Intersex

by Catherine Harper

Intersex' is the condition whereby an individual is born with biological features that are simultaneously perceived as male and female. Ranging from the ambiguous genitalia of the true 'hermaphrodite' to the 'mildly or internally intersexed', the condition may be as common as cleft palate. Like cleft palate, it is hidden and surgically altered, but for very different reasons. This important book draws heavily on the personal testimony of intersexed individuals, their loved ones, and medical carers. The impact of early sex-assignment surgery on an individual's later life is examined within the context of ethical and clinical questions. Harper challenges the conventional and radical 'treatment' of intersexuality through non-consensual infant sex-assignment surgery. In doing so she exposes powerful myths, taboos, and constructions of gender - the perfect phallus, a bi-polar model of gender and the infallibility of medical decisions. Handling sensitive material with care, this book deepens our understanding of a condition that has itself only been medically understood in recent years.

Genres: Nonfiction, Intersex

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2007

Reviews

[Julie Bozza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book with a whole lot of baggage of my own, which I'm not sure belongs in a review.

Harper's book is a good and thorough (as far as I can tell) scholarly overview of what's actually happening out there. Some people - and there are no clear statistics about how many, but perhaps 1 in 1000 - are born with genitals and/or genetics that are ambiguous in terms of whether they are male or female. Recent history shows that medical practitioners and parents (mostly with good intentions, I have to say) have been quick to not only assign a gender to the baby but 'enforce' that with medical interventions that cannot be changed or undone. Sometimes - inevitably - those responsible guess wrong about the gender that the child ultimately identifies as. Often the child and the adult the child becomes have cause to bitterly regret the choices made without their consent.

Personally I heartily wish that our culture didn't place such an emphasis on a binary approach to gender. I don't think the male-female divide can be that simple and clear for anyone. Having said that, though, it's interesting to me that most intersex people do end up identifying with one gender or the other as they grow through childhood and into adulthood. Only a few, it seems (or only a few of the people interviewed for this book), identify as both or as androgynous. So I can't deny that most people identify as male or female (though I would assert there are almost always complexities around the issue even for 'full' females and 'full' males).

This is where some of my baggage comes in. I identify as a person first and foremost, and for much of the time it's irrelevant to me that I'm physically a woman and socially treated as such. So I'm sure that affects my reaction to any discussion of gender and sex.

The thought that society has been so quick to insist on assigning a gender to these children, and then taking irrevocable medical steps to make it so, just horrifies me. The thought that we can't leave such a decision 'on hold' until the person most closely involved gets to make up their own mind, is epically frustrating. Yes, for now we need to protect these children from those in our society who don't or won't understand, and I can see the practical wisdom of starting to raise the child as their 'best-guess' gender, while doing nothing to enforce that that can't be undone - and with the proviso that the child might decide to change that gender later on, or indeed choose a more complex approach to life.

The recommendations made by Diamond, Kipnis and Sigmundson as detailed in this book are therefore very welcome to me, and I can only hope that parents and doctors have the courage to implement them in individual cases.

Harper ends her book with the thought: 'First do no harm.' Amen to that.

[Sasha Wolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

I originally ordered this when I was researching the legal position regarding surgery on intersex children as part of my Master's, but publication was delayed till after my deadline. Harper is a somewhat surprising author on this subject, being an expert in architecture and design and apparently not herself intersex, but she explains that she has been interested in the subject since childhood, when she noticed that an intersex individual in her neighbourhood was being badly treated. The book interweaves an explanation of the medical aspects of the various intersex conditions (plus Klinefelter's and Turner's, which are not unanimously classified as intersex syndromes) with personal accounts from people who live with them. Most of the medical information was familiar to me from my research, although she has slightly more up-to-date information on treatment protocols, but the personal accounts were engaging, and I think this would make a good introduction to the subject for an educated general reader. My only serious criticism would be that Harper appears oddly defensive on the question of how Turner's syndrome should be classified and seems to treat the views of organisations representing individuals with this condition as more authoritative than the views of those representing individuals with Klinefelter's.

[Silyara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful thorough exploration of intersexuality and some of the many, many ways it manifests, some common causes, and a lot of personal testimony on the issues throughout the book. In some ways, it feels a little dated. But honestly, it taught me way more than I knew about this issue, and I would recommend it to anyone curious to learn and understand a bit more.

[Jessye Cohen-Filipic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for a professional book review, so I'm already writing too much about it, but it was not great.

[Kristen]

Good resource for sociology of gender papers :)