Introduction 1

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Introduction 1 Notes Introduction 1. John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, Man and Woman Boy and Girl: The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 9. 2. Rosie Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Differ- ence in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1994); Georges Canguilhem, On the Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn Fawcett (Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing, 1978). 3. I refer here to the late David Reimer, whom Money recommended be reassigned and reared as a girl following the loss of his penis after a botched circumcision when he was an infant. See Bernice Hausman, “Do Boys Have to Be Boys? Gender, Narrativity, and the John/Joan Case,” NWSA Journal 12, no. 3 (2000): 114–138. 4. Perhaps the most public of those attacks was that of Rolling Stone jour- nalist John Colapinto. See John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (Sydney: Harper Collins, 2000). 5. Refer to “Notes on terminology and definitions” for an explanation of this hyphenation. 6. Money on the other hand has acknowledged—however disapprovingly—the ways in which feminism impacted on his theories of gender. 7. This is not to suggest that gender ceased to be a language tool but rather that its conceptual load increased exponentially when it became the signifier of characters, behaviors, and identities as masculine or feminine. 8. Natural gender, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a feature of modern English where “nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter according as the objects they denote are male, female, or of neither sex; and the gender of a noun has no other syntactical effect than that of determining the pronoun that must be used in referring to it” http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50093521?query_type=word& queryword=gender, s.v. GENDER n. 2. 9. Hausman’s exacting reading of the early work of Money serves as a foundation for some of the key arguments made in Chapters 1 and 3 198 Notes (Bernice Hausman, Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology and the Idea of Gender [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995], 72–109). 10. Ann Curthoys, ed., Gender in the Social Sciences in Australia (Canberra: Australian Publishing Service, 1998), 41; Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler, “Sexual Traffic,” in Coming out of Feminism? ed. Mandy Merk, Naomi Segal, and Elizabeth Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 36–73. 11. Donna Haraway correctly attributes the introduction of the term “gen- der identity” to Stoller (ca.1963) but incorrectly situates Money’s project as successive to Stoller’s. See Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York and London: Routledge, 1991). 12. Rosie Braidotti, “Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratol- ogy and Embodied Differences,” in Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine and Cyberspace, ed. Ninna Lykke and Rosie Braidotti (London: Zed Books, 1996), 135–152. 13. See especially, Mary Hawkesworth, “Confounding Gender,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22, no. 3 (1997): 649–685; Joan Scott, “Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, ed. Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton (London and Philadelphia: UCL Press, 1999), 57–75; Steven Seidman and Linda Nicholson, eds., Introduction to Social Post- modernism: Beyond Identity Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1–35. 14. While many of these cultural critiques of intersex case management (ICM) assume the sex/gender distinction, there are those who draw attention to the theoretical dangers of doing so (see Anne Fausto- Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sex- uality [New York: Basic Books, 2000]; Hausman, Changing Sex). In short, when sex is relegated to nature as “real” and gender to culture as “constructed,” the material construction of “sex” realized through the reconfiguration and/or removal of body parts becomes obscured. 15. Sharon Crasnow, “Models and Reality: When Science Tackles Sex,” Hypatia 16, no. 3 (2001): 138–148; Alice Domurat Dreger, “Ethical Problems in Intersex Treatment,” Medical Humanities Report 19, no. 1 (1997); Dreger, “ ‘Ambiguous Sex’—or Ambivalent Medicine?” Hastings Center Report 28, no. 3 (1998): 24–35; Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Dreger, “When Medicine Goes Too Far in the Pursuit of Normality,” New York Times, July 28, 1998, 4; Dreger, ed., Intersex in the Age of Ethics (Hagerstown, MD: Univer- sity Publishing Group, 2000); Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,” The Sciences, March/April (1993): 20–25; Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body; Fausto-Sterling, “The Notes 199 Five Sexes, Revisited,” The Sciences 40, no. 4 (2000): 18; Fausto- Sterling, “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis,” American Journal of Human Biology 12 (2000): 151–166; Deborah Findlay, “Discovering Sex: Medical Science, Feminism and Intersexual- ity,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 32, no. 1 (1995): 25; Joel Frader, Dena Davis, Arthur Frank, and Paul Miller, “Health Care Professionals and Intersex Conditions,” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 158 (2004): 426–429; Myra Hird, “A Typical Gender Identity Conference? Some Disturbing Reports from the Ther- apeutic Front Lines,” Femininsm & Psychology 13, no. 2 (2003): 181–199; Morgan Holmes, “Queer Cut Bodies: Intersexuality and Homophobia in Medical Practice” http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/ queerfrontiers/queer/papers/holmes.long.html; Holmes, “In(to) Vis- ibility: Intersexuality in the Field of Queer,” in Looking Queer: Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Com- munities, ed. Dawn Atkins (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1998), 221–226; Holmes, “Rethinking the Meaning and Management of Intersexuality,” Sexualities 5, no. 2 (2002): 159–180; Katrina Karkazis, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority and Lived Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Suzanne Kessler, “The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants,” Signs 16, no. 1 (1990): 3–26; Kessler, Lessons from the Intersexed (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Iain Morland, “The Glans Opens Like a Book: Writing and Reading the Intersexed Body,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Culture Studies 19, no. 3 (2005): 335–348, Morland, “Narrating Intersex: On the Ethical Critique of the Medical Management of Intersexuality, 1985–2005,” PhD diss., Uni- versity of London, 2005; Sharon Preves, “Negotiating the Constraints of Gender Binarism: Intersexuals’ Challenge to Gender Categoriza- tion,” Current Sociology 48, no. 3 (2000): 27–50; Preves, “Sexing the Intersexed: An Analysis of Sociocultural Responses to Intersex- uality,” Signs 27, no. 2 (2002): 523–557; Katrina Roen, “Editorial. Intersex Embodiment: When Health Care Means Maintaining Binary Sexes,” Sexual Health 1 (2004): 127–130; Roen, “ ‘But We Have to Do Something’: Surgical ‘Correction’ of Atypical Genitalia,” Body and Society 14, no. 1 (2008): 47–66; Stephanie Turner, “Intersex Identi- ties: Locating New Intersections of Sex and Gender,” Gender & Society 13, no. 4 (1999): 457–479; Georgia Warnke, “Intersexuality and the Construction of Sex,” Hypatia 16, no. 3 (2001): 126–137. 16. Julia Epstein, “Either/Or – Neither/Both: Sexual Ambiguity and the Ideology of Gender,” Genders 7 (1990): 128–129. 17. See Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, 33–35. Teratology emerged as a field in the early nineteenth century and was a precursor to the field of embryology. Teratology’s concern was the study of “monstrosities.” 200 Notes 18. Eighteenth-century physician James Parsons included a review of his- torical, cultural, and religious responses to the “otherly” sexed in his treatise on hermaphroditism, many of which involved ritual sacrifice (James Parsons, A Mechanical and Critical Enquiry into the Nature of Hermaphrodites [London: Printed for J. Walthoe, 1741]). 19. Epstein, “Either/Or,” 116. 20. Here I am referring to L/G/B/T organizations and Web sites and queer studies, in particular. 21. See for example, Roger Adkins, “Where ‘Sex’ is Born(e): Intersexed Births and the Social Urgency of Heterosexuality,” Journal of Medical Humanities 20, no. 2 (1999): 117–133; Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex; Preves, “Negotiating the Constraints”; Preves, “Sexing the Intersexed.” 22. Findlay, “Discovering Sex.” 23. Hausman, Changing Sex, 179. 24. See for example, Epstein, “Either/Or”; Kessler, “Medical Construc- tion”; Kessler, Lessons. 25. Hausman, Changing Sex, 74–76. 26. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Iden- tity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits Of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993). 27. Dreger, “Hermaphrodites in Love”; Dreger, “Ethical Problems”; Dreger, “When Medicine Goes Too Far”; Dreger, “Ambiguous Sex”; Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex; Findlay, “Discovering Sex”; Hausman, Changing Sex; Holmes, “Queer Cut Bodies”; Kessler, “Medical Construction”; Kessler, Lessons; Preves, “Sexing the Intersexed”; Turner, “Intersex Identities.” 28. Elizabeth Wilson, “Biologically Inspired Feminism: Response to Helen Keane and Marsha Rosengarten, ‘On the Biology of Sexed Subjects’,” Australian Feminist Studies 17, no. 39 (2002): 285. 29. Dreger, Hermaphrodites and the Medical
Recommended publications
  • MIAMI UNIVERSITY the Graduate School Certificate for Approving The
    MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Susan Pelle Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy _____________________________________ Director Dr. Stefanie Kyle Dunning _____________________________________ Reader Dr. Madelyn M. Detloff _____________________________________ Reader Dr. Kathleen N. Johnson _____________________________________ Graduate School Representative Dr. Emily A. Zakin ABSTRACT (DIS)ARTICULATING BODIES AND GENDERS: PUSSY POLITICS AND PERFORMING VAGINAS by Susan Pelle The vagina has metaphorically and metonymically been the body part that stands in for the category “woman” and it is this emphatic and fabricated link that imposes itself on bodies, psyches, and lives with often horrifying consequences. My goals in exploring performative and performing vaginas are many. I not only lay out how, why, and in what ways the “normal” and “abled” female body established in both dominant and mainstream discourses is, simply put, one with a specific type of vagina, but I also confront the “truth” that vaginas purport to tell about women and femininity. Ultimately, I maintain that representations of vaginas and the debates and discourses that surround them tell us something about our culture’s fears, anxieties, and hopes. Living life as abject can be painful, even unbearable, yet as individuals negotiate this life they can experience pleasure, assert agency, and express ethical and just visions of the world. The artists, writers, and performers explored in this dissertation strategically perform vaginas in multiple and disparate ways. As they trouble, resist, and negotiate “normative” understandings of vaginas, they simultaneously declare that the “problem” is not about bodies at all. The problem is not the vagina.
    [Show full text]
  • David Reimer Seems to Refute the Nurture Theory; That Is, the Idea That Gender Identity Is Due Solely to Social Eff Ects
    NATIONAL CENTER FOR CASE STUDY TEACHING IN SCIENCE Nature or Nurture: The Case of the Boy Who Became a Girl by Keith K. Schillo Biology Department SUNY College at Oneonta Part I – A Tragic Error In 1965, Janet Reimer of Winnepeg gave birth to twin boys named Bruce and Brian (Colapinto, 2004; CBC, 2004). Both infants were normal and healthy, but because they had diffi culty urinating doctors recommended that they undergo circumcision (i.e., surgical removal of the foreskin of the penis) at six months of age. Although this is a routine operation, the doctors who performed this procedure used an unconventional method that resulted in the destruction of Bruce’s penis. Mr. and Mrs. Reimer sought the advice of numerous specialists, but all agreed that Bruce would have to live without a penis. At the time that the Reimers were coping with the mutilation of their son’s genitalia, a Johns Hopkins University psychologist was receiving considerable attention for his ideas on the biology of gender and sexuality. He promoted the theory that a child’s gender identity (i.e., the identifi cation of the self as male or female) was determined by environmental variables such as the social conditions in which the child is raised. Th is idea is a form of the “nurture theory” of development. A competing view is the so-called “nature theory”; that is, the idea that a person’s innate qualities are determined solely by biological mechanisms. Th e psychologist was essentially advocating the view that a feminine identity could be developed simply by rearing a child as a girl.
    [Show full text]
  • The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology
    The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology Joanna Williams The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology The Corrosive Impact of Transgender Ideology Joanna Williams First published June 2020 © Civitas 2020 55 Tufton Street London SW1P 3QL email: [email protected] All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-912581-08-5 Independence: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society is a registered educational charity (No. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee (No. 04023541). Civitas is financed from a variety of private sources to avoid over-reliance on any single or small group of donors. All the Institute’s publications seek to further its objective of promoting the advancement of learning. The views expressed are those of the authors, not of the Institute. Typeset by Typetechnique Printed in Great Britain by 4edge Limited, Essex iv Contents Author vi Summary vii Introduction 1 1. Changing attitudes towards sex and gender 3 2. The impact of transgender ideology 17 3. Ideological capture 64 Conclusions 86 Recommendations 88 Bibliography 89 Notes 97 v Author Joanna Williams is director of the Freedom, Democracy and Victimhood Project at Civitas. Previously she taught at the University of Kent where she was Director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Joanna is the author of Women vs Feminism (2017), Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity (2016) and Consuming Higher Education, Why Learning Can’t Be Bought (2012). She co-edited Why Academic Freedom Matters (2017) and has written numerous academic journal articles and book chapters exploring the marketization of higher education, the student as consumer and education as a public good.
    [Show full text]
  • Identity: Foucault Against Butler on Herculine Barbin Au
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Kyoto University Research Information Repository <Articles>Bodies and Pleasures in the Happy Limbo of a Non- Title identity: Foucault against Butler on Herculine Barbin Author(s) Hakoda, Tetz Citation ZINBUN (2015), 45: 91-108 Issue Date 2015-03 URL http://hdl.handle.net/2433/197515 © Copyright March 2015, Institute for Research in Humanities Right Kyoto University. Type Departmental Bulletin Paper Textversion publisher Kyoto University ZINBUN No. 45 2014 Bodies and Pleasures in the Happy Limbo of a Non-identity: Foucault against Butler on Herculine Barbin Tetz HAKODA ABSTRACT: This paper aims to establish a theoretical dialogue between Judith Butler and Michel Foucault on the notions of body and pleasure through an analysis of their texts on the autobiography of Herculine Barbin. Butler claims that Foucault’s introductory essay to Herculine Barbin is somewhat inconsistent with his theoretical standpoint on sex and sexuality. While appreciating his construc- tionist approach, she doubts that Foucault ever succeeds in getting rid of a utopian vision of sexual- ity. However, her discussion seems to face another theoretical deadlock because of her insistence on law and desire. With much stress on the impossibility of love of Alexina, her own reading ends up with some fatalism under the law of prohibition. On the other hand, Foucault reads the memoirs as a record of encounter of an otherwise anonymous person with the emerging modern apparatus of power. Re-reading his essay in this line, we can find a way of thinking that is neither an idealistic identity-free body nor a fatalistic subject of desire.
    [Show full text]
  • Medical Histories, Queer Futures: Imaging and Imagining 'Abnormal'
    eSharp Issue 16: Politics and Aesthetics Medical histories, queer futures: Imaging and imagining ‘abnormal’ corporealities Hilary Malatino Once upon a time, queer bodies weren’t pathologized. Once upon a time, queer genitals weren’t surgically corrected. Once upon a time, in lands both near and far off, queers weren’t sent to physicians and therapists for being queer – that is, neither for purposes of erotic reform, gender assignment, nor in order to gain access to hormonal supplements and surgical technologies. Importantly, when measures to pathologize queerness arose in the 19th century, they did not respect the now-sedimented lines that distinguish queernesses pertaining to sexual practice from those of gender identification, corporeal modification, or bodily abnormality. These distinguishing lines – which today constitute the intelligibility of mainstream LGBT political projects – simply did not pertain. The current typological separation of lesbian and gay concerns from those of trans, intersex, and genderqueer folks aids in maintaining the hegemony of homonormative political endeavors. For those of us interested in forging coalitions that are attentive to the concerns of minoritized queer subjects, rethinking the pre-history of these queer typologies is a necessity. This paper is an effort at this rethinking, one particularly focused on the conceptual centrality of intersexuality to the development of contemporary intelligibilities of queerness. It is necessary to give some sort of shape to this foregone moment. It exists prior to the sedimentation of modern Western medical discourse and practice. It is therefore also historically anterior 1 eSharp Issue 16: Politics and Aesthetics to the rise of a scientific doctrine of sexual dimorphism.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:54 14 August 2016 Classic Case Studies in Psychology
    Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:54 14 August 2016 Classic Case Studies in Psychology The human mind is both extraordinary and compelling. But this is more than a collection of case studies; it is a selection of stories that illustrate some of the most extreme forms of human behaviour. From the leader who convinced his followers to kill themselves to the man who lost his memory; from the boy who was brought up as a girl to the woman with several personalities, Geoff Rolls illustrates some of the most fundamental tenets of psychology. Each case study has provided invaluable insights for scholars and researchers, and amazed the public at large. Several have been the inspiration for works of fiction, for example the story of Kim Peek, the real Rain Man. This new edition features three new case studies, including the story of Charles Decker who was tried for the attempted murder of two people but acquitted on the basis of a neurological condition, and Dorothy Martin, whose persisting belief in an impending alien invasion is an illuminating example of cognitive dissonance. In addition, each case study is contextualized with more typical behaviour, while the latest thinking in each sub-field is also discussed. Classic Case Studies in Psychology is accessibly written and requires no prior knowledge of psychology, but simply an interest in the human condition. It is a book that will amaze, sometimes disturb, but above all enlighten its readers. Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:54 14 August 2016 Geoff Rolls is Head of Psychology at Peter Symonds College in Winchester and formerly a Research Fellow at Southampton University, UK.
    [Show full text]
  • Film Review XXY Offers a New View of Life in an Intersex Body
    Film Review XXY Offers a New View of Life in an Intersex Body XXY (Film Movement 2008) Directed by Lucía Puenzo; written (in Spanish, with English subtitles) by Lucía Puenzo, based on a short story by Sergio Bizzio. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Not rated. Reviewed by Anne Tamar-Mattis† I was ready to hate XXY,1 the much-lauded film by Argentinean filmmaker Lucía Puenzo. The film is a fictional account of the coming-of-age of Alex (Inés Efron), an intersex adolescent living in a remote coastal village in Uruguay. In general, I approach fictional and mainstream media representations of intersex people with some trepidation. Too often, these stories drip with a romanticized view of what it means to be intersex: the intersex person as a tragic, isolated figure,2 as an idealized blend of male and female,3 or as an exotic and objectified specimen.4 Such facile depictions make me wince, in part because I happen to know and care about more than a few intersex people. Through my life partner, openly intersex activist and physician Suegee Tamar-Mattis, and more recently through my work as director of a national legal project serving the needs of children with intersex conditions, I have come to know intersex people of many ages and experiences from around the world. Some have become good friends, some have become clients, and more than a † Executive Director, Advocates for Informed Choice. B.A., Brown University, 1991. J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. I would like to thank Anna M.
    [Show full text]
  • Boy Has Only Become More When We Are Born, We Are Around Gender, Whether We Choose Timely, Poignant, Illuminating and Essential
    YOUR GUIDEYOUR TIMELINE TO PRODUCTIONS CHICAGO PREMIERE BY ANNA ZIEGLER DIRECTED BY DAMON KIELY BACKSTORY “Something profound is happening three years ago), Boy has only become more When we are born, we are around gender, whether we choose timely, poignant, illuminating and essential. And assigned a gender. Usually this to see it or not.” – National Geographic whether your life experience has included a depth is straightforward: a child’s body of understanding about gender identity, or these is neatly defined as “male” or In January 2017, National Geographic issues feel foreign or taboo, the characters in the “female,” and they grow up to declared us to be in the midst of a “gender play are so recognizable and relatable. identify accordingly. People revolution,” as issues affecting transgender Dear Friends, On the subsequent pages of this Backstory, who identify with their gender and intersex people have pushed to the fore- I’m proud to welcome you to Anna I encourage you to further explore a glossary of assignment are referred to as front of news cycles and legislative agendas Ziegler’s Boy. We previously fea- terms and the play's historical context, a timeline CISGENDER (CIS), and com- alike. In Boy, Anna Ziegler tells one of the sto- A MESSAGE A tured this beautiful play at a one- of notable events, and on the following page, a prise most of the population. ries at this revolution's roots—the story of Dr. night event in 2014, also directed further examination of why TimeLine is eager to But it isn’t always so simple.
    [Show full text]
  • Handbook for Parents
    Contributors Cassandra L. Aspinall, MSW, LICSW Christine Feick, MSW Craniofacial Center, Seattle Children’s Hospital; Ann Arbor, MI University of Washington School of Social Work, Seattle, WA Sallie Foley, LMSW Certified Sex Therapist, AASECT; Dept. Social Arlene B. Baratz, MD Work/Sexual Health, University of Michigan Medical Advisor, Androgen Insensitivity Health Systems, Ann Arbor, MI Syndrome Support Group, Pittsburgh, PA Joel Frader, MD, MA Max & Tamara Beck General Academic Pediatrics, Children’s Atlanta, GA Memorial Hospital; Dept. Pediatrics and Program in Medical Humanities & Bioethics, William Byne, MD Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New University, Chicago, IL York, NY Jane Goto David Cameron Board of Directors, Intersex Society of North Intersex Society of North America, San America; Board of Directors, Androgen Francisco, CA Insensitivity Syndrome Support Group, Seattle, Anita J. Catlin, DSNc, FNP, FAAN WA Nursing and Ethics, Sonoma State University, Michael Grant Sonoma, CA Lansing, MI Cheryl Chase Janet Green Founder and Executive Director, Intersex Society Co-Founder, Bodies Like Ours; Board of of North America, Rohnert Park, CA Directors, CARES Foundation; Board of Kimberly Chu, LCSW, DCSW Overseers, Beth Israel Hospital; Board of Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Trustees, Continuum Healthcare, New York, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, NY NY Howard Devore Philip A. Gruppuso, MD San Francisco, CA Associate Dean of Medical Education, Brown University; Pediatric Endocrinology, Rhode Alice Dreger, Ph.D. (Project Coordinator and Island Hospital, Providence, RI Editor) Program in Medical Humanities and Bioethics, William G. Hanley, BPS Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern Memphis, TN University, Chicago, IL iii iv Debora Rode Hartman Charmian A.
    [Show full text]
  • Hermafroditas Con Actitud: Cartografiando La Emergencia Del Activismo Político Intersexual1
    48 intersexualidad Hermafroditas con actitud: cartografiando la emergencia del activismo político intersexual1 Cheryl Chase2 La insistencia en dos sexos claramente discernibles tiene desastrosas conse- cuencias personales para los muchos individuos que llegan al mundo con una anatomía sexual que no puede ser fácilmente identificada como de va- rón o de mujer. Tales individuos son etiquetados por los discursos médicos modernos (Migeon, Berkovitz y Brown 1994: 573-715) como intersexuales o hermafroditas. Alrededor de uno de cada 100 nacimientos exhibe alguna anomalía en la diferenciación sexual (Raman-Wilms et al. 1995: 141-148), y alrededor de uno de cada 2 000 es suficientemente diferente como para convertir en problemática la pregunta "¿es un niño o una niña?" (Fausto- Sterling 2000). Desde comienzos de la década de los 60, prácticamente cada gran ciudad de Estados Unidos ha tenido un hospital con un equipo permanente de expertos médicos que intervienen en estos casos para asig- nar —a través de drásticos medios quirúrgicos— un estatus de varón o de mujer a bebés intersexuales. El hecho de que este sistema que preserva las fronteras de las categorías de varón y de mujer haya existido durante tanto tiempo sin despertar críticas ni escrutinio desde ningún flanco indica la incomodidad extrema que despierta la ambigüedad sexual en nuestra cul- tura. Las cirugías genitales pediátricas convierten en literal lo que de otra forma podría ser considerado un ejercicio teórico: el intento de producción 1 Tomado de El eje del mal es heterosexual / Figuraciones, movimientos y prácticas feministas queer, compilado por Carmen Romero Bachiller, Silvia García Dauder y Carlos Bargueiras Martínez (Grupo de Trabajo Queer), Madrid, 2005.
    [Show full text]
  • Shadow Report to the 6 National Report
    Shadow Report To the 6th National Report of the Federal Republic of Germany On the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Compiled by: Verein Intersexuelle Menschen e.V. / XY-Frauen Association of Intersexual People / XY-Women Lucie G.Veith Neu Wulmstorf [email protected] Sarah Luzia Hassel-Reusing Wuppertal [email protected] Claudia J. Kreuzer Trier [email protected] Editor Intersexuelle Menschen e.V. c/o A.Kumst Slebuschstieg 6 20537 Hamburg Authors Lucie G. Veith, Sarah Luzia Hassel-Reusing , Claudia J. Kreuzer English translation Maggie T. Dunham [email protected] Contact Lucie Veith Postweg 11 21629 Neu Wulmstorf [email protected] Date July 2nd 2008 2 2 Contents Foreword / Executive Summary …………………………………………………. 5 Questions to the German Government …………………………………………. 7 1. Preamble and Article 1-5 CEDAW …………………………………………… 9 1.1 Definition - What is Intersexuality? …………………………………………… 9 1.2 Denial and Ignorance of the German Government …………………………… 10 2. Article 5a 10c (Education) ……………………………………………………... 11 2.1 Prof. Dr. John Money`s Gender Theories and their Violations to Human Rights ………………………………………………………………………….. 11 3. Article 12 (Health) ……………………………………………………………… 12 3.1 Problems in Parents - Child Relations ………………………………………… 12 3.2 Medical Experiments on Human Beings ……………………………………… 13 3.3 List of Human Rights Violations as a Result of the Treatment according to the “Standards” Developed by Prof. Dr. John Money …………… 13 3.3.1 Removal of Gonads (Castration) …………………………………………. 13 3.3.2 Genital Amputation ………………………………………………………. 14 3.3.3 Effective Protection of Rights ……………………………………………. 14 3.3.4 Documentation of Treatment …………………………………………….. 15 3.3.5 Irreversible Genital Surgery of Minors and Adults ……………………… 15 3.3.6 Off–Label Use of Pharmaceuticals ……………………………………….
    [Show full text]
  • Contesting Gender in Popular Culture and Family Law: Middlesex and Other Transgender Tales
    Indiana Law Journal Volume 80 Issue 2 Article 4 Spring 2005 Contesting Gender in Popular Culture and Family Law: Middlesex and Other Transgender Tales Susan Frelich Appleton Washington University in St. Louis, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj Part of the Family Law Commons, and the Sexuality and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Appleton, Susan Frelich (2005) "Contesting Gender in Popular Culture and Family Law: Middlesex and Other Transgender Tales," Indiana Law Journal: Vol. 80 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol80/iss2/4 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Law Journal by an authorized editor of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Contesting Gender in Popular Culture and Family Law: Middlesex and Other Transgender Tales SUSAN FRELICH APPLETON* I. CAL AND His COHORT They're everywhere: transsexuals, intersexed individuals, and others of uncertain gender classification. Transgender issues have come out of the closet as popular culture seems to have discovered a new favorite. Recently, several successful books and movies, not to mention frequent television coverage on both talk shows and science programs, have introduced the public to numerous ordinary people whose very existence challenges the notion that sex and gender provide life's fundamental organizing principles. In turn, the law's reliance on strict sex-based categories becomes increasingly fragile, indeed too fragile to withstand challenges to marriage laws requiring a male and a female.
    [Show full text]