The Importance Of Physical Sex And Intersex

One’s physical sex determines how that person will be treated for the rest of their lives, but a large majority of people find themselves left out because they’re not really a boy but not really a girl either. What if when a child is born, it was unclear what physical gender they were because their reproductive organs pointed to a boy, but also a girl? Or even vice versa. According to Julia Serano’s book Whipping Girl, these children are known as “Intersex”, which is a term used to describe individuals who are “born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not fit the typical definitions of male or female” (25). As an analogy, think of gender as a spectrum of color, where one color is "female" and another is "male." "Intersexed" would then appear to any shade of color in between.

In the past, this condition (also known as hermaphroditism) was one of secrecy, and it was common for parents to choose their baby’s gender for them and to have doctors remove ovaries from a child whom could grow into a boy, or remove the penis from a baby that showed more sign of being female. There are a variety of different issues that can cause a child to be intersex. Some could be an extra X or Y chromosome or genetic mutation. The issue is that people do not always grow into the gender that they are given, whether they be intersex or not. Despite the either-or categories society has perpetuated on gender, intersex children should be given the choice of which gender they choose to identify with after puberty—for their own well-being, emotionally and physically.

Intersex surgery as a child is risky in the long-run. In a journal written by Haze Glenn Beh and Milton Diamond Ph.D., they analyzed how physicians have long conveyed a sense of medical...

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...y done or begin to go into hormonal therapy.

Intersex children should be given a choice in which gender that they choose to identify with and become after they have gone through puberty. The ability to choose one’s gender after puberty will give the intersex person time to be well informed and prepare for their future. As a reminder, gender reassignment surgery is a serious decision that should not be taken lightly or hastily because there have been cases where people have been known to regret their decisions. The time between their birth and puberty will give them enough time to properly learn who they are and what gender they want to be, without any mystery in their medical history, and a sense of self-validation that they are in control of their bodies and given the chance to be who they were born to be, even if it all started a bit jumbled up in the beginning.