Progress on the Genital Integrity Front

Powerful article there. Appreciate your having supplied it and am grateful to women such as Cheryl Chase for having not only found what happened to her but to have fought so hard to get this matter addressed in a better way than it has been.

One of the odder things (to me at least) was this:
"Reports on the frequency of intersex births vary widely: Chase claims 1 in 2,000; more conservative estimates from experts put it at 1 in 4,500. Whatever the case, intersex is roughly as common as cystic fibrosis, and while the outcome of the debate Chase has stirred is directly pertinent to a limited number of families, her arguments force all of us to confront some basic issues about sexual identity, birth anomalies and what rights parents have in physically shaping their kids. Will a child grow up to enjoy a better life if he or she is saved from the trials of maturing in a funny-looking body? Or will that child be better off if he or she is loved and accepted, at least at home, exactly as he or she is?"
Now, considering the overall population of the United States and the world in general, the matter of one in 2000 (Chase's estimate) or even one in 4500 as experts use that is a hell of a lot of intersex children being born on a regular basis and the absurdity of having had all these children randomly assigned a gender so they would not be inhabitting a "funny looking" body is tragic, not just absurd. Who in the fucking hell decides what is funny looking? Take a clean look anywhere on any street and ask 100 persons who is funny looking

Similar to where society is slowly coming to terms with homosexuality and bisexuality being normal (I said slowly) this will hopefully reach a time where being intersexed is not considered terrible. I have seen various programs on one of those cable channels (Discovery perhaps) about this matter and what always strikes me is that the "well meaning doctors" convince the parents that surgery is necessitated and the child always seems to grow into adulthood feeling awkward and as if something isn't quite right. Just leave the children as they are they are perfect as they are at birth without some whacked Frankenstein clone doing hatchet jobs.

I'm very surprised that circumcision wasn't brought up in the article.

However, it was a good read. I can imagine that if one's parents are morally troubled by the issue, it would be almost impossible to stop them from cutting their children. Even if they weren't cut, the child would most likely face severe emotional problems if their parents treated them differently.

The point was made that gender reassignment is drastically different that repairing a heart irregularity and rightly so.

What?! This is about gender assignment not circumcision There is a big difference. Circumcision whether or not one feels it is right or wrong, does not change the child's sexual assignment There was/is no reason for the article to have brought in circumcision. Circumcision related to gender reassignment would be a seperate matter and would be aout possible dangers of circumcision. Circumcision is not pursued as a way in which to assign a gender identity The persons in the article dxjnorto has supplied us with are persons who were born intersexed it says nowhere that they had a massive foreskin which needed to be removed in order to make them a female.

here we have 2 things to address. First,why should a parent treat a child any differently just because they are intersexed and secondly, isn't it true that many parents show favortism towards one child over another even when the sexuality is clearly defined (whether both children are male or female).

Really?! You're kidding...there's a difference? I never would have thought whacking off a penis could be different from repairing a heart valve or something of that nature

Here is an article about one of the more famous intersex celebrities, Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of actor Tony Curtis. She is termed an AIS (androgen insensitivity syndrome).
http://www.suspectthoughts.com/twisted5.htm

Circumcision is elective cosmetic surgery that serves no useful purpose in infancy. They brought up another instance like that of correcting a hare lip so why didn't they bring up circ? Circ is used to limit a male's sexual response, so what's that if not a gender limiting form of surgery?

Parents all expect a perfectly formed creature as though it's their right and we've come to believe that anyone who is outside the norm faces a lifetime of problems. Instead of addressing the validity of the norm, we hack and whack so that these infants conform to our ideals. What a bunch of bs.

It's time to address the issue of how much control parents have over their children's bodies. Cosmetic surgery that serves no medical purpose needs to be banned.

There is one: the case of David Reimer - castrated after a botched (and unnecessary) circumcision, and unsuccessfully reassigned as female - illustrated that gender identity is not dependent on the form of the external genitalia, nor conditioning, but comes from somewhere within the brain.

I agree that the rights and (mainly) wrongs of parentally elective, non-therapeutic, neonatal circumcision have very little overlap with the rights and (mainly) wrongs of parentally elective, would-be therapeutic, infant gender assignment.

Good call Snozz. Doctor John Money, mentioned in the article, did not burn off David Reimer's penis, but he did castrate him. He called his gender reassignment case history of little John/Joan (David Reimer) a success. It still stands on the books because he has never retracted it. David lived a tragic life and killed himself on May 4th, 2004. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (Colapinto, 1997) was written about what Money did to him. The short version is available here.

Madman has hit on it. Parents feel absolute rights to non-therapeutic surgery on children's genitals and doctors (like that baseball character who follows me around this list) feel an absolute mandate to do it.

In this age of information this is not so easily swept under the rug. And, you know, infants don't really take so long to turn into adults. This Cheryl Chase in the article is struggling very hard to be seen as non-extremist. When will the body snatchers posing as parents and doctors be seen as the extremists?