And for those of you kinda between...
Sep. 24th, 2006 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lsandersonWhat if It’s (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?
By ELIZABETH WEIL
By ELIZABETH WEIL
When Brian Sullivan — the baby who would before age 2 become Bonnie Sullivan and 36 years later become Cheryl Chase — was born in New Jersey on Aug. 14, 1956, doctors kept his mother, a Catholic housewife, sedated for three days until they could decide what to tell her. Sullivan was born with ambiguous genitals, or as Chase now describes them, with genitals that looked “like a little parkerhouse roll with a cleft in the middle and a little nubbin forward.” Sullivan lived as a boy for 18 months, until doctors at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan performed exploratory surgery, found a uterus and ovotestes (gonads containing both ovarian and testicular tissue) and told the Sullivans they’d made a mistake: Brian, a true hermaphrodite in the medical terminology of the day, was actually a girl. Brian was renamed Bonnie, her “nubbin” (which was either a small penis or a large clitoris) was entirely removed and doctors counseled the family to throw away all pictures of Brian, move to a new town and get on with their lives. The Sullivans did that as best they could. They eventually relocated, had three more children and didn’t speak of the circumstances around their eldest child’s birth for many years. As Chase told me recently, “The doctors promised my parents if they did that” — shielded her from her medical history — “that I’d grow up normal, happy, heterosexual and give them grandchildren.” More
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 04:30 pm (UTC)Now, if we lived in a sane society, they would be allowed to mature and choose for themselves.
Unfortunately, ignorant or confused but well-meaning doctors and parents make the decision for the new born.
Now society might think 50% might be justifiable.
Why not wait a few years and shoot for 100%?
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 05:09 pm (UTC)I think the heart of the whole thing is here:
"we perform questionable medical procedures on certain patients, like intersex people and conjoined twins, when we consider those patients to be less than human."
"We consider"--as if our personal mental quirks gave us the right to alter the bodies of other people--people unable to speak for themselves--so that we are more comfortable looking at them. What needs to be changed is our vision, not their bodies.
I can hardly express how much this upsets me.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 08:09 pm (UTC)Admittedly, in some extreme cases the separation doesn't work; I seem to recall a case last year (though I don't remember all of the details) in which two infant girls joined at the head didn't survive, but that could just be because the shared organ in that case was a section of the brain.
My point is, with intersex children, it makes perfect sense to me to leave them as-is until they're old enough to decide for themselves (or not, as the case may be). But conjoined twins seem to often be better off if they're separated.
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Date: 2006-09-24 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 10:27 pm (UTC)B
no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 01:31 am (UTC)