On intersex erasure and genital "mutilation"

[la_vie_noire]

Kynn very well points on the cisprivilege that is going on with this outrage over "genital mutilation". TRIGGER WARNING: POST TALKS ABOUT GENITAL RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY.

It's really an intersex issue that everyone is choosing to forget.

Here is a wonderful anonymous comment that points a lot of the issues here and everybody who is not an intersex person should read. Because as informative and useful lizardspots's post is with all the mess that this has become, it also reeks of cis privilege:

Children should be allowed to decide for themselves if they want genital reconstructive surgery, and which gender identity they wish to align themselves with. While doctors may be right in some cases, in a large number they are not, particularly because they decide the child's gender identity largely based on the size of the cliterophallus. Most cases have nothing to do with the chromosomes of the child and everything to do with the heterocentric notion that the child, if allowed to be 'male' will have an unhealthy sexual life because his penis will not be able to pleasure a woman because it is too small.

It is far, far more traumatizing to be given a gender identity you do not want and to have your genitals hacked apart before you are really cognizant of them as an adult. Many, many intersexed could have had much happier lives with genitals closer to those that they really wanted, and happier childhoods without the pressure to conform to an applied gender identity that did not fit them. This also touches on transphobia, because many people cannot deal with the idea that a child should be free to choose what gender they ascribe to. Contrary to what may be a common belief, if a child is given guidance about the nature of their genitals, they'll deal with it pretty well. Children are really more flexible and strong than most people given them credit for.

Also people? Terms like "normal" and "anormal" aren't neccesarily "neutral," "right" or devoid of any demeaning/discriminating connotation just because they are used regularly in medicine. God knows that in this context, with intersex issues, they are definitely not that.

Something about scientists: most of them are privileged people who don't live completely dissociated from their environment.

Comments

[bell]

Also, I am reading the discussion in lizardspot's posts, and the defense of offensive medical language ("normal," "true," etc) is annoying me. Perhaps these terms have specific meanings in medicine, but they also carry the pejorative connotations from other uses of the same word-- and I wouldn't be surprised if the medical terms either came from or influenced the pejorative language. Given that doctors have so much control over a person, and given that doctors can carry harmful notions just as much as anyone else (thinking, for example, that a child must fit binary sex standards), I do think it's important to be as careful as possible with medical terminology.