Why did the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival feel the need to exclude "pre-operative" transsexuals even though these women consider themselves to be females?
The article from Emi Koyama confuses me, because after reading the DSM and GID stories from Tuesday, I thought that anyone who fell into the criteria for GID was able to consider themselves the other sex. Even though transsexuals may have not had the sex reassignment surgery, can they consider themselves or be considered of the other sex? "We too want the safe space to process and to heal our own hurting. We too want to seek solace in the arms of our other sisters, and to celebrate women's culture and women's music with other festigoers" (Koyama 3). If they consider post-operative transsexuals to be women why is pre-operative so different? I didn't think genitalia could make such of a difference for who you are inside. Can these women call themselves feminists if the are still excluding other women?
Can intersexual infants keep the bodies they are born with until they are old enough to make a decision?
In Cheryl Chase's article about her own life, she talks about how much hurt and confusion intersexuals feel about their gender and identity. “To myself, I was a freak, incapable of loving or being loved, filled with shame about my status as a hermaphrodite and about my sexual dysfunction” (Chase 34). But my question is can an intersexual infant keep the body they are born with and lead a "normal" life as a child? Would the child be able to decide which gender they fit into and then change their body? Will the child grow up being ridiculed or feel out of place with other children? I think the parents of these children are trying to make the life easier for the child, but that can't be the case for all intersexual children.
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"Can intersexual infants keep the bodies they are born with until they are old enough to make a decision?"
ReplyDeleteI like that you pose this and other questions about how we should approach the raising of intersex children. Would it really be harmful to them to not make their little bodies go through such traumatic surgeries as babies and young children and raise them through their formative years as the sex that seems correct for them as individuals? I would like to think that eventually it would be the first option for these kids, not the most abhorred one by the medical community.
"Advocating gender assignment without resorting to normalizing surgery is a radical position given that it requires the willful disruption of the assumed concordance between body shape and gender category. However, this is the only position that prevents irreversible physical damage to the intersex person's body, that respects the intersex person's agency regarding his/her own flesh and that recognizes genital sensation and erotic functioning to be at least as important as reproductive capacity. If an intersex child or adult decides to change gender or to undergo surgical or hormonal alteration of his/her body, that decision should also be fully respected and facilitated. The key point is that intersex subjects should not be violated for the comfort and convenience of others." (Chase, pg. 37) I think it is of the upmost importance that these individuals be given choice in such very personal decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. I realize, as you do, that the parents are only trying to do what they think is best, but again, I think it should be made known to them-with the aid of supportive material/people-that in the end it is the quality of another human being's existence and not their own well-being that must be considered of the utmost importance in these situations.