Why is Intersexuality Labeled "Unnatural"?

Why is Intersexuality Labeled "Unnatural"?

 

So many individuals who are identified as intersex at birth are labeled “unnatural” or “monsters” and society has molded us to treat intersexuality as taboo, completely unacceptable and rarely discussed.  An individual that identifies as intersex may have ambiguous genitalia, meaning their reproductive organs may not fit the traditional standards for a female or a male.  For example a baby may be born and determined to be a female and live most of her life that way but an absence of a menstrual cycle could lead doctors to investigate and find that the patient has no ovaries or an increased amount of male hormones.  There are a multitude of different cases of intersexuality and every person’s story is unique.  It was helpful for me to read individuals’ personal accounts of living as an intersex person and what it means for them to gain more insight on the subject.  Katherine’s story involving same-sex intimacies shed light on one particular issue that has been examined for centuries, intersex individuals identifying as homosexual.

Cases such as Katherine’s have been feared by society for centuries.  According to Elizabeth Reis’s book, Bodies in Doubt, the early nineteenth century was the first time individuals born intersex were even considered people.  Before then, “unusual anatomies were seen through the lens of monstrosity” and it was reasoned that God had sent this unnatural creature as a warning or a sign (23).  By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth intersex individuals made the shift from “monstrous” to surgically fixable. 

Doctors saw no way that intersex people could live amongst the rest of the population.  There was virtually no reality for them, when a noticeably intersex baby was born the baby was instantly taken into surgery, sometimes without even telling the parents, and “fixed” so that they displayed only one sex; male or female.  Intersexuality or ambiguous sex was feared at this time especially because women still did not have the right to vote.  Only men voted.  So an individual with an ambiguous sex could stir up significant controversy and ultimately be arrested for deception if they attempted to vote.  Ambiguous sex was also not welcome because it did not fit into mainstream culture.  The gender binary of the society clearly presents only two choices, male or female, and if an individual is unable to conform to one and only one of these identities they can be seen as a danger to the rest of the community.  Individuals in the nineteenth century feared that intersex people would confuse potential mates and could essentially lead to homosexuality, which was not in the question during that period.  As Reis states on page 22, “[Courts] were also suspicious that sexual duality could lead to sexual duplicity – an innocent individual might be seduced into sex with the wrong partner”.  Just from this one sentence it is evident intersex people are labeled the villain, made to seem dangerous and promiscuous “seducing” and deceiving innocent, unaware citizens.

To fix this disruption of normalcy doctors are quick to “solve” the problem by determining the patient's truest, singular sex and immediately proceeding with surgery to fix this seemingly horrible, unnatural misfortune.  Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, doctors cannot just choose a sex for an individual.  Many times doctors would try to fix an individual by removing any ambiguity about their sex and choosing just one, but what if the surgeon chose wrong?  That individual could live the rest of their life feeling incorrect or trapped inside a body that didn’t fit their identity.  Furthermore, why were intersex people seen as unnatural in the first place? In the natural occurring world there are intersex people, no doctor could argue against that.  So why is it that they are immediately pressured into possibly dangerous surgeries by doctors claiming their ambiguous genitalia as unnatural?

It is increasingly surprising to me that a surgical solution to ambiguous genitalia arose during the mid-nineteenth century because, although doctors were becoming more professionalized, there was an absence of anesthesia and ignorance of asepsis. This made surgeries during this time extremely dangerous and sometimes fatal, not to mention excruciatingly painful.  Reis states in her book, "The justification for risky surgeries consistently emphasized social over medical concerns".  In other words, intersex people could live a long, healthy life just like anyone else without these dangerous surgeries but they were still looked at as an absolute necessity.  So again, why is it that surgery was the first and only option for intersex patients?  Why was broader education never an option?  Is the male female binary so tight that there is no room for an individual that falls in between to exist at all?  These are the questions that I ask myself when considering the extraordinarily great lengths that were taken to squeeze intersex individuals into one definitive category; male or female. 

It is truly disappointing to me that it seems we, as a culture can make no room for anyone who slightly disrupts the gender binary.  A contemporary example of the unfortunate exclusion to intersex people is the story of Mokgadi Caster Semenya, a South African Olympian runner who was expelled from races after questions about her gender arose.  Semenya began running during training for soccer and soon discovered her immense talent.  She won her first gold medal in 2008 after running in the World Junior Championship, and from there she only progressed.  Following Semenya’s domination in the 2009 World Championship for women’s running questions were raised about her gender and Semenya was subjected to a gender test.  

Competitors and spectators complained about her masculine features and demanded a test be done to ensure a “rare medical condition” was not granting her an “unfair advantage”.  Though Semenya accomplished a great achievement by taking the gold medal in the women’s 800-meter in 2009 as shown in this video of the race, her achievements were largely overshadowed by the gender scandal.   Competitors complained the race was not fair and she should not have been able to compete with the women.  So my question is, where is Semenya supposed to compete?  Where can she show her extraordinary talent?  Should we completely disregard Semenya, throwing away an exceptional athlete indefinitely because her gender test reported the absence of a womb or ovaries?

This is a question I raise for all intersex people, not just the exceptional athletes like Semenya.  What is gained by a society so utterly exclusive that we do not allow intersex individuals to exist comfortably in our society without pressure to conform via surgery or hormone shots?  In my opinion it is our loss.  Our loss to excluded this amazing runner to participate in women’s or men’s games.  And our loss to ignore many others like Semenya because the slight chance of sexual ambiguity make us uncomfortable.  Society labels these intersex people as unnatural and pressures them to conform, but what is unnatural about them?  Were they not born this way?  In my mind, the unnatural part of intersexuality is the surgeries that are forced upon individuals to manufacture a more acceptable or more bearable person for society’s sake.  It makes us uncomfortable that we cannot determine whether they are male or female by their appearance so we write them off as “weird” or “different”.  And though I believe that the exclusion these individuals face hurts them, I think it hurts us as a society more. 

Reis, Elizabeth. Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. Print.