Intersexed - There Is No Clear Line - Research Paper Example

An intersex individual is someone with male and female genetic traits. This can take place by several different ways. An individual with XY chromosomes can be insensitive to testosterone. Various groups of cells within the same individual’s body can have variations in their genetic sexual characteristics, identified as mosaicism. An individual can have XXY chromosomes instead of the usual XY or XX. There is nothing strange regarding this. It is all part of the innate distinction within human beings. However, there is no definite dividing line between who is intersexed and who is not. Everyone has both male, as well as female traits (Kessler, 1998). Every male has a female body when exist in the womb. Testosterone is believed to be the male hormone and estrogen is believed to be the female hormone, although every human being generates both. The prevailing perceptive of genetic sexual category in the society is that the entire human beings are either male or female: there is not anything in between. The presence of intersex individuals exposes the inaccuracy of this much unsophisticated concept. It depicts that genetic sexual category is a continuum (Ryle, 2011). The dual perceptive of sexual characteristics is surely not widespread in different societies. Outside the West, a lot of of the world’s inhabitants have a lot more sympathetic, refined as well as practical view. The Bugis community within Indonesia identifies five different genders. They consider intersex citizens, or “Bissu”, as a legal “third sex”. Instead of being belittled, Bissu are honored as clerics. They are recognized to be a grouping of the other four genders, and are consequently capable to intercede among them in holy ritual (Reis, 2009). When someone first observes an individual, he runs a mental sum of traits that ultimately lead him to judge that individual as male or female. People have a tendency to hold the androgynous responsible for not providing them a sufficient amount indications. “Many of the people will react in a way such as, why do you have to dress like a boy, and wear your hair like that. People do not know what you are! Alternatively, what is the matter with you? You walk like a girl, you throw a ball like a girl, and what are you anyway” (Preves, 2003). Gender eccentricity is the main source of social calumny people face as gay, lesbian and transgender, and intersexed. One out of every 100 individuals has some kind of physical, genetic or endocrinological trait that makes them not completely male or female. “We are called sexually ambiguous, but that implies that our “true” sexual category is obscured by some malformation and can be divined with proper testing and subsequently corrected. Our truth does not lie in what we might have been if we were not what we are. It lies in what we are. What we are is a little bit of male and a little bit of female but not exactly either” (Kessler, 1998). The late 19th and 20th centuries witness the surfacing of medical influence in terms of sexual point of reference, gender and sexual characteristics. Sex and gender turns out to be medicalized and the public turned to surgeons to sort out hermaphrodites or the intersexed, transsexuals, and homosexuals. Progress in hormonal treatment as well as plastic surgery united with fright and prejudice made it feasible as well as preferable to make sexually indistinct children to have a proper sexual identity, as a result defending the vision that all individuals are, or should be male or female. Fabrication, apprehension, confidentiality, and embarrassment are the characteristics of an intersexed individual’s early days. If they are fortunate enough, they runaway with their bodies intact. Even though intersex hardly ever presents a medical problem that needs surgical construction or reconstruction, the majority of intersexed children born between 1960 and 1980 were put through genital surgery, obviously without their approval, without entire revelation to parents, and with no consideration for the loss of feeling, function, or suitability of an imposed gender assignment. Medication never formed males or females out of the intersexed. It merely produced intersexed individuals who had been surgically changed to appear somewhat like males or females. Sex reassignment surgical procedure on kids does not create genitals that function or seem normal (Sytsma, 2010). Disturbing, excruciating, scarring several surgeries all through early days have formed insensitive bodies with surgical consequences as well as devastating emotional issues. A number of such individuals never develop secondary sex traits that let them to move ahead successfully in their given sexual characteristics. Many never recognized as the gender they were assigned and a few find it unfeasible to categorize with males or females. As the intersexed come into sight from invisibility, one will increasingly take notice of the claim that they should allowed to live in their own bodies. Intersexed individuals want independence in their bodies, their characters and their lives. They are no longer ready to believe that “Just be yourself does not include them” (Preves, 2003). There are as a lot of ways to be intersexed as one can see. A few of them are genetic mixtures. Such as XXYY, XXXY, X0, on Chromosome 46 and/or 47 just to mention about few. A few of them have singular genetic groupings throughout their bodies. A few of them appear quite similar to normal males or females. The most regular type of intersex is sourced by congenital adrenal hyperplasia. “Adrenal glands excrete sex hormones, as do gonads. When they go on overdrive in an XX fetus, the fetus virilizes in unstable levels”. Several congenital adrenal hyperplasia individuals have female fertility. “As an XX fetus is exposed to androgenic (male) hormones that have been taken by the mother the same sort of thing happens” (Sytsma, 2010). At some point in the late 1950s, a hormone known as Progestin was prescribed for females for certain medical conditions. Although it did not actually help with any of those medical conditions but it did create a lot of intersexed children (Sytsma, 2010). Many of such people who are transexed, transsexual or even transgendered may categorize as intersex. To them it is just a fact of their characters. They are not on the lookout for support from general practitioners, officials or political campaigners, who all from time to time believe they have the right to characterize intersexed people. Neither are they in search of a little pity or gain for being intersex (Sytsma, 2010). Their prevailing point of views of sexual characteristics as well as gender frames Intersex as a medical irregularity. Nonetheless, by means of sociology, one can appreciate this condition more clearly. Intellectuals oppose the incidence of children born with some type of Intersex situation. “Biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000, pp. 18-23) recommended that Intersex take place at a rate of 1 in 2,000 births; however, other latest estimations range from 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000”. Either way, this rate is quite low. Whatever the case may be, the society has difficulty understanding that these differences in sexual characteristics might be part of the diversity as a species. Just as sexual orientation - despite the fact that people have trouble with that one as well - or other human traits that vary biological sex actually can as well. One accepts that hair and eye color differs and that those traits have no implied meaning yet he cannot seem to do the same for biological sex (Reis, 2009). Sociologically, perceiving how the cultural standards support one class over another for particular sorts of characteristics reveals not just who has authority in this culture but also how people attribute meaning (Preves, 2003). During the last few years, clusters of intersexed persons have formed. The Intersex Society of North America has in fact shut their doors but their website is still a helpful resource. One of the ISNA organizers, Cheryl Chase, has a powerful presence on the internet. Organization Intersex International is a dynamic group giving perception, as well as resources for individuals who are part of the intersexed group of people or those who would like to find out more (Reis, 2009). Sociologically speaking, as the experiences of intersexed individuals carry on to be made public others will speak their mind and confront the idea of sexual characteristics, which eliminates individuals who do not clearly fit into one group or another. The earliest sociologist to put efforts on the notion of intersexuality was “Harold Garfinkel during 1967 by means of a technique taken from sociological phenomenology, and he termed it as ethnomethodology” (Preves, 2003). He based his study on the daily commonsense perceptive of Agnes, a female experiencing social as well as surgical gender reassignment. Ethnomethodology was as well applied during 1978 by Kessler and McKenna (Preves, 2003), who declare that, while sexual characteristics can be observed as a social success, cross-cultural studies consider gender as challenging as they emphasize on how it is generally regarded as a actuality, when it can be shown to be assembled in special methods. They spot to diverse cultural approaches to gender functions, and how hermaphrodites as well as berdaches are integrated within society, as troublesome to fixed ideas regarding sexual characteristics, sex and gender functions (Preves, 2003). They argue that what people identify about sexual characteristics is stranded in the daily social structure of a world of two sexual characteristics, where sexual characteristics acknowledgment appears to be more significant as compared to gender segregation (Ryle, 2011). “Intersex was discussed on British TV for the first time in 1966, and became a topic of interest for broadcast TV and radio in the United States and other countries from 1989” (Preves, 2003). References Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). “The Five Senses Revisited.” Sciences. Volume 40, Issue 4, pp. 18-23. Kessler, S. J. (1998). Lessons from the Intersexed. Rutgers University Press. Preves, S. E. (2003). Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self. Rutgers University Press. Reis, E. (2009). Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Ryle, R. (2011). Questioning Gender: A Sociological Exploration. Pine Forge Press. Sytsma, S. E. (2010). Ethics and Intersex. Springer. Read More