Hermaphrodites have throughout history been in the center of mythology, scandal, and the perverse fascination of the public eye. They have been misunderstood and persecuted for centuries by those who are confused by their ambiguous genitalia. Today, such people possessing to some degree both male and female genitalia are referred to as "intersex". Professor Anne Fausto-Sterling, author of Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, claims that somewhere between 1.7 and 4% of human births are intersexual of some form. (Fausto-Sterling. 2000.) This number differs based on the definition of intersex and the location.
[...] With a five sex system, parents and doctors would not feel the pressure of having to perform immediate surgery and assign sex to a child who may regret it in the future. Instead, doctors could focus their attention from conforming intersex children to society to treating the possibly life threatening conditions that can accompany intersex development such as hernias, gonadal tumors, and salt imbalance caused by adrenal malfunction. (Fausto-Sterling. 1993.) Gender reassignment surgeries are available to those who desire it but this five sex system would also allow for some to choose to live as active intersex individuals. [...]
[...] The bestselling novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides tells the story of a young girl who suffers from a 5-alpha-reductase deficiency and in puberty develops as a male. Simon LeVay explains this deficiency in his book The Sexual Brain. The enzyme 5-alpha-reductase is responsible for the conversion of testosterone into the more potent androgen dihydrotestosterone. It is the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone that permits the external genitalia to differentiate in the male direction during a developmental period when testosterone levels are fairly low. [...]
[...] One of the doctors stated that if the baby's phallus responded to male hormones by growing, this was a criterion to designate the baby a boy. The baby did not respond in this way and they started to discuss the possibility of making the child a girl, which meant widening the vagina, removing the testicles and in puberty giving female hormones. Still later, however, they saw a reaction to the testosterone that the child had been given. The phallus had grown a little. [...]
[...] Some psychologists theorize that it is nurture rather than nature that determines sex and believe that children are basically ambiguous for the first eighteen months of life. It was this theory that spawned one of the most infamous sex assignment cases. In the 1960's a set of twin boys were born. One of the twins, Bruce, had complications with his circumcision. The doctors used a laser rather than a simple knife and burned off most of Bruce's penis. His parents were distressed and confused and psychologist John Money convinced them that it would be in Bruce's best interest to raise him as a girl. [...]
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