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Case Study Intersex
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I was an interesting case study for them, an experiment. page 67
This really got me thinking.
As a not intersex person I ha..."
Well, that really is a thing - many intersex people remember doctors poking at them, a doctor who has seen them for 5 minutes knowing more about them than they themselves...
When the first generation of intersex people grew up that was affected by surgery, they found themselves in medical books, with black bars before their eyes, but they read their case studies and added 1 and 2 together...
It's horrible...
Mod
Current medical procedures were introduced in the late 50s, early 60s, so of course there are hardly any persons with variations in sex characteristics left who haven't at some point in their life had interventions from the medical complex.
What was the population size again of the intersex community? 3%? Just imagining how many people have been hurt by the medical community....
Mod
Just imagining how many people have been hurt by the medical community...."
1,7% - now, not everyone in this figure will be harmed by doctors - mainly because of its wide definition - again, people can be intersex and find out only when they have problems to conceive for example. I've heard this number would be 3 million Americans (and nearly all of them would be subject to harm in some way)
Now, taking the much narrower definition of visible at birth - 1 in 2000, that is still 162.500 (but then again the real number will be much closer to the 3 million than to the 162.500)
still too many hurt and abused by the medical community
Mod
I know! When I heard the 3 million figure, I was really taken back, I mean, me coming from Austria that would be nearly every third person here...
3 million is so many!!!
Mod
Nadine, because you write you aren't intersex: We tend to use endosex or dyadic for people who aren't intersex.
Second thing: Nobody knows with certainty what their hormone levels or chromosomes are... unless they got them tested. There's a probability that it could be one thing (having XY chromosomes for example, in most cases affiliated with a male body), but unless you got them tested, you can't say with certainty.
In the end, the whole thing that got us in the situation we are in today, is the idea that every human body is either male or female, and if they are not completely female or male then they are an underdeveloped male of some sort. <- Yes, this is really terminology that was used and until quite recently at that.
That's how they came up with the term "Disorders of Sex Development", a despicable term that I don't know any intersex person using for themselves.
What got us finally here is the experiment of Dr. John Money, who was of the opinion that gender is totally a question of nurture and not nature, in the nature vs nurture debate:
He made a horrible experiment with 2 twins, where one of them was circumcised and castrated. In the end, both twins died by suicide.
The problem is hardly ever a medical one, and if so, then of course medical treatment is necessary. What is the problem is the understanding that every body that isn't "male" or "female" is wrong and this pathologizing attitude and the resulting pathologizing language and treatment hurts us far more, than being intersex.
I was an interesting case study for them, an experiment. page 67
This really got me thinking.
As a not intersex person I have a hard time to imagine being kind of an trial patient for countless doctors. This must be horrifying, especially for children.
But if you follow Archie’s story, Doctors seem to have a hard time finding reliable sources and studies about intersex. So they try to ‘make the most’ out of the patients they have.