I thought Fausto-Sterling’s writing in “Of Gender and Genitals” and “Should There Only Be Two Sexes” developed strong ideas in the reader. Fausto-Sterling did a great job at presenting facts in addition to voicing her own opinion. Of course, her opinion does not go unnoticed, however by providing factual information I was able to significantly increase my knowledge on intersexes. In “Of Gender and Genitals”, Fausto-Sterling discusses the surgical practice of doctors transforming intersex infants. When infants are born with XX chromosomes and an enlarged clitoris and testes, the male genitalia are often converted to female genitalia. Fausto-Sterling provides details that tell you how the doctors sometimes will go ahead with these surgeries without telling the parents. Doctors defend this procedure by saying that if the parents truly knew, this would affect their gender identity in society. Parents would also have trouble naturally nurturing their child in to their specific gender identity. In the case of an intersex infant—1.7% of 100—doctors ill-inform the parents by not allowing time for the parents to consult with other families who have experienced an intersex child. Fausto-Sterling argues the necessity of conducting surgery on the genitals of an infant saying, “doctors may choose to remove a small penis at birth and create a child, even though that penis may have grown to “normal” size at puberty” (58). Many cases provide that doctors will perform surgery on a female infant’s clitoris if it is “too big” and on a male infant’s penis if it is “too small”. In both cases, the child would be reconstructed to be a “normal” girl. Most women who have had this surgery performed have complained of the impossibility of a clitoral orgasm. These women, who were intersex as infants, are horrified that the doctors constricted them for the rest of their lives when no surgery proved necessary. Fausto-Sterling argues that genitalia reconstruction should only be performed when life-threatening; not because of it’s appearance to society. Money and Hampsons researched the story of an infant boy who was reconstructed to be a girl and had an identical twin brother. John/Joan was nurtured as a girl and loved to do “girly” things. Money argued that because of Joan’s ability to function in the gender of a girl, infants were born neutral to sex. Sex was not identified until gender identity identified their sex for them. Diamond argues that sex is innately biological and is determined in the infant’s brain before birth. Joan ended up feeling drawn to being a male as she got older. Diamond believed this case of John/Joan/John falsified Money’s statement of nurturing sex and “sex neutrality” at birth.
The chapter “Should There Only Be Two Sexes” deals with issue of constructing sex to fit in to one of the two categories of sex. Fausto-Sterling argues that this infant, reconstruction of sex reiterates that there are only TWO sexes. She also argues that the only reason doctors feel the need for each infant to have a definite sex is because of a gender system that WE created. She believes that nature did not create these gender identities and that society constructed gender identities. I thought it was extremely interesting how doctors are trying to avoid a child facing psychological hardships by genitalia surgery. From the personal experiences in the chapter, all of them felt more psychological pain because of the scarring surgeries and the visits to the hospital to be inspected by researchers, interns and students. Fausto-Sterling says, “Many intersexual adults report that repeated genital examinations, often with photographs and a parade of medical students and interns, constitute one of their most painful childhood memories” (86). Many of these intersex people struggled with the fact that their parents and doctors have lied to them for most of their lives. Fausto-Sterling concludes the chapter with proposing the question of why sex should be identified in the first place. Why do you other people need to know the sex that you identify with? She says, “If cultural genitals counted for more than physical genitals, many of the dilemmas just described could be easily resolved” (113). This statement is extremely powerful and sets a platform for what Fausto-Sterling believes.
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