The Games People Play
by Sophia Siedlberg
Spokeswoman for the United Kingdom
AKS/OII
You have probably stumbled on this page looking for some references to a number of medical conditions where someone is born with either ambiguous genitalia, or in other cases where the doctors are saying a child has some question mark over their sex. Then you have perhaps looked around the internet and found a lot of "What makes a boy or a girl" articles, and lengthy discussions about how fluid biology really is when it comes to what is known as "Sexual Dimorphism" (Which describes basically the notion of their being two sexes).
Well "intersex" condition are a natural variation and sadly a lot of people fail to understand what one of these conditions seems to mean. I am not talking about the layperson either, or the worried parent getting mixed messages from doctors. In many ways your average person has some common understanding that may not be informed by a PhD in Genetics or a PhD in Endocrinology. A child with a problem is a child with a problem.
Unfortunately one of the medical approaches on offer is, as you may have gathered while looking, surrounded by a lot of controversy. And people who should know better are actually making the controversy more difficult for the every day person to understand. Looking at it in the most basic terms, Medical professionals follow numerous sets of guidelines, which in some cases still advocate genital surgery. There are problems with this approach, and I believe they need to be understood for what they are. Firstly surgery on a child carries the risk of complications, as developing tissue, after surgical intervention can be rather unpredictable. These complications are not straight foreword either. They can in some cases lead to repeat visits to the surgeon for continual "patching up". This is where the controversy should start, but apparently not. Don’t forget that in the majority of cases (But not all) surgical intervention is in essence cosmetic. To make the child "look normal". I have no problem with that being proposed when a child is older and can make some decision as to what can or cannot be done. But with infantile tissue development I am not so convinced that surgery is a good idea, certainly not in terms of "looking normal". And without the child's consent being involved there are clearly ethical issues that need to be considered. And it is as simple as that.
The controversy starts when we are talking about what sex the surgeons decide to assign a child. I believe this ignores totally the reality of what these surgical procedures entail. For example "Clitoral reduction" and "Mild Hypospadias repair" are two examples of surgery where the intention is entirely "normalization" and in both cases the end result is not pleasant, Clitoral reduction often involves the surgical removal of a portion of the clitoris, where the clitoris is "Too Large". Anyone opposing female circumcision will tell you that similar procedures are involved in female circumcision. And likewise the motivation is cultural. Mild Hypospadias Repair
Involves moving the urethra to the tip of the penis from somewhere further down the penis. This is not life threatening, and as such a child should have some time to grow in order to decide what is best. (Often the diagnosis of the underlying causes of these variations in development is unclear even today, so acting with surgery is not well advised). In such cases we are told sex seems relatively clear, well no it could be more complicated than that. And in cases where the ambiguity is more marked, but again still not life threatening. The controversy is still rather muted. It is only when the now infamous "Phalometer Test" is applied (Measuring the clitoris/penis with a ruler to decide which way to go, yes it is as rudimentary as that) we start seeing the controversy, and Quite frankly that controversy is skewed.
Take a look at this statement:
"If it (Penis/Clitoris) is shorter than a specified length, then they cut it all of, if it is longer, you are lucky you get to keep it"
The problem with the statement is that it illustrates quite well the mind set of the surgeon, and not people who should know better. Because most surgeons will attempt to "Correct" the "Deformity" in the "Penis" when it is "Too Long to be a clitoris" And this is not without complications. What does this statement mean then? Well it is obvious to me that it is not about the clinical risks of genital surgery, It seems to be about the somewhat arbitrary and primitive approach to diagnosis. A ruler is not going to inform anyone about any underlying genetic or endocrinal condition or provide any clues to a prognosis after the surgery has been carried out. so the statement is correct in addressing the absurdity of the "Phalometer test".
However the implication of the statment is that "surgical feminisation is bad, surgical masculinisation is OK". the obvious problem with that is in both cases the surgeon intervenes in some way, to either re-enforce a female morphology or male morphology. In both instances surgery is involved. so it would seem somewhat ridiculous to be questioning infant genital surgery if it was just a case of questioning one course of action and not the other. Surgery at such a young age, whatever form it takes, will result in complications.
It seems to be about what sex to assign the child, And this is where toe controversy truly seems to begin. A controversy that seems utterly devoid of any priorities and seems to regard the child as a "problem" from the standpoint of what sex to they are assigned. And we are talking advocates of the child’s rights in some cases adopting this "what sex to assign" model as opposed to "What problems do any of these surgical procedures cause".
But then are some of these advocates really speaking for society and not the child. It seems obvious to me that the emphasis is on avoiding surgical feminisation and backhandedly promoting surgical masculinisation. You would probably by now be thinking "ah yes, but it is a male dominated medical profession, who would veer towards male assignation" Actually this is not quite the case. Feminisation was more common after Dr John Money proposed the idea that "Gender identity" (Whatever that is) can be socially moulded. And While surgeons adopted the (Easier) path of feminisation Dr John Money was proven wrong by one of his patients, David Reimer with the Help of Professor Milton Diamond, and the whole process of surgical feminisation across the board was brought into question.
What you are never told, is that during this time, in the 1960's and 1970's masculinising surgery was still going on, and Before Money masculinising procedures were more common. Money introduced a slight bias in terms of what sex children are assigned, it didn’t work, and this is the actual reason why surgical feminisation is brought into question.
So you may be thinking "well do they prefer to assign these children as boys" The answer to that question would probably be yes, and the Reimer v Money case is often used to explain why to the casual enquirer. Again what you are not told about are the real reasons why we find this bias drifting towards male assignation. And the problem with any assignation, male or female remember is that surgery can involve complications. You would think that the backlash against Money's approach would explain the now increasing male bias, but you would be wrong. Remember that point about "Ah it is a male dominated medical profession of course they will veer towards male assignation" Well before Money that was probably true, The results from those times were often messy, to a large degree the procedures were experimental and patients who endured that were left with some very unpleasant injuries to deal with throughout life.
So it would of course seem rather foolhardy for today's medical profession to replace the mistakes of Dr John Money by adopting earlier mistakes. and you would be right to think that. And yes there are some medical professionals who advocate phaloplasty in some cases because "It would be better to be a boy". A very male dominated attitude. Only they are not the sole reason the Bias seems to be gaining a momentum. Paradoxically it is some forms of feminism that are involved as well. The statement from them being "Assigning them male will give them male privilege" It is strange to be seeing feminists and patriarchal doctors actually agreeing on something, but there it is. And it raises a very unsettling question. Because some advocates for the children are such feminists, and some of these advocates use the male privilege argument when promoting masculinising surgery. Any reasonable human being would say "Hang on that is conducting risky surgery for social reasons on a child that cannot give consent".
Exactly.
My argument is a common sense one, that surgery itself is the real issue, it is not as good as it is claimed to be, it is risky when conducted on developing tissue and really should be avoided until two criteria are met.
1: The child is old enough to comprehend what is happening and be able to indicate what they feel is best.
2: That the tissue is sufficiently developed to be workable.
This can be pre puberty but most certainly not between the ages of 1 and 9.
The problem of course is the somewhat secretive attitude of the medical profession over matters like this. so giving the child sufficient information about their condition, is seldom something that happens, practically speaking a policy of openness needs to be put into place. so the child can make some informed choices. surgically altering a toddler and then keeping quiet about it does not work, As has often been demonstrated.
My argument is one of common sense, you can raise a child in whatever "role" you feel best indicated, but ultimately they need to know what is going on, and be given the freedom to decide what if any surgical intervention they feel best. As it is the child who will be facing the rest of their life with the consequences, it should be up to the child to have some say in the matter. surgery is better undertaken when tissue is reasonably well developed, or at least to a point where the outcome of any surgery is predictable. If they choose not to live according to a given "Gender role" then allow for that. and that is that. It is simplistic but experience tells me that would avoid a lot of pain.
So why has this not come to pass. Well it has been suggested, by one Professor Milton Diamond. who drew up a set of guidelines that proposed this model. I have even questioned him on some aspects of it, but his explanations made sense. So I ask myself, why have Milton Diamond's guidelines not been adopted universally. Well we are back in the realms of Man versus Woman using the child as a battleground. Remember I said that it was a certain school of feminism that was talking about "Assign them male they will get male privilege" It is the self same school of feminism that talks about female "purity" basically the school of feminism that argues a woman with AIS (Androgen insensitivity syndrome) has "XY chromosomes" and is thus a "male". So women with AIS are men, and in the case of CAIS they are men even though testosterone has no effect on them other than making them more feminine through aromatisation. And with CAIS surgery is seldom involved incidentally, they are born outwardly female. This is where the politics (Culture) Justifying certain models (Non consented to surgery done in haste regardless of the consequences) gets weird.
Oh yes this particular school of feminism argues that "the gender binary" is a "social construct" and should be "deconstructed", well if they were deconstructing this "Gender binary" they would not be talking in terms of assigning children male so they would get "male privilege" would they? Surely the whole exercise of feminism in the true sense was to get rid of sexism as in "Male privilege". You know the "Male privilege" that gets men and boys shot in Sebrenica for example. Or made to drown on a sinking ship for example. (Perhaps there is a process of elimination going on between the two sexes, we wonder in the light of that)
The only was to reconcile the very inconsistent arguments like the paradox thrown up by some schools of thought like this brand of feminism, and medical patriarchy is to find some very unsettling ideas beneath the surface, and in the absence of any explanation from those peddling these arguments, the accusations of some very nasty motivations logically seems to stand. Either way none of the debate convinces me that the interests of a child born with a condition that renders their sex open to question are at the center of this debate. Rather I see the nastiest forms of sexism that goes on between men and women, dictating medical policy.
I mean if "Male privilege" is a good thing, and leads to "honors" like dying on sinking ships or being shot in Sebrenica. the name "Valerie Solanas" springs to mind. So that is the female self interest exposed for what it is then. Oh and the male self interest does not go unchallenged either. I notice how in some countries where giving birth to girls is not considered good because of numerous dowry systems in the culture (There is the "Culture" word again), It seems some are saying "well make them male" From using testosterone injections to some very scary surgery soon after birth, to prop up the hyper misogynistic culture of some places. I seem to be witnessing the same crap in a different package here. some Men (As in Phalocrats) and some women (As in Radfems) really need to get their house in order and leave these children alone. and not use a child's body for their petty and nasty arguments.
If you have read this and concluded that it all ends rather strangely, consider this, a child with a condition like this is up against some very nasty cultural "norms" and needs to be protected from, but aware of these "Cultural norms" and needs to be given time to work out how to survive in all this. Surgery, secrecy and silence are not the answers. I think it is time society faced up to the facts and the somewhat nasty sides of human nature it has yet to admit to, and do something about it.
My Identity is My Identity
by Sophia Siedlberg
I have seen it, all over the place "Intersexuals join the LGBT movement", and "The GLBT organizations include Intersexual" (Funny how the G and the L keep swapping for first in the list, Men and women arguing again I suppose). Well I don’t see myself as an "intersexual". I mean my being born with 5 alpha reductase deficiency is not a sexual orientation. And quite frankly the thought of a bunch of Falwell Fundies pouncing on me calling me a lot of bizarre things when in religious terms I am a Qumran Ascete is perhaps too cruel an irony. I mean yes, while there are common issues, (Society wants people to live in a place called Stepford, seems pretty simple really), but I have a few problems with being defined by others, as others.
I mean when you look at it, it gets a bit contradictory. The alphabet soup is a nice idea but it does not "Deconstruct gender binaries" (Or whatever the actual ideal is supposed to be these days). If anything is constructs the "Gender binary" I think "Gender binary" is the observation that there are sort of two forms loosely called male and female, over-emphasized to mean man and woman, Ah "Gender Binary" means "Bickering opposites", hence GL or LG then GL and LG. You see "L" means "Lesbian" and "G" means "Gay" in most literature this means "L" means a woman who is attracted to other women and "G" means a man attracted to other men. So we have, errm yes, Woman(W) and Man(M). "B" means "Bisexual” meaning someone attracted to either men or women, note the medical term ending in "sexual", whereas "Gay" and "Lesbian" are references to happy and sunny Mediterranean islands. While someone who is "uncertain" is a medical term. "T" is "Transgender" a term invented a long time ago by one Virginia Prince who was a cross dresser and quite openly proud of it from what I have read. And Prince was pretty clear that this is what "Transgender" meant. Well these days the term is applied to Transsexual folk, Intersex Folk, in fact many folks who just don’t like being called "Like Virginia Prince". why? Well Prince did sort of emphasize quite strongly that "Transgender" meant "a man acting as a woman" So someone who has had surgery to be a different sex, or someone else who was born with some medical condition that makes sex unclear is hardly "Transgendered" by Prince's own definition surely. What you may probably have noticed by now is there is a lot revealed by these terms. How they have this little hierarchy of sexual constructs being applied to people.
Of course this hierarchy is as rigid as the Stepford Wives fantasies of the Falwell Fundies. It is all done with the best intentions, I have no issue with that, it is just that we find the unsettling "Norms" creeping in. I mean you cannot get more biologically essentialist than saying:
"Man with male anatomy attracted to men with male anatomies, Woman with female anatomy attracted to women with female anatomies. Man with male anatomy or woman with female anatomy attracted to either anatomy and Man with male anatomy or woman with female anatomy interacting with the world as the opposite in clothing only"
(This is what LG-GL-BT means after all). Suddenly the rainbow flag turns monochrome. Oh dear, that was not supposed to happen was it? If anything the most glaring is the swapping of "GL" and "LG" in the literature. You see here it becomes evident that we are really talking squabbling men and women again. I mean come on, doesn’t this seem a bit petty? Which letter comes first? It is fair to say I do not see myself as being part of any of this, not because of any noble ideals the LG-GL-BT movement stands for being something I may not agree with, but because I sort of get this color blindness when I look closer at the multicolored magnetic letters on the fridge spelling out "LG-GL-BT" At best the letters become pink and blue at worst just monochrome.
I do not see "intersexual" as my identity, OK I have a biological condition that renders my "Biological sex" into the meaningless concept it actually is. But I am "Asexual" (They have to end everything with "Sexual" unless they are "normal", as in happy and living on Mediterranean islands, Gaily living on Lesbos). I know I am an "Idarean" I live on a wonderful mountain called Ida with a lake called "Salmacis" in the foot hills. Ah no, the likes of me don't get exotic geographical names or happy states of mind as identities, just a medical term ending in "sexual".
By behavior I am an "Asexual" by biology I am an "Intersexual" and I am now it seems a "Disorder of Sexual Differentiation". I see so no exotic locations then, it's a pity that, Well I cannot complain, there are the Falwell Fundies who would brand me an "Abomination" (A king James word that was put in place of about twenty classical Hebrew words because King James could not read Hebrew). Of course that makes G-d an "abomination", (Such are the vagaries of Hellenic translation of Hebrew) Yes the bereshyth does say that G-d made men and women in G-ds own image. Ooops! G-d also does not do lots of sex either, Oops! And G-d is not all that keen in being split into three little bits, plated in gold and sold at MacDonald’s as veal burgers either, certainly when the gold plating was procured by one Aaron the gold bullion dealer and the disowned brother Of Moshe who told Aaron that gold and veal are not a good idea, Oops, I think the Falwel fundies have been labeling G-d a bit too much.
Labeling, that is the problem really. I genuinely do not know what it is like to be any of the following.
"Man with male anatomy attracted to men with male anatomies, Woman with female anatomy attracted to women with female anatomies. Man with male anatomy or woman with female anatomy attracted to either anatomy and Man with male anatomy or woman with female anatomy interacting with the world as the opposite in clothing only"
And quite frankly no human being fully fits any of the definitions offered by "LG-GL-BT". I mean people are people, How can someone identify with a limiting and arbitrary label? That is what this is really, labeling, the very thing the whole edifice was built to prevent surely? We have "Pansexual, Spammersexual, Greek Islander, Happy, (Notice who gets the nice labels, and who gets the not so nice libels) Asexual, Glibsexual, Meterosexual, Googlesexual, errm Polysexual, Sexualsexual, Spacedoutsexual" the list is ever growing. I suspect there is a bit of Freudian navel gazing going on.
Why can we simply not use the term "human" and think in terms of our "humanity". why does it have to be references reducing people to bits of meat, I mean this "Rainbow of diversity" seems to be broken into little bits, Like the real thing is broken into wavelengths. OK it may serve a purpose but people are not robots. To identify as a set of mechanical acts or rigid states of being is to go right against the whole point of the exercise in the first place. and yes the color is drained from this rainbow when we get identity politics, every human being is an individual, And the problem with the rainbow as a symbol is you end up with people pointing to specific bands and saying "This is me". Well no I am not a color on a symbol or a wavelength of light, I am me.
Well where do we go from here? I suppose we stop looking at our differences and stop trying to shoehorn those differences into rigid categories. I suspect the most destructive is defining everything in terms of sexuality and then linking sexuality to identity, because all this does is define people as bits of meat, nothing more. It is also very unhelpful for people to be saying "This is my experience all are the same as me" because all that does is exclude people after defining them as bits of meat. In terms of my own experiences as someone born with 5 alpha, I am not the same as someone else born with 5 alpha, And I am not a "Disorder" (Sexually differentiating or otherwise) In fairness to ISNA I can see why they took that approach, it is the term "Disorder" I am uncomfortable with. The argument is that this allies people with people who have disabilities. Well read Thomas Shakespeare, and you will find that "Disorder" is not a popular term among other communities either. I would suggest Conditions of Sex Differentiation, personally, and leave it at that. I mean the real message that should be put across is that sex dimorphism is not as rigid as people claim it to be, and the "in-between" is not broken up into little bands either. because the "in between" is also far from rigid. To use the term "Disorder" is to evoke the notion of "un-fitting, non conforming, outside the order" The problem is the "order" is not totally dimorphic. How can variations in sex differentiation be "Disorders" when in truth they are part of the "order" in the first place? (Do we need a lecture in evolutionary biology to prove this?)
If people are going to use a rainbow to describe variation as a metaphor, think of it like this. The range of colors between Ultra violet and infra red is 3000 angstroms to 7000 angstroms (300 nanometers to 700 nanometers). that is superficially 400 and more in depth 4000 different wavelengths. Actually you could divide the scale of the wavelengths to a factor of infinity. So consider how it will look in 20 years time in the days of custom medicines, and the ever more complex picture of biology that gets revealed, The rainbow would be a good analogy if described accurately and not as six bands of demarked color. (Incidentally such demarcation does not appear in a true rainbow, we get hues).
No two people are the same, not even monozygotic twins. and even the most rigid of Falwell fundies would have to admit that, to do otherwise would in truth bring the wrath of their biblical G-d, as symbolically the their holy spirit is all (Shekinah El-Shaddai), would they break the holy spirit down into bits? I doubt it.
By this I mean come on, open your eyes. Especially the Falwell fundies and the LG-GL-BT movement. We are human beings and we exist, we are all different, no two of us are identical, and if you like, yes that is how G-d seems to have intended it. Or how Nature seems to manifest it (Whichever belief you have).
Consider it
A Cigar is only a Cigar?
by Sophia Siedlberg
Once Sigmund Freud was asked when smoking, "Isn't a cigar a phallic symbol?" Freud replied, "Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar". But there is a curious "Freudian slip" in this discourse that few will have spotted. The enquirer we are led to believe did not approve of smoking so in effect decided to "normalise" Freud’s actions by using Freud's own methods. To sexualise his actions.
However there is a sort of opportunistic psychology going on here, "If it can be associated with sexuality, then associate it". It seems even Freud had his limits on this idea. It is a pity many of his backhanded advocates do not take counsel from this anecdote. Take a child born with either ambiguous genitalia, or some medical condition that makes their "biological sex" not so easy to define and what do we hear. "Intersexual" and "Sexuality" and "Sexual Minority" and "Sexual Orientation". Well sometimes (Invariably as it happens) a child is a child. And while in adulthood having such a condition may have some bearing on sexuality. The condition does not actually define sexuality.
This is a process known as normalisation, if you are uneasy about something demean it, the best way to demean it is to sexualise it, sexualisation is (Radical thinking caps on folks) normalisation. If that sounds like some quantum leap in logic, well calling a new born child "A sexual being" is far more bizarre. So let us look at it again, what defines a child with an intersex condition? That they are a lesbian? Or they are gay? Or they are Meterospammerpatho-sexual (Let us not forget the hy-phen). Well no they are a child with a condition that makes "biological sex" uncertain. (As if there are reliable absolutes for defining "biological sex" in the first place). I mean does this extend further into the surreal and strange? Do people claim a child with a missing leg is suffering from apotemnophilia? A desire to not have said leg in the first place? Errm no! Is being born with a missing leg bourn of some motivation to be born sans leg? Or even some sexual desire as some would claim to be born minus the missing limb? I think not somehow.
But believe it or not some people do normalise those with disabilities by claiming the person minus the leg is somehow responsible for it. Look at how absurd it really is. It gets even more absurd when people start sexualising missing limbs.
So what chance has someone who has an intersex condition got? To be able to avoid people who would call a man smoking a cigar a penilecigar-sexual (or whatever) or to avoid people who would claim that having a disability is somehow their fault? Well a child with a condition that involved sex differentiation obviously stands very little chance of avoiding this silliness.
You see this process of "normalisation" is a sort of sanitisation of an individual into some state of "otherness". And as can be clearly demonstrated this is not only irrational, but in many ways at the root of prejudice. So why then do we find children born with intersex conditions somehow singled out by society as "A sociomedical emergency" in the first place, and while facing the prospect of "Alteration" (Vivisection) or "Psychosexual adjustment" (Secrecy and shame usually) they are made to feel as if they have no right to exist, unless of course it is in some "Gender dustbin" which usually takes the form of a ghetto like existence.
There was a time when many textbooks described intersex children as "Imbeciles with severe mental retardation". Well that was another process of "normalisation" which "Blamed the individual for existing" Well when that nasty little libel was got rid of it was replaced by sexuality.
Often these little slurs and pathologisations say more about those saying these stupid things rather than those with any given condition. I mean most medical professionals realised that it took a somewhat limited intellect to say that all children with intersex conditions grew up to be "Imbeciles with mental retardation".
I mean when an intersexed child says something like "Well when you define Einstein’s theory of relativity in pure math by employing Hausdorrf space, you see some interesting sides to Einstein’s model" Or "Oh Doctor Fiscal, Did you know that because of the pliatropic and polygenic way DNA works, your notion of chromosomes defining sex is dumb!, how about a simple lesson in synthesising multiple peptides from the information on a single coding region of DNA?". Do you honestly think the Doctor is going to get away with "Imbecile with mental retardation" when referring to such a child? I am not claiming that all intesex children are piano playing, nuclear reactor building, chess experts who would give Kasparov a run for his money, while translating Einstein’s theory of relativity into pure math and explaining the human genome to a PhD in genetics. But I am saying that the shape of someone's reproductive tract does not actually define their intelligence. The slur about intersex children being "Retarded" is well and truly disproven, they often have the same intelligence as anyone else.
It is funny how today’s army of normalisers would claim to agree with me when saying that reproductive organs do not define intelligence. While, paradoxically, they constantly seem to be making intersex people feel like they are the lowest of the low because their reproductive tract somehow defines them, only in some other way. We have moved on it would seem. These days normalisers hide behind the new pathology of sex. It gets so absurd that even the "Surgery" (vivisection) you may have endured as a child defines who you are to these people and it is "all your fault".
It sort of goes like this. If you were "normalised" as "male" by society or in any way defined as "male" by society (Having "Male chormosomes" etc, while a obviously not being male) then you are sexually deranged in some way, for not being the "Perfect male" who incidentally is also defined as an "Axe wielding psychopathic rapist who eats babies for breakfast while talking genocide with Satan" by the normalisers. If you were normalised by society as "female" then you are either some "stupid female who has no brain" (Hence the female assignation I assume) Or are a victim who has to be placed on a martyrdom pedestal, or a very dangerous woman.
Considering that these normalisers call themselves politically correct, I wonder how on this planet they managed to get away with such revolting and rampant sexism? Well they re-interpret it. Look at the endless volumes of "Male brain, female brain" studies that get published these days "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" theories are all over the place and guaranteed to get funding, well I am from planet Earth deal with it!
Scratch beneath the surface and you do not tend to find any real science, You will tend to find pompous "experts" extolling the idea that women are good at housework and baby making (Multitasking) and men are good at reading maps (navigating battlefields and Indulging in a few wars). And these "experts" are often presented as "Liberalists" with "A politically correct outlook on life" who "Agree with equality".
Oh and notice how strange things happen when the idea of "Brain sex" does not play the game according to the rules. Let's look at another group of people for a moment, transsexual folk, now when someone publishes any paper that states their brain may be one sex, their genitals another, Oh the Venus and Mars brigade are so offended. There are flurries of papers published denouncing the idea, and armies of hectors and harpies in the press going on endlessly about "the nat-ural or-dah" (Don't forget the hyphen). and how the idea of "Brain sex" is inherently sexist? (Yes they say that, honest) But when the Venus and mars brigade peddle their sexist claptrap it's "Oh well we knew this all along, it is official now". Oh right, "brain sex" is no longer sexist then, I see. Men are men and women are women and they have defined roles, to make babies or die in a war. That is not sexism we are told. It's official.
It is confusing, isn't it?
Normalisation is basically the process of propping up a delusion, to the point where contradiction is not an issue anymore. See how conveniently mutually opposite ideas both magically agree, Brain sex is sexism when it says that brain sex can contradict the body, but not sexism when it does not contradict the body and puts people into clearly defined, and sometimes demeaning "Gender roles".
Funny how conducting surgery on a non consenting child is considered "OK" by society and at the same time a consenting adult seeking surgery for themselves is considered "Sexist". And it is a real hoot when you read that being feminised as a child is sexist, while being masculinised is not, because it confers "male privilege". wherever you look these glaring contradictions appear. As I have explained in another article, the LG-GL-BT alphabet soup works on very tight definition of what male and female is, with regards the anatomy of the person and the anatomy of who they fancy or what is considered suitable in terms of clothing and anatomy (As in "T"). And yet they say "We are deconstructing gender binaries" So when a someone says "GG means Genetic Girl" that is deconstructing a gender binary, is it?
Well it is all a bit confusing I must say. Or is it? Well no, because the one thing that is very, very consistent is that despite the spin, the sexism is very much the core delusion, usually summed up in the deliberately self contradicting statement. "Men and women are equal but different".
So given this you would think a child born with an intersex condition, or "Disorder of Sexual Differentiation" has no chance whatsoever in this world of spin and corporate style pseudo-psycho-babble. (forgive the hyphens). Well you would be right.
Well if you have some intersex condition, you will by now have noticed how society almost blames you because you were born somehow to "Biologically give out mixed messages in terms of sex and gender". Well I put it that this is in truth the other way round. All you would have done is be born outside some collective delusion, the collective delusion that nature, as in biology, obeys certain rules when they evidently do not. But the collective delusion itself is so challenged by all this that the delusion goes into flat out contradiction, to the point that those who claim they are not deluded prove to be the most deluded of them all.
Which brings us back to one Sigmund Freud smoking a cigar and saying "A cigar is just a cigar". How Ironic that the man who gave the world the more recent language by which the collective delusion is propped up protested when his language was used to tick him off for smoking. How Ironic that it was him who said "Anatomy is destiny" and all those who objecting to that with their Venus and Mars science are in fact propping up the very idea that "Anatomy is destiny".
Sex not only sells, it is now a tool of normalisation. But is it the sex that is now the commodity or the normalisation? Notice how big the grants seem to get for the Venus and Mars graduates looking to get funding, and how small the grants for those that ask other questions seem to get these days. Sexism sells. And those who shout about it the loudest, like the sexology-sociology academics, political radicals, media hectors and harpies are protesting too much. Sigmund said that too.
Sophie Siedlberg is a bioinformatics/genetic analysis software developer writing open source software. She is trained in genetics and currently uses her knowledge to question the numerous ideas and theories that seek to "normalize" the biology of sex differentiation. She herself has 5 alpha reductase deficiency and during childhood was treated badly by the medical profession.
She also spends her time trying to reconstruct the history of the religious tradition she was raised in, an essentially Jewish tradition, which was almost destroyed in the last century.
She has been involved with numerous intersex support groups, trying to raise awareness of the problems caused by infant genital surgery, the stigma, shame and secrecy often imposed on people with conditions of sexual differentiation.
Consequences!
by Sophia Siedlberg.
Recently a newspaper in Virginia, US called "The Daily Press" carried an article by someone called Jack Drescher, asking about the scientific understanding of homosexuality. A somewhat interesting example of objectivity where Drescher is obviously trying to balance evidence against claim. The core of the debate, as it always seems to be in the US is this idea that Gay and Lesbian people are "Choosing a lifestyle" versus the idea that Gay and Lesbian people are gay and lesbian because of certain biological factors, and correctly Drescher points out that in truth the jury is out on this debate.
But, Drescher does make a few errors in assessing who can be defined as Gay or Lesbian, and of great interest to me, as a commentator in this area myself, who is not from the US. I can see a few things that actually prove my point about the way normalization seems to be working.
Take this paragraph:
"In intersex (hermaphroditic) conditions, a child's sex at birth is not clearly male or female. For example, girls with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, exposed to unusual amounts of male hormones before birth, may be born with clitorises resembling penises. Studies of adults with CAH indicate a higher rate of female homosexuality than that found in the general population. This suggests that hormonal "masculinization" or "feminization" may contribute, in some cases, to human homosexuality."Aside from being a somewhat large jump from one subject (The basis of being gay or lesbian) to another (An intersex condition). It is very interesting that "Intersex (hermaphroditic)" suddenly becomes "girls" who when exposed to higher levels of androgens are "female homosexuals". It is a very interesting chain of statements really how "Intersex (Hermaphroditic)" is a problem that has to be "defined" in "normalized terms" thus "girl" (Not woman you will notice if you are a feminist) and this moves on to "because of too much testosterone" we move on to a definition of "homosexual female". If that is not a chain of pathological logic, I do not know what is.
I am not arguing that people with CAH are of no given sex or are. I am not arguing that some who are Lesbian are "justified" or "not justified" as Lesbians with regard to the debate. (Do they see themselves as Lesbians, Has Drescher ever asked anyone? They could be identifying as male and heterosexual, has Drescher ever considered that possibility) That "make em fit our ideas" silliness, quite frankly, is for the Falwell fundies and the LG-GL-BT people to squabble pointlessly about in the US as they always do.
No I am arguing that this is a chain of reasoning that gives an individual with CAH a poor chance of saying anything for themselves, about who they are, what they experience as human beings and their rights, as people with an intersex condition. (This is the important part) I repeat this, their rights as people with an intersex condition. They may identify as female and be attracted to men, they may identify as female and be attracted to women, they may identify as male and be attracted to men, or may again be male and attracted to women. But commenting on sexual attraction is missing the point when you consider some of the very unpleasant surgery those with CAH are subjected to as children. And some of the often ignored health problems people with CAH suffer.
Dresscher also forgets to mention the full range of CAH, and illustrates the point by discussing Androgen Insensitivity syndrome in the next paragraph. Even more clumsily.
So some clarification is needed.
Let’s start with chromosomes. (Ah yes the stick with which eugenically challenged normalizers beat us all with). In most cases XX chromosome parings (23rd pair) result in the reproductive tract differentiating in a female direction. In most cases XY pairings result in male differentiation. That is because the Y chromosome has a few "MSR’s" (Male Specific Regions, like SRY) on it that causes gonads to differentiate into testis.
However.
From there the process depends on other factors to produce male reproductive organs, An MSR on the X chromosome for example (Xq 12) is needed to make all the tissue sensitive to androgens, without that you get AIS (Androgen insensitivity syndrome) which results in a external female genitalia and a body that would only feminize further if exposed to androgens because the androgens are converted to estrogen.
In CAH it is different, basically you get either the XX initially moving towards female, but due to problems with hormone synthesis, you find higher levels of androgens involved. Hence someone who is more "masculine". In the case of CAH where the person has XY chromosomes they have male differentiation (Testis) but then become "hypervirilized" by the increased amounts of androgens from their adrenal glands.
Quite simply, chromosomes do not have the last word in defining sex. But the way Drescher talks you would think that Chromosomes were the last word. So if an XY pairing with the MSRs in the Y chromosome not working results in a woman with a uterus and streak ovaries. (Like Swyers for example) Some idiots would even then define such a woman as a man. Others have perfectly "healthy" XY chromosome pairings but do not end up as the demanded sex (Demanded by eugenically challenged normalizers) because other genes in the autosomes are also critical for sex differentiation. (It is called the polygenic model, in case you are wondering).
Why did Drescher not mention CAH when manifested on someone who has XY chromosomes I wonder? Ignorance, or pathological trains of thought? In fairness this does not quite get the same airing because we get male differentiation driven to the extreme, manifesting as an early male puberty (At around the age of 6)
I suppose to Normalizers that is not so much of a "Problem" (Which says a lot.)
Well let’s look at Drescher on AIS:
"An environmental role is further suggested in Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Although AIS children have male XY chromosomes, they are born looking like girls. They are usually raised as girls and most develop adult relationships with men. Are people with AIS heterosexual because they think they are women and choose male partners? Or homosexual because they and their partners both have XY chromosomes? Either interpretation may be correct, depending on one's point of view: an individual's subjectivity vs. chromosomes. Obviously, there are limits to the questions that biology can answer."Well there are many questions biology cannot answer, but I would argue that dragging chromosomes into it is missing the point. Lets look at this again, what about a woman with Swyers, who would have a uterus, who could technically carry a child to full term. (But cannot conceive). Would any sane biologist call woman who could carry a child to full term a man then? Personally I think that the application of "XY = Male" across the board, with Swyers or AIS is absurd basically. But Drescher slips up when being "Objective" on this, let’s re-examine the statement.
"Are people with AIS heterosexual because they think they are women and choose male partners?"Note the word "think" - note the slip of Money’s ideas about environment being used to re-enforce the idea of environment. "They are born (Or assigned as in PAIS sometimes) outwardly female, are raised as female therefore they are conditioned to be female, so they "Think they are female". Problem is Money was proven wrong in the Reimer Case, but still you find most women with AIS identifying as women. So the environmental argument explaining a woman with AIS identifying as a woman does not stand up to scrutiny does it. Or is Drescher informed by those American "medical dramas" like House where anything that does not fit is derided and hammered? Seems Drescher’s understanding of intersex conditions is skin deep.
I mean let’s face it, does being born visibly female at birth, being raised as female, having most of your body differentiate into female except the uterus (In the case of AIS) or with a uterus (In the case of Swyers) constitute some "Delusion" or "lifestyle choice" if you say "I am a woman". I think not.
I am not going to condemn Dresher’s ideas to some sin bin of bad journalism, because there was a serious attempt at being objective, about a debate that actually is about sexual orientation, not sex differentiation. But this is the consequence of mixing orientation with intersex issues. Drescher’s mistake was a common one, to make chains of assumptions about people. Chains of assumptions that did not involve Drescher actually talking to anyone with any of these conditions, chains of assumptions that were misleading and chains of assumptions that evidently went off into trying to define humanity as consisting of two sexes in some absolute sense, despite all the "PR and Rhetoric" type remarks to the contrary, claiming that biology does not have the answer. It is not biology that is at fault here, a true biologist would not be calling people things they are not on the basis of arbitrary definitions of chromosomes. Biology does not judge a book by it’s cover. If a gene is a chapter in a book then the chromosome is the binding, the cover. Would someone look at a book and judge it by it’s cover. Does a Buccal Smear test look at anything more than the cover?
If Drescher is going to talk about Biology, I would suggest that Dresher and other journalists take the time to actually open a textbook and read the contents. Look up "Polygenic" and "Pliatropic" while they are at it.
Chromosomes do not determine sex, genes do, and the genes involved are not all on the X and Y chromosomes.
Consequences (Update)
By Sophia Siedlberg
In the article "Consequences" I took one Jack Drescher to task about his comments on intersex people. Within 24 hours of "Consequences" appearing a press release appeared entitled:
"US - Jack Drescher, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.." What followed was a considerable list of academic achievements and qualifying remarks about how Jack Drescher is of some influence and importance.
"Dr. Drescher is a leader in his field. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Chair of APA's Committee on GLB Issues and a Past President of APA's New York County Branch. He is a Trustee of the Accreditation Council for Psychoanalytic Education and a Past Trustee of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry. He is a member of several distinguished psychiatric, medical and scientific organizations, including The American College of Psychiatrists, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and the New York Academy of Medicine." I have read enough. Here's the paradoxical shocker. He dug himself into a deeper hole. It is called "Hanging yourself in public", considering that most intersex people have had to contend with medical professionals, usually proclaiming their eminence in response to any objection to any question from an intersex person.
To someone like myself "Psychoanalyst" and "Psychiatrist" are synonymous with "Liars who try to brainwash you into believing that shame and secrecy are a valid approach when you are an intersexed child". The same two titles are synonymous with people like Dr. John Money. It is not that I have an issue with the profession of psychiatry or the discipline of psychoanalysis. Far from it. It is that my experience of people within this profession talking as Drescher has done has often been a very negative one.
Secondly, psychiatrists are not trained in the area of genetics. Simplistic statements like "XX = Girl and XY = Boy" are false. They have proven to be false by the very virtue of the fact that people do not uniformly become male or female according to the way these chromosomes appear. As I stated in the article, chromosomes are basically the packaging within which the genes are contained, and because dilpoidic systems work in a polygenic manner it does not automatically follow that the chromosome pairings (23rd in the case of humans) associated with sex differentiation mean that the end result is the expected sex. Unless of course people who do not fit this rather tight definition of biology are "disordered". and even if that view does hold sway, stating that having been born with an anatomy that is different from the "expected" anatomy, does not constitute any delusional state about the sex they physically happen to be. To say that someone "thinks" they are a woman when they were born female (Read Swyers for example) raised as female and matured more or less as female, is absurd.
Is this transferring of a physical condition, a physical state of being, from birth, into some sort of delusional "XY chromosomes - as in " thinks she is a woman because of environment", simply the act of simplifying the situation so certain people can "Comprehend" it? I mean reducing a person to a chromosome pairing , is that ethical? And is doing this while proclaiming that one has a vast array of qualifications any more valid? I think not.
That is the process of "heteronormative normalization" and it is not nice. It does not in any way shape or form contribute to the debate over the appalling way some religious people treat those in the gay community. It just gives the more extreme of religious opinion more people to pick on. It does not and never will change the attitudes that really need confronting.
This is about confronting prejudice. And claiming that a woman with AIS is "A male who thinks she is female" or (Despite being presented as an opposite argument) "Is a homosexual male because they have XY chromosomes" is in both instances plainly prejudiced.
If Jack Drescher does not like the religious right giving his community a hard time then he should comment on the religious right and their bad behaviour, not on people who have little or nothing to do with this debate. If Jack Drescher had done that, I would more probably have supported his position as the mistreatment of people in the LG-GL-BT community by the religious right appals me.
If Jack Drescher does not like intersex people such as myself objecting to his carefully spun misinformation about us, and responds with press statements about how qualified he is academically, I will simply point out that this actually is the very problem intersex people have had to deal with. Eminent experts making our lives both difficult and in some cases intolerable by means of shame, stigma, secrecy, unwanted surgery, false generalizations and ill informed opinion.
Glass House
by Sophia Siedlberg
“You're pure estrogen, which is why you get heightened female characteristics; clear skin, great breasts. The ultimate woman is a man. Nature's cruel, huh?"
The fictional Dr House discussing a teenager with CAIS
"So my thumping you is not ladylike eh? Make your mind up, you want me to be a man don’t you? Oh sorry I hit you! And sorry to confuse you like that"
My response once to a doctor like that in real life.
House, Or "The Cure for the Common Medical Drama". A TV show that managed in 5 minutes of plot to alienate most of the intersex community and in particular women with CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome). Well I assume the joke was on women with CAIS, well no a joke would be a depiction of an opiate addicted quack that knows practically nothing of genetics, as being the heroic and brilliant "Maverick Genius".
You only have to utter the words "Fox Network" suddenly all becomes very easily explained. Of course most of the responses to House seemed to be about the incorrect talk of women with CAIS by the media, the misrepresentation and stereotyping of women with CAIS, sometimes comments about the unreliability of using XX and XY chromosome pairings as sex markers. Yes the usual, but of course most of the objections didn’t actually get anywhere with the Fox Network, hardly surprising really, considering how the Fox Network thrives on inaccuracy and misrepresentation.
But someone slipped up. I mean if a certain media empire are going to humiliate a group of people, Portraying these people as victims of child abuse and then making a joke of it is going to backfire. And then to justify the "joke" by claiming the person who was a victim of sexual abuse is the opposite sex, with daft explanations of genetics. is, well going to backfire even more. And here we go, the backfiring starts.
Lets look first at what the "Maverick Genius" (An ill informed script writer) said on the genetics, lets warm up a bit.
"His DNA says you're wrong. Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails. You've got male pseudohermaphroditism. See we all start out as girls and then we're differentiated based on our genes. The ovaries develop into testes and drop. But in about 1 in 150,000 pregnancies a fetus with an XY chromosome, a boy, develops into something else. Like you. Your testes never descended because you're immune to testosterone. You're pure estrogen, which is why you get heightened female characteristics; clear skin, great breasts. The ultimate woman is a man. Nature's cruel, huh?"
I wonder, what an XY chromosome is, I have heard this one before, It is a cracker of a joke, Some "Expert" in the UK's Guardian Newspaper in the 1990's called Dr. Emily Hanckock Said:
(Referring to the Reimer case)
"John's (David's) case suggests irrefutably that boys are created in the womb. Playing with Barbie and wearing pink dresses can never, undo the power of the XY chromosome"
Well that is a bit misleading, I suspect for a reason, This bit about an "XY chromosome" often seems to appear when trying to assert the idea of "XY = Male". It is hilarious because the use of "XY Chromosome" to assert maleness is commonplace. It is a bit of a cliché really.
OK I will be fair I am playing semantics, the two separate parts of a chromosome pairing are "Chromatids", And sometimes a chromosome is a reference to as the pairing itself. but when looking at it the way I need to (In terms of genes on the chromosomes and expression in the Mendelian sense) The notation of a singular chromosome tends not to be all that helpful. I always say "Chromosome Pairing" This is why in some documents you read of "X and Y chromosomes" (Plural). Rather than "XY Chromosome" (Singular). I stress this for a reason, because when you regard the X and the Y chromosomes as a singular you end up with less clarity about genes. OK, its like this, unlike other chromosome pairings (Where both parts consist of paired genes), the so called sex chromosomes don’t get paired genes all the time, It is why you get "X Linked" genetic conditions which can include colour blindness for example, because there is only one copy of the genes on the X chromosome when paired to a Y chromosome, Whereas a pair of X chromosomes have both sets of genes. (See how it works). It is easier to treat the X and Y chromosomes as separate entities. And while in both XX and XY pairings, it is one gene that is used from the pair, in the case of XY pairings there is no "Backup" gene just one copy on the one X chromosome.
So there is a reason why I would use X and Y chromosomes, as opposed to "XY chromosome" as you may be gathering by now. If we stick to this idea, of an X and a Y chromosome, for now, it will begin to make sense. And the "Housian" school of genetics will make even less sense.
So lets read the "Housian" explanation again.
"See we all start out as girls and then we're differentiated based on our genes."
OK on the Y chromosome there is a gene that codes for a protein that causes "proto gonads" (Which would usually develop into ovaries) to turn into testis. This is what the Housian explanation means by "differentiation". However there is a small problem with this very simplistic description. Yes SRY makes testes, but we are not talking sperm manufacturing, super testes, we are talking well, undeveloped testes really. Now lets get back to a nice little scriptwriter talking a lot of testes.
"Your testes never descended because you're immune to testosterone."
Well the "immunity" is down to the gene that makes the androgen receptor not working. Basically this is the real bloke gene not working, on the X chromosome, yes I said X chromosome. And its the only gene available remember in the XY pairing remember, you only get one copy of genes on the X chromosome in an XY pairing. you see for testes to fully develop as testes, and descend, you not only need the product of a gene on the Y chromosome, it is a gene on the X chromosome that has to work, as well, have the last word so to speak. And yes AIS is an X linked condition. Interesting really, if the "woman chromosome" says "this is not a man" after all, I wonder why the Housian explanation says otherwise, Ah well it is called going back to the idea of an "XY chrisom" which conveniently obscures the little problem with a gene on the X chromosome having the last word. the ultimate doctor is a phallocratic prick, House is cruel huh?
In the script the talking total testis continues:
"You're pure estrogen, which is why you get heightened female characteristics; clear skin, great breasts the ultimate woman is a man"
Yes, well errm lets quote bit of strange terminology from thin air. "CYP19" That was fun. It is a gene, not on the sex chromosomes but Chromosome (Pairing) 15. and it codes for an enzyme called aromatase. Now lets make this fun for Housey halfwits. remember this is chromosome 15 right, not X or Y. Nothing to do with sex in the Housian parallel universe. Aromatase converts testosterone to estrogen, you can have a woman with XX chromosomes and she would be a bit manly were it not for chromosome 15's CYP19, We are talking about steroid synthesis, Its getting a bit complex isn’t it.
Well in the case of CAIS, CYP19 working as it should is also a "problem" because a woman with CAIS would be "All Estrogen" because of her body's ability to convert Testosterone to Estrogen. but of course, we don’t mention this because the gene is not in the X or Y chromosomes. but what makes CYP19 interesting is that in the case of it working properly, it actually makes a woman with CAIS (Who is supposed to be a he according to House) even more feminine. what you don’t get to hear is that this is not to do with sex chromosomes.
Now, don’t tell anyone, I have a big secret, notice how a gene or two on other than those on the Y chromosome having the last word seems a little, well awkward. Actually there are lots of "Last word" genes, that kind of make life awkward for "Maverick Geniuses" (Like House, Mengele etc). and Scriptwriters don’t know this big secret., it is called "Polygenic expression" what it tells us is that you cannot rely on a gene on the Y chromosome to produce a male phenotype by itself. The development of sex is in truth rather complicated, it involves lots of genes, I wont list them here, it is not the point, but most conditions of sex differentiation tend to occur because of a number of genes working in a certain way.
So to simplify the Housian definition of all this down to its pure absurdity. Our fictional "Maverick Genius" seems to think with a logic that can be illustrated like this.
If you have a car with a big petrol tank it is a truck. If the petrol tank only fills to the capacity of a car's petrol tank it is still a truck, If petrol doesn’t actually burn because the spark plugs don’t work, it is a truck that can shift a huge load. And I suppose if there were lots of bits in the car not working, rather than just the spark plugs and petrol tank, it is a juggernaut. "Right yes fine, back to the class and tell me what are you taking. Ah yes the sore leg, I get it".
I bet you producers of House out there were smirking while reading this and thinking "Oh she/he whatever has veered from the sexual abuse topic" errm wrong!
I suspect that is the real but not often covered issue has been missed when people were arguing about the scientific inaccuracies of the episode of House, and that is the sight of a doctor making a joke out of a teenage girl who has suffered parental sexual abuse. I mean forgive me but.:
"Good news is, I don't think dad's going to be sleeping with him/her again. See, now it's gross".
and
“No, a joke would be me calling you a homo. See the difference? I'll schedule him for surgery.”
Is what exactly? funny? Oh so a medical diagnosis of CAIS makes the abuse different now does it? there is the backhanded comment like if she were being abused by her father and diagnosed as not having CAIS, it would be different would it, More serious, like get the cops in, but as the woman is a "male pseudohermaphrodite" It is not a problem for the police, a quick comment about the abuser being a "homo" would do. Like run that by me again? Like what sort of sicko wrote a script like that?
You see this is where we turn the heat up a bit on certain scriptwriters who think child abuse is funny. (15 is under the legal age right? Incest is illegal yes?) Oh sorry, I cant state the obvious can I, lets be fair to the House Scriptwriter, the house scriptwriter has already assumed that XY chromosomes in a woman equates with sub human. I think we have got the message from the very simplistic and absurd "scientific" explanation so cleverly delivered by a "Maverick Genius" that she somehow "deserved" to be abused because she was not some pure example of biological womanhood., but an "XY chromosome" parading as a woman. Lets do the House on House then shall we, Lets talk like a "Maverick genius" does this logic apply to all "deformity" or "imperfection" that they being abused is something that can be jokes about. What next, a kid with downs being abused and the scriptwriters joking about it via the script for Dr. House?
So what then? it is deliciously politically incorrect inst it? Like hey lets have another medical drama and call it "Mengele" where does it end, that slippery slope as the media loves to spout. funny that, how slippery slopes seem a real problem in society but in the land of twisted scriptwriting ah it is just a bit of fiction. Well how many of the 1 in 150,000 were watching this "cure for medical dramas" and feeling a bit insulted, if not threatened by it. Well they don’t matter really do they, they are there for the amusement of the audience. And then there is another sticky little question, I mean these days most parents seem to know that their child has CAIS, and does this mean that the writers of House think parents of CAIS children abuse their kids or something?
I find Dr.House as a TV show to be offensive, but deliberately so. I do not consider it "Irony" either for the simple reason that the rather insulting description of CAIS or AIS in general is a list of half truths that were designed to convince the layperson that CAIS describes a male. "Parading as a woman" .Well no, House is a misleading and false television parading as serious drama, more like
Doctor Doctor
by Sophia Siedlberg
It is interesting how when I write anything about some of the ideas of medical professionals commenting on intersex conditions, the usual responses from their supporters appear. So I have decided to answer one of them
A physician recently commented on an article I wrote as follows:
“Do you not think that it is wrong to classify someone who sees their intersex condition as an illness as an intersex person, surely they are the gender they present themselves to be with an illness”
My answer to this is that I would never presume to impose the identity of “intersex” on anyone, actually I dislike the term, and I have always said this openly. However I dislike even more terms like “intersexual”, “disorder” and “illness”. What I do object to is how the above statement implies that fragmentation of the self is legitimized when there is an “intersex” condition diagnosed.
I will give an example: I have 5 alpha reductase deficiency - “I have a female gender identity”. Not quite, I am basically female. I ended up female. But I hear, “Ah yes, but you are a man (XY chromosomes) who has an illness and you have a female Gender identity which seems to be a consequence of having 5 alpha". Meaning I as a woman am an illness. As a Man I would be a man with an illness, rather than a woman that is an illness. The same reasoning seems to apply to CAH. I mean if someone with CAH identifies as male, (and has XX chromosomes) they are seen as an illness, if they identify as female then they are women with an illness. Why? XX chromosomes?
That is the real problem. What the doctor says. It is the notion of fragmented self. It seems that the medical profession has this checklist of sex markers, “Gender identity”, “Chromosomes”, “Genital morphology” and “Hormonal bias” and “normal”. Seems to be if all these boxes are ticked in one direction or the other, Like “Female gender identity”, “XX”, “Vagina, uterus and ovaries” and “Estrogen” equals female. Or “Male gender identity”, “XY”, “Penis, Testis” and “Androgens” equals male.
The problem occurs when we get “Female gender identity”, “XY”, “Vagina, uterus, no ovaries”, “Estrogens” (Swyers) or “Male gender identity”, “XX”, “Uterus, Vagina etc” and “Androgens” (Some forms of CAH, not all)
You see this is untidy. In the “Male gender identity” and “XX” there is a contradiction. Well “Chromosomes are essentialist markers, Identity is a social construct, so Identity is an illness”, they will say. I mean yes this reductionism may serve as some sort of diagnostic model, but there is a tinge of the stereotypical about it all, a taint of normalization. I mean it is hardly reasonable to be breaking a person down into a lot of bits and then judge them on the basis of whether all the bits line up or not.
In fact the fragmentation model is illustrated with AIS, or CAIS being discussed in a certain silly “Drama” called “House”. Lets look at the checklist. “Female gender identity”, “XY”, “A Vagina but no uterus no ovaries” and “estrogens”. We are led to believe that this is a man, who “Believes she is a woman but is a man”. Obviously she is not a man, so what went wrong? Arbitrary checklists are what went wrong.
The problem is that the medical profession may give people some sort of “Place” if they have an uncertain checklist, but they get very upset is someone does not accept the checklist they are “given”.
I mean, I do not buy the idea that if I, with 5 alpha, identify as male my identity is “valid” and if I identify as female it is “non valid”, because the rest of my checklist does not add up to some clinical expectation. It is Rubik’s cube medicine basically. “If the colours don’t match on all faces, it is wrong”. The worst part of it is the “Genderizing” I think. I will explain this. “Genderizing” is the practice of trying to pretend that the markers, when not tidy, are the person’s fault. Basically if most of the markers equal one sex, and “Gender identity” the opposite, then there are problems. So this has to be “Genderized” as in “Gender identity”. A woman with CAIS for example is a woman, who would feminize further if exposed to high doses of androgens. Hardly a choice or lifestyle, and hardly a Money-ish socially constructed delusion built around female socializing. It is a simple fact, CAIS means testosterone does not work, you don’t get a guy. All the XY chromosomes on this planet and all the missing ovaries and underdeveloped testis, are not going to produce Mr. Universe. It does not happen, so I would hardly think that clinical model about “A socially constructed Gender identity” is going to say anything much, is it?
It is much easier to say “She” and leave it at that rather than start nit-picking over chromosomes and hormones. But no, Genderizing says “She” but a “he” really, so she he is an illness if identifying as female and a man having a problem if identifying as male”. Suddenly we go away from the person and on to this checklist.
My problem is that I will be accused of pandering to the two sex system by saying what I have said, but no, I am not the one constantly putting people who don’t have straight “M” or straight “F” checklists on the spot and reclassifying them as “other than” or “something-other-sexual”. What people do not understand is the way genderiszing works. My own experience of the ambulance where my health was seriously compromised thanks to kidney infections as a child, I heard “Will they want to be a boy or a girl, what toys do we give them now? I thought the surgeons made it a boy”. Genderizing ignores the person and thinks of otherness.
Many of the terms and concepts we encounter in the medical profession do not stand up to scrutiny. I am a “Male pseudo-hermaphrodite” according to the text books having 5 alpha, I am “Expected” to “identify as male”. Well I ask “Why” and it’s “Others with 5 alpha identify as male” (Some do, not all) I don’t buy that, I say “I don’t identify as male, I am an individual, no two people with any condition are identical.” then the truth comes out. “But it would make you more male in the checklist, obey the checklist or be called transgender”. We are talking classifications of the two sex system.
I am not “Transgendered” I am just someone who is predominantly female, What’s the problem? Well idealization is the problem, hyper conformity is the problem. Well there is something very insidious about that.
I argue as a geneticist that chromosomes are unreliable sex markers, while the majority of the time we find XX = female and XY = male, To claim that someone who has XX chromosomes but is male, is someone “undermining others” or to claim someone who has XY chromosomes who is female is also “undermining others” is irrational. I say this because chromosomes seem to be the real sticking point for some reason,
What is it when there is evidence to contradict the notion that chromosomes are the major determinants of sex and someone insists despite the evidence that they are? Well it isn’t science. A lot of medical text books would say it was a delusion. Which is interesting, because when someone is born female (CAIS in this example) and cannot undergo any form of virilisation through hormonal activity, even induced hormonal activity, Then how does their “having a female gender identity” make them a man masquerading as a woman or a man thinking he is a woman?
Well the evidence does not suggest this. The evidence suggests that an individual with CAIS cannot utilize androgens, and as such is not male. I know this would go round in circles and end up as a debate about semantics, but the point I am actually making is that arbitrary definitions (Checklists) and Identifiers by proxy “They do, so you must. If you do not, you are the problem” are not an entirely constructive approach.
The Gender Genital Gene Genie
by Sophie Siedlberg
As someone who is intersex, the worst career move I ever made, in terms of my self esteem, was to become a "Bio-informatics" developer. The relationship between this strangely named profession and my condition would at first appear tenuous, until, that is, you realise who it is I sell or distribute "Bio-informatics" to.
Bio-informatics is a branch of software development that specialises in things like sequencing DNA, macromolecular modelling, protein/peptide analysis, and so on. So having established this you can guess who some of the users would be. Those strange and mildly confused individuals we all know as geneticists.
Geneticists tend to fit a stereotype, they make proclamations about a "Gene for this" and a "Gene for that" and often appear in the media discussing "The Human Genome Project" where they initially thought they could categorise every human being on the planet according to a set of simplistic criteria. Problem is there is a paradox here, you need a very very large genome of some 100,000 genes all expressing singularly for a specific purpose, to set up such a simplistic model of the given gene pool. In plain language, you need to have each and every gene doing one single thing. For example when you need to have a gene for "Gayness" you say "Ah we have a single gene that makes someone gay". This sparkling example of single gene paradigm was espoused a few years ago by one Professor Dean Hamer, who, by a slight of Mendel's Astrology and a blob somewhere in lane in his electrophoresis box (migrated fragment of chromosome X) that seemed to appear every time the owners of said gene on chromosome X said they were gay. Well in the great scheme of things, this gene was given the name of "Xq 28". Now anyone who knows their genetics will tell you that this gene has yet to be named. Because "Xq"only defines the location of this gene. Not any official name referring to its purpose, function, resulting proteins from the coding exons etc etc.
This is where single genes cease to become "paradigm" (That is an "established model" to us lesser mortals) . What does this gene actually do, what peptides, proteins, enzymes etc does it code for? And what function do these coded proteins etc actually do to make someone gay? The reality is of course far more complex, Whatever the gene codes for will interact with something else, sometimes whatever another gene's exons code for. This is a type of polygenic expression, as opposed to the single gene concept of "monogenic" expression. The smaller the number of genes found in a genome would indicate the higher probability of genes interacting with each other rather than them simply expressing directly as a single gene. So when the human genome project announced (with some disappointment) that there was only 33,000 genes. You can imagine the bewilderment. "It is more complex than we thought!"
And this is where I get myself all in a hysterical fit of laughter. You see geneticists love to say the following: "XX equals a girl, whatever you say, even if "she" is born with a penis, has a six pack, looks like Arnold Schwartzenegger, and says that "she" is a regular guy.