A reader writes:
You quoted Nelson Jones: “The problem with surgical intervention isn’t just the theoretical one that it violates the integrity of the body but the practical one that the doctors might well make a mistake.” The possibility that the child grows up to express a gender different than the one assigned is real. However, it’s important to understand that the sexual surgeries usually performed on intersex infants are mutilating, even when the gender assignment is not “wrong.”
The most common surgeries are intended to make the child’s clitoris smaller. That is done by removing clitoral tissue. Lots of clitoral tissue. Psychologist Suzanne Kessler asked female college students to imagine having been born with the kind of clitoris that causes children to be targeted with these surgeries (any clitoris over 3/8 inch):
Students were then given the physician’s standards for genital lengths, and women were asked to imagine having been born with a clitoris between 1.0 and 2.5 centimeters. Under what conditions would they have wanted it surgically reduced? Ninety-three percent would not have wanted their parents to agree to clitoral reduction if the condition were not life threatening and if it resulted in the loss of orgasm or pleasurable sensitivity. Over half of the women would not have wanted surgery even if the condition were unattractive and made them feel uncomfortable. This was particularly true of the lesbian and bisexual women in the sample. Twelve percent of the women would not have wanted a clitoral reduction under any circumstance
— Kessler, S., 1998. Lessons from the intersexed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. (page 100-101).
Other sexual surgeries performed on intersex children include:
* vaginoplasty (a part of the colon is transferred to the perineum to form or to lengthen a vagina)
* gonadectomy (the child’s gonads are removed, both sterilizing the individual and rendering her dependent upon exogenous hormones for life)
* hypospadias surgery (skin flaps are used to try to extend the penile urethra so that the penis urinates from the very tip instead of somewhere further back along the underside)
Intersexed people all over the world who have been subjected to these surgeries (including myself) are calling for them to be stopped because we have experienced them as mutilating rather than normalizing. The vast majority of us remain in the gender that we were assigned, so the harm is by no means limited to wrong gender assignment. Surgeons claim that most of their patients are happy with their surgical outcomes, but you will search in vain for such silent, happy graduates of the intersex normalization process.
Shame is even more crippling than mutilating sexual surgeries. These surgeries are a response to shame. Ironically, by delivering a message that intersexuality renders the individual unloveable without mutilating sexual surgeries, they actually serve to reinforce shame. Those of us who are speaking out are the ones who have managed to transcend shame.
The Dish 