Sexing The Body By Anne Fausto-Sterling

Any society, American, Mexican, Indian, no matter which, its inhabitants have a familiar set of opinions and standards, and a firm belief that those are good, sensible, and irrefutable. We want to believe that we are right, and we want to make sure we are right. This determination has led humanity into periods of discrimination, misunderstanding, and pain. Yet we do not learn as easily as many think we do. The abundance of mistakes in history are too many and some too great to be unnoticed. Despite these lessons, we do not yet know it all, even if we think we do because 'we live in the 21st century'. New controversies arrive, new ideas, perceptions and discrimination arise and one example is on intersex and homosexuality. The except Of Gender

and Genitals: The Use and Abuse of the Modern Intersexual from the book Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling presents a broad overview of the issues surrounding intersex births and the ambiguity.

Sterling analyzes and criticizes the way society handles the meaning of different when it comes to sexuality and gender. The medicalization and misjudgment of intersex and other sexual ambiguities is heavily derived from our long standing belief in two genders and the appropriate roles they are assigned in playing 'house'. Consequently, a cycle of discrimination against the 'abnormal' rose and seeks to use medicine and higher knowledge to change the unknown based not based on medicine, but our own biases.
Our civilization believes gender to be composed by only males and females. We think of it as an irrefutable fact and that nature has always had those intentions. According to past generations, nature intended for Earth to be composed of males and females and that they would be attracted to the opposite sex in order to reproduce and populate the earth. This is the gospel truth

that our ancestors have taught us and it's everywhere- the bible, the law, and in our 'inherent' moral values. American society, more so in the past, has usually paired gender and sexuality as things that go hand in hand. The way we perceive gender and sexuality sounds similar to computer programming or a recipe of some sort; it's all a set of instructions we are expected to follow. That is how we perceive nature to be, to be a series of programs within DNA that can only result in either/or. Everything was meant to be either/or and what was not born as either/or is 'rescued' by medical experts who decide in the stead of nature and act as its chosen medium to relay its true intentions. These beliefs have seeped into the the medical world and they influence the opinions that medical experts bring with them to hospitals, research papers and the media. Such is what Sterling describes in the opening of her first chapter, "They (medical staff) declare a state of medical emergency" when an intersex child is born . This is how sexuality is still viewed within American society, as a problem that should be fixed straightaway and cease to exist. Yet, being the curious, troublesome creatures that we are, we still seek to know the root of the 'disorder'. Is it the body? Or is it our surroundings that influence sexuality? These questions seem to try to carve a path towards understanding, when in fact, it is only trying to find something to hold accountable.
Our expectations in being right about the 'unnatural' state of intersexuality and different sexual preferences are driven further when medical 'experts', people we usually view as authority figures, contribute their opinions on intersex births which are only reflections of what society.

For example, in the treatise on The Intersexual Disorders, Drewhurst and Gordon adopt a very tragic tone on the birth of intersexual children, assuming that parents must feel bad and that the child is facing a dreadful deformity, "One can only attempt to imagine the anguish of the parents. That a newborn child should have a deformity...(affecting) so fundamental an issue...which immediately conjures visions of a hopeless..." (Sterling, 47). But what constitutes an actual deformity? A deformity is usually interpreted as a physical difference that leaves the person unable to perform day to day tasks to care for themselves. However, Dewhurst and Gordon adopt a very dark tone when they describe the settings surrounding the birth of an intersexual child. They use words such as 'freak', 'misfit', 'deformity', and 'tragic'. They dramatize the fact that the child happened to be born as an ambiguous sex without considering the fact that the child may not be in any sort of danger or need for

treatment.
When we encounter the 'abnormal' in gender, it automatically becomes our duty to intervene and attempt to give the child a 'normal' life. This is always not to save the child, in fact, the child is never really involved in the article, or in any many other accounts of sexual ambiguity, not even to attempt explore and ask what they really feel about their ambiguity. Instead we judge their happiness and satisfaction based on what their gender role dictates. Gender role dictates that, "Young boys should be able to pee standing up and thus "feel normal"; adult men, meanwhile, need a penis big enough for...intercourse." (Sterling, 57) In order to enforce these idea, we use genetics as the culprit and medicine as a solution. We offer a variety of chemicals, not all necessarily natural, and surgeries that has the potential to create unnecessary health problems. Again, the adults and medical experts are the ones making the decision, children are only a small part of the background through second hand stories.
The ever present deficiency in providing support to any cause is always an issue which in this case, can be observed through the urgency to change the unknown into a male or female. Why is it that we are so stubborn to accept that things change or that we might be wrong? It seems as if people collectively display a sort complex that drives us to push what we believe everywhere we go We have made these same mistake in the past multiple times in believing that women and slaves were inferior mentally and physically. Today we still have controversial opinions on topics such as how we should treat children and immigration