..if you were born a hermaphrodite?
Anne Fausto-Sterling's chronological mapping of the exposure of the intersexual points to the various ways in which such gender-perplexed people have been cared for and dealt with throughout time. As Aristotle believed, "hermaphrodites truly belonged to one of only two possible sexes (33). As such, historically, hermaphrodites have been urged to choose a gender, unless their gender has been chosen for them at birth. Yet how does one decide which sex characteristics will prevail? In choosing a gender, hermaphrodites have been influenced by the social and political norms of the time period in which they live; traditionally, hermaphrodites have chosen to live as males in order to attain economic benefits through work and political power through the right to vote. Another frame of thought involves the individual choosing their sex according to their dominant personality. Do all intersexuals have a dominant, gendered personality, aside from the sex as which they were raised? Couldn't an intersexual live with conflicting personality traits? Living as an intersexual is not discussed as a life option in this chapter, which brings me to the present options afforded hermaphrodites. As the title of this post poses, what would you do had been born with traits characteristic of both sexes? Would you submit to the "Age of Conversion" (40), and choose your sex, male or female Or would you remain an intersexual, facing societal challenges and internal complexities on a daily basis? Either lifestyle presents strength of mind and character; to live as Cal does, changing his course completely and accepting his new life as a male, though raised as a female, or to live as an advocate for intersexual recognition by living out your life with the natural body you inherited.
I found a point at the start of Sterling's chapter extremely interesting, and also troubling. "Researchers have nearly completed development of technology that can chose the sex of a child at the moment of fertilization" (31). This kind of control over the sex of ones child symbolizes what gender means to us in contemporary society. We must evaluate the value we place on different genders, so much so as to be able to choose whether or not we'll have daughters or sons.
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This last quote that Eileen mentioned really struck a cord with me. If scientists can determine the "sex" of the baby at fertilization, and perhaps even change it, this means that we as a society have decided that sex is a biological fact. While we went over the biological facts in class on Tuesday, I still have trouble creating such black and white facts since sex/gender can be so easily manipulated.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Eileen's question, I think if my child were intersex I would try to raise them as gender neutral as possible and let them choose at puberty. It is so much pressure on the parents to make the right decision and I think, especially given the criteria of size of the clitoris, it is possible to choose.
The history of the hermaphrodite also sheds some light on our cultural understanding of intersex people. Some cultures accept them while others deny their existence. Still, they always exist in relation to other men and women (as in Jewish law) even if the laws are specific to intersex people. Part of the modern day movement must be an effort to move away from this binary to understand sex ,in addition to gender, on a continuum. However, with these new medical advances, I doubt we will ever change society to fit our bodies and will continue to change our bodies to fit society.
The question Eileen poses is an extremely difficult one and one most people having children probably haven’t considered. What would you do if your child were intersex? What if your child didn’t fit into the male and female dichotomy? How would you even refer to the child? He? She? It? Even our language makes it difficult to refer to someone who isn’t clearly male or female, there is no gender-neutral pronoun. I like how Lindsey proposes to treat the child as gender neutral as possible and then let the child choose which gender he or she wants to be at puberty. While this is a great suggestion and I can’t come up with a better answer to Eileen’s question, I wonder if this is really practical. How would the child being an ambiguous gender affect him or her (even here it is difficult to talk about with no gender neutral pronoun) at school? As we have learned from the recent bullying case in Massachusetts where a girl was bullied into killing herself, kids can be really cruel. The best way to deal with having an intersex child (in an ideal world, I am under no misconception that this would happen easily or quickly) would be to change the norms around gender construction and make for a child to pick his or her gender or even have the option to not pick one gender at all. After all sex and gender are both on spectrums. Nothing is black and white. But for now Lindsey gives us our best possible option.
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