In "Of Gender and Genitals," Fausto-Sterling examines social, parental, and medical attitudes towards and reactions to intersex individuals and how these views affect these individuals' treatment. She starts off by explaining that "[o]ur conceptions of the nature of gender difference shape, even as they reflect, the ways we structure our social system and polity; they also shape and reflect our understanding of our physical bodies (45)." In other words, the fact that we view sex and gender as having to be separate categories - either completely male or female, but nothing in between - affects how we understand ourselves, construct our society, and view people that do not follow these "normality guidelines." One example of this "either/or" view is the near-hysteria doctors and parents experience when an intersex child is born because they view this child as abnormal or unnatural because s/he is neither totally female nor totally male. S/he has to be fixed immediately because s/he does not fall neatly into what we have defined as sexually normal or natural; s/he is an outsider, a freak, a social outcast, a frightening threat, a monster even, just because s/he does not conform to society and ours "all-male or all-female" ideal standard. Thus, to "save" this child from a horrible life of confusion and ridicule, s/he must be made to agree with what society expects in terms of sex and gender as soon as possible, which has lead many doctors to assign "nature's intended sex" of intersex babies at birth. Doctors who follow this path usually explain to the parents that what has happened is a rare anomaly - that their child "'really' is a boy or a girl...not that they constitute a category other than male or female (50-51) -" which is a classic example of denying or ignoring the truth because it doesn't fit with our beliefs or it makes us uncomfortable. In describing multiple ways to "fix" intersex individuals, Fausto-Sterling remarks that if we can physically "fix" a person into a boy or girl and that we can decide what constitutes a boy or girl means that sex is culturally and socially determined as well as biologically determined (58). If there were no social component to sex, we would have no say in determining someone's sex - it would just be. Also, sex is constrained by local cultural traditions as well as broader ones, such as parents wanting their intersex children "fixed" or at least raised male because male offspring were preferred (58-59). On the psychological aspect, doctors touted that in order for children to be mentally sound, their sexual identification had to match their physicality since bodily and sexual clarity was crucial to proper psyche development; sexual ambiguity would destroy the child's developing self-image as well as the parents' ability to identify and raise it. Therefore, information sharing between the doctors and the parents and intersex child was nearly non-existent so as to "spare" them. Fausto-Sterling argues that our denial and silence as well as the attitude that intersexuality is wrong are proof that sex and culture are irrevocably linked - one's definition and rules are influenced by the other; we can see that '[o]ur theories of sex and gender are knitted into the medical management of intersexuality (77)." Because of this connection, intersexuality has the potential to change what society thinks of as sexually normal (77).
In "Should There Only Be Two Sexes," Fausto-Sterling continues to examine intersexual medical treatment and why we are so opposed to having more sexes than just male and female. She asserts that doctors that deal with intersex individuals should follow three simple rules to challenge the stigma of intersexuality: no unnecessary infant surgery, assignment of a "provisional sex (79)" based on physical evidence, and long-term counseling for the entire family. She says that infant surgery's importance is rooted in social norms, not medical or physical necessity since the child is not going to die if it doesn't have the surgery done; in other words, "reshaping a sexually ambiguous body so that it conforms to our two-sex system (80)" is for social acceptance, not for the health of the child. Also, she states that genital surgery on infants usually doesn't work, but the need to social conformity is so strong that doctors do it anyway and then try to keep medical information from these children supposedly for their own good, which damages trust between doctors and patients (80-85). So why continue doing it if it has such little merit? Fausto-Sterling also advocates the right of both intersexual individuals and their parents to refuse "fixing" surgery. Doctors usually think that performing this surgery is beneficial to the intersex individual and do it without consulting anyone; they just assume that these people and their families automatically share the same view and that they would thank them for it (92-93). To explain the reason behind these doctors' beliefs, she says that "[d]ogma has it that without medical care, especially early surgical intervention, hermaphrodites are doomed to a life of misery." However, these doctors are assuming the wrong thing - "Yet there are few empirical investigations to back up this claim. In fact, the studies gathered to build a case for medical treatment often do just the opposite (93)." Therefore, she concludes, there is no reason not to consider having other sex categories - transsexual and intersexual being two - because these surgeries have few, if any, benefits. She asserts that shifting attention away from biology and genitals to how people define themselves is a better way to deal with gender.
No comments:
Post a Comment