Our very own author, Cyclist, blogged the other day about a Very Important Programme* on the subject of intersex births that aired on the BBC.
The show went into great detail about several specific types of Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD is now the preferred scientific/medical term in describing intersex conditions). It included great illustrative graphics (illustrations, animations, ultrasound and laparoscopic photos), and probably more medical information than a lot of doctors got in medical school.
More importantly, though, the program** dealt with the medical ethics issues, societal issues, identity issues and the tremendous mental and emotional stresses caused by fear and rejection. Even more importantly than that, we meet real people who are coping with DSD. People easy for a television audience to relate to in a sympathetic way.
One thing is clear to me. People with DSD are the most important example of why we need to move society away from the notion that "male" and "female" are a rigid binary God-given dichotomy. Intersex births are either proof that gender is a lot more complicated than most people think and that God loves a little variety, or that this version of God does crappy work, and consequently doesn't exist. I'm going with the love choice, myself. As it says in Genesis 1:27 "So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."***
According to that passage, all humans are in God's image, so God must be both male and female. Therefore, to one extent or another, so must we all be. And God loves us.
Now, how to explain this to all the haters out there. In my humble opinion, publicizing, explaining, and demystifying DSD is the only path. It proves beyond any doubt that the too-often religiously-held notion of everyone dividing into purely masculine men and purely feminine women is an unsupportable fantasy.
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* Correct British spelling.
** Simplified American spelling.
*** That's the TNIV. KJV: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
Comments
Thank you for the review of
Thank you for the review of the programme Pippa. I hope eventually some format I can view or purchase will come to the states. It sounds like the programme did a really good job of covering intersex conditions. I am curious where the statistic of 1/50 was derived. Do you recall from the programme where they derived the frequency?
Thanks again.
CaroL
CaroL
One In Fifty
I don't think they gave a source for that, but I seem to remember them saying that the number was inclusive of all known DSD conditions, including the most mild types. I'd guess to get to that number, they'd have to be including some very mild ones which either have no symptoms or are self-correcting in the first few months and not really much of an issue at all, other than to illustrate the frequency.
Interestingly, the Intersex Society of North America website (isna.org) cites the frequency of DSD as 1 in 1500.
Besides the isna.org website, I'd also recommend looking at this 2006 article from the NY Times Magazine on the founder of ISNA.
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I'm not intersexed, or am I?
Overseas viewing
Thanks for the nod, Pippa. I believe one other linked to the same programme on here, but can't check out who while typing this. On one of the two threads, mine or theirs, instructions were posted on how to watch this stuff on the Net in different regions.
That was on yours...
And I was the one who posted them. I already PM'd CaroL a direct link to my comment, with instruction to let me know if she needed instructions for a different browser. By her silence I do not know what to assume has occurred.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
Hatred and binary life
Pippa, the comments about binary, polarised, pigeon-holed world views touched a nerve with me. I rather suspect that there are personalities who simply need to hate, and so they need to slot people into nice and neat us-them categories, to make their hatred easier to direct. There is a very old joke of a man walking down a Belfast street when he is stopped by three masked gunmen. One says to him "Are you Protestant or Catholic?"
"I'm a Jew"
"Aye, but are you a Prod Jew or a Catholic Jew?"