On October 26 I attended the Alice Dreger lecture called Adding “I” to LBGTQ? which was presented in the library presentation room from two p.m. to three p.m. In this lecture Dreger had four main points regarding Intersex which was how biology is not an identity, norms and health are different, clinics should focus on healthy outcomes, and lastly if you are going to talk about LGBTQI understand it first. Towards the middle of her lecture she went into depth discussing how the phall-o-meter effects a child. Therefore, to end her lecture she gave us some questions regarding why we need to add” I” to LGBTQ. Although this lecture only lasted one hour long it was very informational and clarified most of my questions I did have prior to having the social construction lecture in class.
Furthermore, Dreger made it very clear that any person with sex development (DSD) looks like everyone else normal. Actually there are thirty-six different type of intersex situations we so far know about she stated. One thing I appreciated about her lecture were the visuals that were being represented with each difficult topic because these topics were very
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complex to comprehend in a short period of time. Dreger specially mentioned Tiger Devore who has a PhD and came out then he became the first intersex advocate. While trying to connect Devore to her theory that “gender is about up brining and not nature.” This idea had me think back to the day where we had our lecture in class about social construction. Given that your sex is male or female society gives you your gender assignment. Whereas being masculine or feminine cannot be switched at all. A male has to grow up being masculine and a female can only be presented as being feminine. Then I decided to look back at my notes and saw how the class definition of intersex had the same context as Dreger’s. The Phall-O-Meter is where this problem begins.
There are three distinct points which determines if you are a girl or boy. If you fall under the .9 category congratulations you are a girl although if you are between .9 and 2.5 you need surgery. Therefore, if you are at the 2.5 mark you are a boy. Another connection I made while I was listening to the lecture was another article I read in class called “Naming all the parts” by Kate Bornstein. In that article Bornstein made a direct relationship to Alice Dreger’s lecture because Bornstein discussed gender assignment, gender identity, gender role, and gender attribution. Dreger discussed how these people that have DSD are not different than a normal human. Many articles that we read tie in with this talk because of the discouragements many people go through because they are
different. Although she asked the audience “Why should we add I to LGBTQ?.” A sum up of everyone’s ideas with regards with the real answer was to increase invisibility, recognize homophobia and sexism, and to get a wider and deeper understanding of this concept. It can be accomplished with support from many people. Our society has a difficult time accepting change and growing to change for the better. Intersex happens in thirty-six different types of ways and not much can be changed about it. To reassure many people there are groups designed as a support system to help them change normally. Many people want this situation not affect them drastically to appoint where your life will change but a smooth transition so help is offered in many places.
Jody was born biologically with male genitals and he was brought up as a boy. Unlike his more gender-typical older brother, Jody’s childhood behavior was considered “sissy”. Jody genetically preferred the company of girls compared to boys during childhood. Jody considered herself a bisexual male until the age of 19. At 19 years of age, she became involved with a man, and her identity would be transgender, meaning that Jody was unhappy with her gender of birth and seeks a change from male to female. It would seem that there was some late-onset dissatisfaction, and late-onset is linked to attraction to women; in comparison to early childhood-onset, which are attracted to men. Jody identified herself as bisexual. The relationship with the man ended; nevertheless, Jody’s desire to become a woman consumed her, and Jody feels that’s he was born in the
The information acquired over the semester, whether through text or visual media, vividly brought the importance of knowing how one’s gender is identified and developed.
In 2006, an unidentified individual who had a disorder of sexual development underwent sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) to go from male genitalia to female genitalia. Initially the individual was described as having a large penis and elevated testosterone levels, he was also labeled as having confusing genitalia—the individual was intersex. There was a vaginal opening and ovarian tissue, which is why the doctors and parents took four months to do the surgery and the individual was 16 months old when the surgery happened. Similar to David, this person also identified as male despite being raised female for five and a half years. Also similar to David, this person expressed differentiating behaviors from their assigned SRS; however, in contrast this person came out earlier, at the age of seven. The unidentified person’s parents sued the medical facility that carried out the SRS for malpractice. That year there were 139 clitoral reduction surgeries and in 2009 there were 156 (Greenfield, 2014). It is still debated what the moral or correct course of action is for intersex
According to the textbook, the term Gender Dysphoria means “biological sex and gender identity do not match, thus leading to distress and impairment” (Chapter 8, pg.279). The textbook also discusses how “children with Gender Dysphoria is apparent in repeated statements that the child wants to be the opposite sex or is the opposite sex; cross-dressing in clothing stereotypical of the other sex and how the child has persistent fantasies of being the opposite sex such as; pretend play or activities associated with the opposite sex” (Chapter 8, pg. 279). However; the textbook also mentions how “people with gender dysphoria have persisted discomfort with their own sex” (Chapter 8, pg. 279).
I think I have grown tremendously in this class, not just because of the great talks that we have, rather the application of the things that we discuss in and even out of class. I find myself recognizing and putting my biases behind me. I find myself being more aware and more conscious of what is going on around me in terms of the people and what they 're saying. People have actually been surprised that I know so much as well. I have some friends in the LGBTQ+ community and last year I would always semi offend them with the words that I used such as tranny and faggot, because believe it or not, I had no idea that they were offensive because for me, I had always used them as a term of endearment and now I know so much more about the community
In the past Johns Hopkins was a center for patients with a gender disorder. John Money, PhD worked in the Psycho-hormonal Group as a head. He had a very strange theory. He would apply his theory to actual patients, not knowing or expecting what would happen. The experiments he attempted on children and adult literally had no boundaries. One of well-known cases of gender identity disorder was about a boy. He was inducted into the Johns Hopkins center because of what happened during a normal ‘surgery’. The boy’s penis was accidently burnt during the circumcision. He underwent a surgery that made him have female body part. The little boy was raised as a girl. The boy raised as a girl felt as if he was a boy. When the family decided he was old enough to know they told him about what had happened during his circumcision. Once he had heard of this he decided to not be living as a female anymore. He later committed suicide. What we have learned from this experiment is that it comes with a lot of depression. Van Meter stated, “Because of the failures that began to materialize from Money’s ideology, the Psycho-hormonal group was abolished and Money was forced into retirement.” (239.) They are steps being taken to provide the best medical treatment and social environment with those who are suffering GID. I added this piece of information because I thought it was something we all show know about how the past has
It meets the guideline with its’ attention to assert a concern on gender identities and our scientific understanding of them. The writer essentially focused on scientific theories by Dr. Kranz and Dr. Cecelia Dhejne that the foundations of sex-reassignments are based upon a mismatch between gender-specific brain developments and how they are “scientifically” formed and the high suicide effects of it subsequently. Using important information such as transgendered people with brain structural differences reports relevant information in relation to the controversial idea of how changeable is gender and how it affects lives to this day.
According to the DSM-5, gender dysphoria is “the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender” (American Psychological Association, 2013). Even though studies have shown that not every individual suffers from distress, it is still possible that an individual might suffers from distress due to the hormonal treatment or surgical procedure(s). In the past, gender dysphoria has been referred to as “gender identity”. However, gender identity, by the DSM-IV definition is “a category of social identity and refers to an individual’s identification as male, female, or occasionally, some category other than male or female” (American Psychological Association, 2000). Individuals that identify themselves with another gender tend to change their sex, which has been proven to be a hard and long process.
...ome intersex people grow up and feel very worthless, telling a intersex child she does not have a normal body like the doctor did to bonnie can make intersex kids not love and appreciate the body that they have, and categorizing intersex kids as special and having some kind of disorder in their sexuality make them feel like they are different from anyone else. If surgery is not enough to mess with the physical and mental minds, words like I just mentioned should not be mentioned around kids that are intersexual because it does make them feel some kind of not having self worth. According to preventing suicide among gender and sexual minorities, lesbian, gay, transgender and intersex are the specific high risk groups for suicide in annual senate report, however transgender group have been singled to be recognized as having high rate of suicide (Paumier, 2014).
Being a man doesn’t need the back up of a Y chromosome and being a woman doesn’t need both XX chromosomes as I made clear in this paper. I enjoyed reading and writing about intersex and informing myself and the people around me about it. My best friend is deciding to do his research paper on it and I’m helping my little cousin do a school project on intersex and genetic make-up. I’m proud of myself for doing something out of the box and being the voice for a person with intersex.
Part Two of Kartina Karkazis’ novel Fixing Sex focuses on the reality parents face when their child receives an intersex diagnosis. Karkazis illustrates what a couple experiences when they discovered their baby girl was not in fact a girl, in accordance to the socially constructed understanding of a female. She also covers the importance of choosing a sex with an intersexual baby when society is involved. A great example from the text is, “Bodies with atypical or conflicting biological markers of gender are troublesome because they disturb the social body; they also disrupt the process if determining an infant’s place in the world” (96). It ties in perfectly to the purpose of paragraphs four, five and six: The Ramifications of Corrective Surgery (Good and Bad). The quote highlights one of the “bad” ramifications of intersexual corrective surgery. It has progressed to the point where society has such a large impact on what is classified as a “proper girl” or “proper boy” that if a baby does not classify into one of those categories, then the child is no longer accepted.
The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community has been disapproved by many since it first came about in the 1950s. Since then, the societal attitude towards homosexuality and LGBT culture has changed greatly, as much of the world has become more accepting of same-sex sexuality as it has become more common. Studies have also shown that the younger generation are more tolerant towards LGBT views. The LGBT community consists of many beliefs and values that make the community different and intriguing.
“Because our Father loves his children, he will not leave us to guess about what matters most in life concerning where our attention could bring happiness or our indifference bring sadness.” Not all families are the same anymore. And this to me says perfectly what I need to hear because of my family situation. I am not sure what is going to happen in the next life because of the complicated situation with me family, but I know the Lord has a plan and he will not leave us astray. The Lord has prepared a way.
I showed growth in the third learning outcome of this course: Utilize skills for accessing and appraising research-based information. When I began this course, I hadn’t realized different it was accessing and appraising articles covering human sexuality compared to other topics, and how difficult it could be to differentiate reputable sources. This sticks outcome sticks out to me because when I was finding articles for the assignments and blogs, I found it quite difficult to target an authentic research-based article on search engines. I quickly figured out that the web and the media are crowded with articles on this topic with little to no research-based information. Most articles were based on opinions or assumptions the writer is sharing. I was forced to practice
The treatment of the LGBT community in American Society is a social injustice. What most people think is that they just want to be able to marry one another and be happy but that’s not it. They want to be treated like humans and not some weird creatures that no one has ever seen before. They want to be accepted for who them are and not what people want them to be and they deserve the right to be who they are just the same as any other human being. After all the discrimination they have endured they should be allowed to be who they are and be accepted as equals just like people of different skin color did in the times of segregation. We have a long way to go as a country but being the greatest country in the world in the eyes of many great America will make big steps to make things fair.