(Hetero) sexism and pathological medicalization of sex in children and 
Intersex - Sex that dare not speak its name By Curtis E. Hinkle
You can not really say whether a scoop to say that we live in a sexist society. However, just when we think we're making progress in our fight for equality and dignity, we are caught by surprise by the backlash and political force that supports it. We have recently found evidence of this powerful machinery hetero-sexist United States, with the announcement from ISNA, Intersex Society of people in North America, about his adoption of "disorder of sex development" ("Disorder of Sexual Development as DSD" in English). This American organization says that this term would be better for children than the word "intersex" or "intersex" in English.
I recently read an article by Vincent Guillot, an activist from the intersexed community in Europe which is entitled "It's up to us to get out of medical discourse." I applaud this title. It also intersexed adults to speak out against the hetero-sexism disease and its devastating consequences for intersex children. We were children. Doctors and "experts" who speak on our behalf are not always heart to defend our own interests. They are part of a gender machinery which has made tremendous damage to many of us during our childhood, they do not listen to us and they continue to try to control our lives.
The fact that some intersex adults can actually believe that they suffer from a medical condition should not in any way to silence those of us who reject this view of pathological intersex. It was quite possible to use the term "intersex" or "intersex" as an adjective describing a medical condition of formation atypical of a person's sex. The person seeking medical help could get it, with all diagnoses and pathologies associated with the physicians did not typically be male or female. Nobody dictates the way of seeking help for intersex people who felt their bodies as pathological, and nobody would argue they are not entitled to receive as well. But the situation has radically changed with the creation of the acronym "DSD" for "disorder of sex development." The latter tends to stigmatize a large segment of the intersex community because of its purely pathological, sexist and demeaning to consider intersex people. We have a duty to protect the children of a policy as destructive, sexist, stigmatizing which is vigorously defended by our medical institutions, legal and social issues.
close look at this term. It may help us understand the mentality of those who chose to adopt it to talk about defenseless children. First they say that the child has a disorder. Merck is the editor of one of the most widely used medical reference in the United States. Here is the definition of a disability after their website: "a disorder or abnormal operation, a physical or mental disease" [1]. Since the day of birth, and more even before his birth, an intersexed child is labeled as abnormal or disturbed because they would have received a malfunction or a physical disease. This unbalanced or abnormal operation is based on centuries of reduction of their reproductive function. Set a child on the sole basis for its future reproductive and sexual functioning is clearly sexist and certainly something that the children in question would not understand because they have no experience of what it means to be an adult sexually mature. This sexualized children from their birth and sends the message that their true goal in life is to have a body capable of functioning in a heterosexual relationship whose main purpose is reproduction, even though it is unlikely that any treatment they will ever happen again. The treatments imposed on them is intended to enable them to simulate heterosexual activity later in life, even though it is possible that this does not affect them, depending on how they grow and how they integrate their sexuality (or lack of interest in sex). It is not acceptable to assume that all children will feel the desire to have heterosexual relationships as adults. This often makes them even more confused and ashamed because they are treated to a fault (ie failure to be born with the need for a reproductive function, and thus heterosexual).
Their body becomes a destabilizing element for sexist institutions and young child is locked in a series of speeches about who he / she is the appearance that his body should have in order to have any hope of register in the system. But my questions are: Is all this really helps the child? Is this child really is unbalanced or abnormal? Does all this really requires intervention
Medical ? What is really wrong about the body of intersex children? Why is it necessary to "correct" the child? I think the answer to all these questions lies in the profoundly sexist and heterosexist ideology that controls our society and has nothing to do with the real interests of children. She cares only for the protection of traditional institutions of our society. The real disorder or disturbance is not in the body of intersex children, it is the ideology of the society in which the child will live and who have legitimate use a wide range of biomedical technologies to impose an order that did nothing natural, which was established as an obvious and, therefore, legitimate all necessary measures to require all persons who fail to comply not the traditional division of gender and all human beings between men and women.
Blurring the arbitrary division between two categories of people is a threat to a heterosexist structure that can not live by imposing a dichotomy between men and women who become two social categories, almost two classes separately. Power inequalities between members of these categories are not considered a danger. No, they are helpless children who become the battlefield and must pay a very high price simply because they are born with a body that involves arbitrary categories and gender who have no legitimacy to be required for this system hetero-sexist work. The second term of the term "DSD" with which some are trying to replace the word "intersex" is "sex". It is used to denote the sex that dare not speak its own name. The following definition is a fairly good description of what most people mean when they use this word:
"A biological construction, based on biological characteristics that make possible the reproduction" (from Krieger N. A Glossary for Social Epidemiology, J Epidemiol Community Health 2001; 55:693-700.)
The hetero-normative character This definition is obvious. She said that according to a biological perspective, humans are essentially dimorphic. But even from a strictly biological perspective, gender can not be defined as. Furthermore, biology is just one of the disciplines which deals with the human body and gender. From a genetic standpoint, sex in human beings is much more complex. Genetic variation between people who they are not men or women "standard" are so many in fact few people are really the criteria, even physically. The mere fact of using the terms "male" and "female" when referring to genetic markers poses serious problems because what is known as a marker "male" does not necessarily lead to sex, etc.. formulaic character of an ideology and artificial and arbitrary binarism becomes even more evident when one looks at the genetic components of sex. The message that many intersex children hear is that sex is in itself a disorder, disability and physical disease. This does absolutely nothing to alleviate the stigma associated with being intersex. In fact, it only increase it, once again making sure that intersexuality is sex that dare not speak its name. Like being a hermaphrodite-e was so humiliating, we are told now that the term "intersex" is too "political" to be used when speaking of a child (see the article by ISNA describing why this organization believes that it is so [2]). But actually what is wrong with the fact not be clearly male or female? We are really impossible to love a child who does not meet these criteria artificial? Having red hair is not common, but that is perfectly natural to be born and, as is perfectly natural that children are born intersexed, and it does not usually require more medical treatment than to be born with red hair. Ie none. And all children, whether born with red hair or intersex need the same love and unconditional acceptance of same by their parents. Deny your identity and refuse to admit that you are intersex is not really loving welcome and unconditional. And this has serious consequences for the child. Legally, we have two sexes "official". This system of law is necessary to maintain a patriarchal structure and hetero-sexist. But there is nothing natural. It is imposed politically and socially and intersex children pay a terrible price to reveal what is obvious, however, that this distinction between two almost contradictory gender is arbitrary. These children have the misfortune of being born with a sex that dare not speak its name, they are intersexed. The last term "diagnosis" imposed on young children is "development". This term is used even though the term "differentiation" is more appropriate given that what doctors consider it a disorder is that the fetus has not differentiated "correctly" in a boy or a girl. The word "differentiation" is more appropriate if the goal is to impose "differences" between men and women stringent. Using the word "development" does obscure things - as if the supporters of "DSD" trying to say that the problem is just that reproductive tissues have not developed properly so that the problem is that by its mere existence, the child defies strict and arbitrary divisions between people that we rank among men and those that we rank among the women. This can be seen clearly if we examine the manner in which a child born with a big penis is processed. It is very unlikely to be perceived as having a disorder of sexual development, even though his sexual organs would be "overdeveloped" compared to other children. In fact, having a big penis does not endanger the distinctions between legal and sexist men and women. Such a child would suffer no treatment. The problem in the eyes of the entourage of intersex children is they are not clearly differentiated as boys or as girls, and it has nothing to do with development, underdevelopment or overdevelopment. I read an interesting comment by an activist who dealt particularly compelling connotations of the word "development" and its reasoning was particularly meaningful. The use of this term tends to believe that the child is not fully developed. Such a statement is not particularly liberating when applied to children.
It tends more to believe that those of us who have not developed into boys are just full of children and people who have only partially developed. This prevents any person who identifies as a man but that does not correspond at all points in the standards of that class to join, even though many of us have an identity and a man's life. (and this is where we find most clearly an ideology of tens of centuries old in the minds of people so called at the forefront of scientific research).
I think the people in the intersex community who disagree with the politicization of gender intersex (and their own bodies) have the right to denounce it. Others also have the right to speak on behalf of children, but this right may be forfeited by a few. Intersex children to believe they are dysfunctional, distorted, or the wrong sex and only partially developed does not help at all. We must dare to speak on their behalf, we must dare to talk about sex that dare not speak its name, that of intersex children.
[1] The definition of Merck can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/7flku [2] "Parents and doctors are not going to want to Give a Child With A Label Meaning politicized. " article ISNA's explaining why they use the term DSD (Disorder of Sex Developtment) can be found at:
http://www.isna.org/node/1066
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