Gendering of Intersex Individuals

Throughout our conversations about intersex individuals one concept that caught my attention was the facet of choosing how to raise the individual throughout their adolescence. A child who is born with ambiguous genitalia was either raised as a boy or a girl. This caused conflict within myself because it makes a situation that is more grey than the Meadville sky into a black or white situation. If a child is born as what society would see as "normal" it's easy to raise that child compared to an ambiguous child. If it is a boy you paint his room blue, buy him tonka trucks, water guns, a skateboard, or if its a girl you paint her room pink, buy her dolls, an easy bake oven, and basically anything pink for that matter. When it comes to an intersex child however things are not that simple. There is no color designated for a child with ambiguous genitalia. There are no toys designated for a child with ambiguous genitalia. Our country creates such a stressful and often hostile environment to individuals that are different than their own. It seems almost impossible to address this issue because being intersex is taboo, so creating an environment and raising a child as intersex instead of just a boy or girl cannot and should not be done because it's not normal. This to me is not the way to handle the situation, I feel like one should be raised as an intersex individual and not be persuaded one way or another to become either a boy or a girl. In Chapter 5 of Reis' book there is example of an intersex individual being raised as a girl but feeling like a boy, but also an example of the ambiguous genitalia being predominantly male but the individual was raised female and felt female the whole time. These examples show that choosing the path of raising the child as being either boy or girl cannot be determined by the predominant parts or by decision of the parents. When an individual is born regardless of that child is ambiguous or not their brain knows literally zero about anything at all. It does not know if it is male, female, or ambiguous. It does not know the cultural construction of gender in America, or the fact that it is in America at all for that matter. The point I am getting at is that from that moment on that child will be learning about the world around them and everything that is constructed in their brain is new to them. They don't know that it is culturally taboo for an individual to be intersex, so why make it be? If a child is born intersex they should be taught that they are normal the way they are even though they don't fit into a boy or girl category. The same goes both ways for children who are born either a boy or a girl, they should be taught that being intersex is a mutation and there is nothing abnormal about that at all.

How should we go from here? Well from what I have learned about from this book and other articles around the internet is that very few individuals choose to remain intersex and opt for a surgery to change them to one sex or the other. This is completely alright of course, but the process of what makes them choose their decision is my qualm. As a heterosexual male it is near impossible to put myself into one of those individuals shoes to try an make a decision like that. As a child I feel like they know no difference between them and other individuals, everyone is just kids to them. Its when the parents influence them to either dress or act like a boy or a girl to try and guide the childs' path is what makes me uneasy. But like I said earlier in this blog, there is no way to dress an ambiguous child that is technically correct because there is only boy and girl clothes. It is my opinion that the child should have the decision on how to dress, what toys to play with, and how to act to make the choice they feel most comfortable with. They can choose to become a boy, girl, or stay ambiguous, whatever that individual wants and really feels should be the course of action.