Yes! Precisely! Better to have odd looking genitals that are fully fuctional then to have normal looking genitals that do not function. Although, from what I understand, the surgery does not usually produce genitals that are really very normal looking. Less strange then what the child was born with, but not standard looking, either.
Totally agree. As a child I was teased because I was:
Chubby
Hindu
Of South-Asian Origin
Vegetarian
Hairy
Wore Glasses
Wore Braces
It bothered me a lot then, none of it bothers me now. The only thing that sort of irks me is that my parents made me get braces. It’s something that I would have chosen eventually, but I went through an immense ammount of physical pain as a child because of them. It’s not fair to inflict physical pain on children. If an adult chooses it, fine. But there is no way you’re going to prevent teasing. If I hand’t been teased for wearing braces, I would have been teased for my crooked teeth. That’s the way kids are. What other kids think should never be a factor in decisions made for your children. You are effectively letting children tell you how to raise your kid.
Any surgery will be painful. In the case of these gender surgeries, there may have to be several surgeries, hormone treatments, etc. No amount of potential teasing is worth subjecting a child to this kind of pain. Unless the child has a serious health problem, surgery should be avoided. Plus there is the additional thing that any surgery is inherently risky.
Surgery is generally about looks, nothing else.
So i’d go without the surgery, choose a nice name like Morgan or Tony or Lindsay, and get on with it.
The kid is going to decide on it’s own what it is. And later on it’s going to decide on it’s sexual preferences. I don’t really have any say in those choices. They’re not mine to make.
The parents’ embarrrassment at saying that their child is intersex pales in comparison to their child never experiencing sexual pleasure, or having to undergo the trauma of an adult or adolescent gender re-assignment, which would involve even more potential embarrassment.
(AFAIK women who undergo ftm gender reassignments generally do not have surgery to create a penis, and many of them seem to have sucesssful relationships with people who don’t give a damn, and who are happy to accept their maleness. Why should a different standard be applied here.)
And that would be my choice too.
And now comes the interesting part- but then what? How does one get on with it and raise a child without gender?
I disagree about the “gender neutral” name, actually. I suspect the kid will identify with one gender or the other by the time he/she reaches school, but may seem a bit “ambiguous” in looks or manner. People will want to know his/her gender, and the easiest way is to ask the kid’s name. If the kid has a gender-neutral name, then you get into the whole “Pat” scenario. I think it may be better to choose a name that is easily converted from male to female, like Donald/Donna or something.
I think it’s unrealistic to try to raise the kid as “gender ambiguous.” After all, as someone said above, everybody’s first question is “boy or girl.” Do you want to explain to every random person at the supermarket that your kid is intersex? At school, the kid will DEFINITELY be singled out for teasing if he/she is a he/she. Somebody raised the point about enrolling your kid in classes–which class do you choose?
I think it would be best to choose a nominal gender for the kid. In other words, choose a gender but do not have the surgery. (make your best guess as to the gender) Then raise the kid as that gender, but try to be gender neutral where possible. In other words, try not to push the kid into gender roles. If you choose “girl,” don’t dress her in all pink and only give her dollies to play with. Of course, the kid and the close family will know the kid is intersex, and the family can choose who to tell. Sooner or later, your kid will express a preference for being one gender or the other. This preference may come out when the kid is 2, or may come out when the kid is 20. Doesn’t matter. When the preference is clear, then let her stay as the nominal gender or switch if that is what she wants. In any case, you have at least a 50% chance of getting it “right” and the kid will not have to make any outward switch at all.
A couple of people have said that they would have the surgery done & let the child change his mind later.
The problem you’re not seeing is that the surgery usually amounts to amputation. Most of the doctors who favor “surgery to appear normal” will turn any intersex child into a “girl” because they lack the ability to build onto the phallus. So if this happens, there is no way later to give an “intersex” small-phallus boy his penis back later. Women who undergo gender-reassignment to men have to wear an unfeeling plastic prosthetic. Male-to-female or intersex-to-female surgery is, effectively, irreversible. Even intersex-to-male surgery, if it removes the uterus of a “true” hermaphrodite, is irreversible amputation.
The argument that this drastic decision must be made before the child is aware of it is based on three assumptions:
First, that gender ambiguity is bad, & to save a child from bisexuality, homosexuality, or some sort of deep insanity, the child must have an unpolluted sense of its own gender.
Second, that gender identity is “fixed” by the age of two, so massive confusion will result if you don’t do the surgery.
Because, & third, that a child’s gender identity somehow is based on his morphology.
What’s overlooked by this sort of concerned fretting is that lots of us, myself definitely included, go through various forms of trans-gender identification without any morphological trigger, & eventually work through it. And gender confusion, or even a sense of gender, tends to develop after the age of two. If you want to solidly put a child into the “male” or “female” camp, there may be no better way than the child consciously & willingly undergoing surgery to be a boy or girl. In any case, very small children don’t really see themselves as, for example, less male because of a small penis. One tends to assume one is normal.
This is why I would pick a social gender-identity for the child, and simply treat the “deformity” as a thing to be dealt with later, once the child is able to assert that he wants it.
I should be clear that when I say, “pick a social gender-identity for the child,” that I don’t expect my choice to be set in stone. If, at 36 months, little Rozzie insists she’s a boy, then we adapt. And maybe later we adapt again. Also, when I say, “surgery later,” I don’t think you have to wait until 18. The point is, it’s the child’s life, and I don’t think I should just make all important decisions for 18 years.
Sometime surgery is necessary to correct defects in the urinary tract system. The baby born at our hosptial had chromo studies done but also needed to have her bladder moved (it was outside her abdominal cavity) and her ureters re-routed.
I am puzzled as to why anyone would think that, if the intersex baby is not surgically assigned a gender, the child will have to be raised as a person of indeterminent or undecided sex.
You make a guess as to which sex the baby seems closer to, based on chromosomes and appearence. You start out raising the child as a girl, or as a boy, depending on which guess you made.
Next, you follow the good advice of several of the other posters to this thread. When it comes to clothes, toys, play, etc. don’t try to push the child into being femenine or masculine. If your little girl starts insisting, “I’m a boy!” or if your little boy starts insisting, “I’m a gir!” say, “Okay, honey”. Move to another town, if necessary, but let the child be what (s)he feels (s)he is.
If doctors try to insist that the child has to be assigned to one sex or the other right away, stick to your guns and don’t let them talk you into anything. If your doctor won’t accept your decision, find a doctor who will.
How many surgeries are you willing to let a child endure? If a child needs an initial procedure to facilitate elimination and thus be compatible with life, I can make a decision at this time…whatever procedures that will keep my child alive and comfortable and functioning. If it’s less invasive to route the ureters as for a female and the chromo studies support this, then my child is a girl.
Cyn, of course i agree with you, any surgery needed for medical reasons is good, any COSMETIC surgery is more iffy ethically.
especially when you realise that eg clitoromegaly is arbitrarily decided based on a measurement of more than a certain defined norm.
Because it seems as if raising the child to be either gender will appear to the child as if we the parents are condoning that gender. Think of how little kids think of gender- they think if a girl gets a short haircut, she is now a boy. And think of the influence a parent has on a baby or preschooler.
If the parents guess unwisely, I fear that there will be confusion and anger at some point down the road.
sugaree, I have to disagree.
Scenario A. The parents give the child a name that can be a boy’s name or a girl’s name with minimal changes. In consultation with medical experts, they make the best guess they can as to which sex the child should be raised as. If, at any point in childhood or teen years, the child objects, says (s)he feels that (s)he’s really the other sex, and sticks to this position for long enough that it seems to be a firm opinion, the parents let the child live, dress as, be treated as, as the other sex. If this means moving to a new town where no one knows that little George used to be Georgetta, fine. No confusion or anger results. Whatever unhappiness may result from the situation, there’s nothing to blame the parents for.
Scenario B. Same as above, except that the parents don’t let Georgetta become George (or vice-versa). The kid is made to stick to whichever sex the parents picked. Until (s)he reaches adulthood, at which point (s)he is free to live as whichever sex (s)he wants. No confusion; the child always knew which (s)he was. Some resentment. Resentment level about equal to that of a child who was compelled to stay in the college prep track in school, dispite his/her firm intention to be an auto machanic or short order cook.
Scenario C. Parents allow the doctors to surgically assign the child to whatever sex they think best. They guess right; child feels, yes, that’s what I am. Just one problem. The surgery denied the child any chance of ever enjoying sexual pleasure. He or she can “pass” as a genuine member of the chosen sex – but is, in actually, a complete eunich. No confusion – major resentment. What right did anyone have, the person will have to think, to subject me to surgery that was, in effect, castration, without my consent? Just to make me “look regular” while growing up?
Scenario D. Same as Scenario C – except the choice was wrong. Whichever sex the doctors and parents picked isn’t the one the child feels is correct. Again, no confusion, but major resentment.
The problem is that doctors could arbitrarily decide that anything was “medically necessary”. They used to claim that the children would suffer psychological harm if they didn’t intervene surgically.
There needs to be a way of defending patients, especially those who aren’t capable of making decisions for themselves, from misguided doctors and erroneous “science”.
Non-intervention is the best solution. If the individual finally decides they don’t want to remain as they are, they can have surgery themselves and accept the consequences of their choice.
I am also of the opinion that time will tell, and I would not want to make a decision during the child’s first years of life. For so many reasons already brought up.
However, I wonder what the doctors would do. Would they try to force surgery? Would child protective services get involved? Would I be labelled a “bad parent” for not choosing surgery? I could see that happening. The idea of gender ambiguity is so frightening to some, or so bizarre, that I could see CPS getting involved with the family on some level if they chose to do nothing (to let the child decide later).
Does anyone know?
Slight hijack - because these things were so hidden in the past, I wonder how many adults are walking around with no idea about delivery room decisions that set the course of their life?
There’s no answer, of course, I just wonder. Wouldn’t if be funny if some big burly man or curvy girly was running around calling transexuals and homosexuals freaks or evil - and never realizing the his or her own sexual identity was based on medical judgement call.
Big-ass hijack
psst, Goo, “It wouldn’t matter what the genetic tests said, IMO, because that has nothing to with (can’t think of the correct way of saying it!) umm, mental gender. As opposed to outwardly physical gender.” There is a correct way of saying it: Sex is the physical, gender is the mental. We have two words so there is a correct way of saying it. A big swinging dick and a pair of hairy balls does not make your gender masculine. That happens in your head.
Doctors used to do the surgery without telling the parents what they were doing at all or with only minimal information. This practice is illegal, unethical, and, in the past, quite commonplace.
These are both possibilites, depending on how much of an asshole your OB and pediatrician are. It’s important to choose caregivers you can trust. Although this doesn’t protect you from meddling nurses, in most cases if the child’s physician says “this is the course we’re taking” the nurse will back off on making a medical neglect report.
Once CPS gets involved, all bets are off. Those people are notoriously irrational when it comes to things like this.
Um, everyone has a “genetic gender”, and it goes like this:
if you have a Y chromosome, you’re male (regardless of how many X’s you may have) The Y is the determining factor.
I never had to undress in front of strangers until I joined a health club as an adult. If I remember correctly we didn’t “shower” after gym as kids.
I think XY chromosomes have a much bigger role to play in gender than any other factor. If it were me, I’d raise the child whatever gender was determined genetically. To do anything else would needlessly confuse the child. Of course, I also believe boys and girls should be raised the same way - so it really shouldn’t matter except with their peers. I wouldn’t do surgery.
I don’t think that other peoples intolerance of an intersex child should be a basis for altering the genitals a child was born with merely to make them look “normal” and “fit in”.
People need to learn that not everybody fits into the cookie cutter “male” or “female” category from birth.
Well in my own mind,having my genitals altered or amputated to where there was no sexual sensation would raise the most intense hatred and burning resentment i can imagine.
To me i would have no right to cut anything off my child,period.
Just going on my own feeling,i would rather have some teasing and isolation during the first 15 years of life until i was confident and mature enough to face it,than to live a life with no sexual sensation.
It doesn’t matter how many surgeries you have done,an intersex person is never going to be “normal” whatever your definition of that is,but their lives can be made much worse by making decisions for them.