Sexist Medicine.

By Sophia Siedlberg

9 November 2008

While the Stonewall controversy raged, in which the Journalist Julie Bindel had been nominated for an award, angering the transsexual community, there was one thing I really felt unable to say directly, probably because it would have not been the best time to point it out. However, now the dust has settled, I want to re-examine something Julie said that I fully agree with.

Julie's basic premise when discussing the surgery undertaken by transsexual folks is that the doctors "Dupe transsexuals into having surgery". This is not true because many transsexual folks usually have to jump through a lot of hoops to get hormones, yet alone surgery. However, one part of her argument was correct, but does not involve the treatment transsexual people usually undergo.

Let's go back to the core premise. What Julie was primarily objecting to was the patriarchal medical profession using surgical and hormonal procedures to prop up the "Gender Binary". This is something that I fully agree with. She also says that such medical practice is "Un-feminist". Again, I agree with her. But I must stress again I am not talking about procedures involving transsexual people.

Let's take the following statement from the European DSD Group:

"Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) constitute a group of rare to very rare, mostly heritable disorders affecting the genitourinary tract and in most instances also the endocrine-reproductive system. Long-term outcome studies on various DSD entities are desperately needed in order to establish a basis for evidence-based medicine regarding sex assignment and conservative and surgical treatment options."

This is a team of very patriarchal doctors headed by one Prof. Dr. Olaf Hiort, who is of the "1950's" school of quackery that Julie so clearly objects to. "Disorders of Sexual Development" is the patriarchal "term" that is used to describe intersexed people. Notice how that term would read if you did not know what it was referring to, it could be applied to a man who wants to get his Viagra because he cannot get an erection or a woman who does not get the "right sort of orgasm". What it actually refers to are children who, if they are born with ambiguous genitalia, they are not considered human (They are "DSD Entities") until they are either made into a boy or a girl. I am sure Julie is perhaps sick to the stomach already having read this and seen just how dehumanizing it can get. This "ethic" has quite a "heritage", having previously regarded women as mere bits of meat whose only purpose in life is to breed.

What we have here is the real "medical conspiracy" that Julie was talking about. In the UK around 450 children are mutilated to fit the two sex system every year. If they are assigned male, they often have to deal with repeated infections, surgical complications and sometimes have more female differentiated tissue and organs removed. Ripping out a uterus because the "penis" is "viable" is not uncommon. (See the Völling Case in Germany for an example of this). If someone is assigned female, one practice is to give a child a dildo and they are then made to dilate so when they reach their teens, they are "fit for sex".

Often (almost invariably) the individual concerned, the child is the passive recipient of such "treatment". I know that this is the sort of thing that Julie is opposing. I am going to take a brave step and invite Julie Bindel to talk to us. I say this because while I felt her aiming her anger towards transsexual folks was wrong, and her attacking the people who treat transsexuals was misdirected. I strongly believe that her core objection is valid, she just aimed it at the wrong people. It is not transsexual folks and the doctors treating them that is the problem. It is "specialist teams" such as the "DSD Experts" who are the real practitioners of sexist medicine.

And it is on that basis I feel that discussion with Julie Bindel could prove more constructive. I am sure she has looked at the OII website and realized by now what we are fighting against. She may have also spotted by now that at OII we are supportive of people who were victims of such sexist medicine who seek to undo the damage, via hormones and sometimes surgery during childhood. This is why we tend to be positive towards transsexual folks, we see this in the broader context.

This is why I feel it is more constructive to offer an invitation to Julie to discuss the real machinations of sexist medicine and how to confront this where it needs to be confronted. Despite all the arguing and anger of recent weeks, I still think that a lot of what Julie says has merit. I don't see her as a transphobe, having engaged her in an indirect discussion (via blogs, etc.). I see her as someone who like me and others in my situation simply opposes sexist medicine. It is just that she looked in the wrong direction to see it.

So to Julie I will simply say that I have put the cards on the table and offered her an invitation, which is offered on the basis of what she has said and what she stands for. I hope she sees that invitation in this light and understands that it is genuine.

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