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Oh, is that so?

by Sophia Siedlberg

Alice Dreger managed to strike a rich vein the other day when she reported in the Bioethics Forum that one Dr. Poppas, a baby mutilating surgeon, had been "testing the sensitivity of the reconstructed clitoris of six year old girls with a vibrating stimulator". (Yes he did and yes, he should be banged up in prison for that.)

However, I did notice how Alice Dreger had framed it as "All these little girls" and not as she had previously done: "All these Disorders of Sex Development" or "All these intersex children". Which is interesting, and what is more interesting is how no one really took any notice of the plight of those children when she described them as intersex, etc.

They were still children.

Oddly enough, when Professor Milton Diamond exposed the activities of Dr. John Money a few years back now, the story was framed as "The boy who had his dick cut off by Dr. Money" and again the world was up in arms.

Remember the Völling case? Ah yes, that was a little different. She was assigned male and had her uterus ripped out by a surgeon without consent, and what happened? The world was not up in arms. Actually she had to go through the courts and prove her female status before they would actually do anything about the surgeon who mutilated her. The press incidentally either called her intersex or DSD.

I was myself butchered in 1965, one year before David Reimer apparently. The surgery was not brilliant. The result was certainly not a "penis". (They intended to assign me as male) and it did involve a lot of repeat visits to the hospital and it achieved very little other than a constantly infected mess. Now in today's speak that would be "assigned male". At the time it may well have been seen differently. Basically it was a case of drill a hole through an enlarged clitoris, call it a penis. Then hope and pray nothing happens, deal with the infections caused by the near permanent catheterization and beat the kid up to make the kid "tougher". More hope that the "Testis will drop" and so on. OK yes I have 5 alpha reductase deficiency so you could use the term "Male" if you cut me to virtual bits like chromosomes etc. and started nitpicking to say the abuse I endured was justified. (Which is what trying to define me as male really meant: the surgeons and doctors could get away with more abuse!)

What was the reception I got from Alice Dreger and her crowd at ISNA? Well, I must have been lying because no one ever did masculinizing procedures. (Well no, Alice it depends on how you spun it. No one ever managed to do phalloplasty on an 18 month old but ripping out uteruses and or making a total mess of some pretty sensitive areas was not uncommon, but you seldom mention that, do you, Alice? Why?)

But hang on a minute, why the fucking hell does it work like that? Why is it the moment you call a child a girl and she is subjected to what I would call sexually abusive practices, or call a child a boy and lob his penis off and the world is crying its eyes out? But if the kid is intersexed and did not agree with the sex to which they were assigned, and the world hates them?

Sometimes my own anger can border on the genocidal when this sort of thing happens -how when definitions determine just how badly you are treated. And if you change the definitions only slightly; society, being the thick grunting bunch of arrogant bastards they can be, suddenly have a totally different opinion. But the child abuse is pretty consistent across the board. You should see some of the surgery and "aftercare" that does go on.

Want to know about dilation techniques inflicted on children with AIS? Or the number of times surgery gets carried out on those children who have had a messy hypospadias repair? Or the uterus ripping, castrating, drugging up and mental hammering that goes on? Probably not. And if society does feel able to stomach it, it will only be in terms society can stomach - that is if the children, the victims of this abuse, are hurt while already being a given sex. If the child is not defined as a given sex during the abuse then society simply ignores it or calls the child a liar.

As you may have stumbled on this page looking something up with regards to intersex, ask yourself this question. Is that right? A child is a child surely? Or does that only stretch to a child you can define as a boy or a girl in some absolute sense? And if that child rejected the "sex" foisted on them, do you say something like, "Well, they did this to some boys like you," when a woman is standing in front of you or vice versa?

I notice that in the UK the Guardian is now peddling Dreger's agenda which is a mixed blessing to intersex people. If you are assigned female and exist as female, you get sympathy, if you are assigned male and exist as male, you don't. If you are assigned female and reject it, you are "controversial" and if you are assigned male and rejected you are plainly hated. Why? Well that is down to feminists, masculinists and every other selfish, self interested norm born with "something to say".

Here is the uncomfortable truth about all this, if you are born intersex, regardless of what sex you are ultimately assigned to, you frequently endure a childhood of being clinically abused and told to either shut up or only speak when it suits someone else. But the doctors still abuse the kids an no matter how much people like Dreger and now the Guardian Newspaper in the UK kick up a fuss about it, while they are selective about saying what really goes on they are complicit in that abuse themselves.

Saying "Oh well, they were little girls or little boys" and then treating them according to the assignment, especially if they reject it, is as "normalising" as getting a Black and Decker to an enlarged clitoris and calling it a penis or lobbing it off and calling it a proper clitoris. It is as simple as that.

If they are going to say to child abusers like Poppas, "Well, we don't like you making six year old girls use vibrators" and then say "But grabbing another child by an enlarged clitoris or micro penis and yanking is saying be a boy or else! is OK!" then the whole pity party is a waste of time and inconsistent.

I was surgically mutilated one year before David Reimer and my body was left in a mess, and simply because the "intended sex" was "male" (It was nothing of the sort), I had to endure yet more radical feminist whining and masculinist bullshit every time I said what happened. It is really simple. Do not cut children up either way. Do not abuse children and do not act like a bunch of sexual sociopaths and frame all this as something relative to men or women or the self interest of men and women.

If people are shocked now after Alice Dreger framed it the way she did, all those who are "shocked" need to ask themselves why they were never shocked before? Why were they not so shocked when they were calling Caster Semenya the Olympic athlete all the evil freaks under the sun? Oh yes, where was their concern then? Collective male and female dictatorship! It is so simple. Leave my life and my body alone and leave those like me alone and fuck off with ALL your normalizing shit!

If you can stomach the full truth and realise how bad it actually has been, then bring all these surgeries to and end and treat intersex children, all intersex children with the same dignity you give any other child. And let the child end up deciding what sex they are. Ah but that is what most the bastards want to avoid, isn't it. Can't allow the child to decide. Oh no, that would be too soft, too fucking "politically correct". Am I right?