethical to change the gender of such a young child? Whose decision is it, the parents? And at that point in life is it their decision to make. Later in life is it even ethical for a person to go through gender change, if we as a society are trying to bring more awareness about it. I personally struggle trying to find an opinion on the subject matter because I understand being placed in the shoes of someone who has gender differences, I would feel very uncomfortable about the whole thing. However, I do strongly believe that as a society we need to take steps in changing gender from being a binary term, and I think that not changing the gender of those born with a "questionable" gender should surgically change it.