I think Astorian has got it. Faced with a baby boy whose penis has somehow been accidently removed, doctors made the (I would say wrongheaded) decision to handle the case with the standard treatment for what is acutally a very different situation, children born with ambiguous genitals.
Does it seem to anyone else that this shows some rather dubious assumptions on the part of the doctors? They were putting a high value on appearence: the baby had to be made to look like a regular guy or gal. And a very low value on sexual pleasure: oh, sure, let’s castrate him if that’s the easiest way to make him look like a normal person.
I can’t help but wonder, did these doctors think that so long as the “woman” they were creating had a vagina, that was all she needed? That sexual pleasure was crucial for a man, unimportant for a woman?
I have read that some adult women have had sex change operations. If they can create some sort of penis for a woman, why can’t they create one for a boy?
A penis created through surgery is made of a piece of tissue taken from elsewhere in the body; I seem to remember reading that they use a piece of muscle from the leg, but I’m not at all sure about that detail.
One important reason they can’t, or don’t, perform this sort of surgery on children is because, to coin a phrase, size matters. An adult man’s penis is quite a bit larger than that of a prepubescent boy. A surgically-created phallus does not respond to hormones in the same way that the “original equipment” would; if the surgery were performed before puberty, the organ would have to be recreated years later, at a larger size.
I’m not a warlock.
I’m a witch with a Y chromosome.
Lest this topic get too serious, here’s a brief excerpt from the British TV series Blackadder, the Bells episode.
Melchett: Ah well, the whisper on the underground grapevine, ma’m, is that Lord Blackadder is spending all his time with a young boy in his service.
Queen: Oh. Do you think he would spend more time with me if I was a boy?
Melchett: Surely not madam.
Nursie: You almost were a boy, my little cherrypit.
Queen: What?
Nursie: Yeah. Out you popped, out of your mummies pumpkin and everybody shouting: “It’s a boy, it’s a boy!”. And somebody said “but it hasn’t got a winkle!”. And then I said “A boy without a winkle? God be praised, it is a miracle. A boy without a winkle!” And then Sir Thomas More pointed out that a boy without a winkle is a girl. Anyway, I was really disappointed.
Melchett: Oh yes, well you see, he was a very perceptive man, Sir Thomas More.
Jeez, Hazel, that article breaks my heart. (Makes my cringe, too, at the thought of such surgery.) Am I glad that my kids are okay!
Still, I’m all the more convinced that it’s up to the parents to make a decision in their child’s best interest. That decision may be to delay final action in some cases, but as you said yourself, a change at an age when the child is aware of what’s happening would be extremely traumatic. And letting him/her grow up ambiguous is problematic at best. What do you say if a kid asks, “Am I a boy or a girl?” “We don’t know yet”?! This is such a dramatic situation I’m just glad not to be in…
Re the Salon article, I was shocked at the arrogance of the doctor who castrated the little boy against the firmly stated wishes of the mother. I think the mother should both sue him and look into going after his license to practice.
I’ve now read the Salon article, the long story about the identical twin whose penis was destroyed in a circumcision accident (it’s on line) and some on line info from people born with ambiguous genitals who are pretty angry about what was done to them, and about having been lied to for years re their situation.
I’d say that the “solutions” medical science has been using for the past 35 years or so are worse then the problem. Almost anything would be better.
thought you might be interested to know that the boy from one of the most closely-studied cases of botched circumcision has decided to shed anonymity and go public, to try to prevent doctors from doing such surgery in the future. He lives in Winnipeg and a book is coming out about him next month.
I removed a link that was making the page too wide. I’ve saved it, and if I can figure out how to make it work, I will reinsert it.
–manhattan
and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel to toe
[Note: This message has been edited by manhattan]
the article’s in the Globe & Mail - try typing in “circumcision” in the search function at the bottom of this page. It brings up the article, “How David Found His Manhood.”
At least I got a rise out of it. It always works for long cgi URLs from SF Chronicle searches.