Intersexy
In a world that is obsessed with normality and fitting into social standards it is inevitable to deny that gender is among one of the most disputable socially constructed issues. From the beginning of time it seems that society has done a hell of a job of fitting people into tightly knitted profiles of what their gender should be and what said gender should look like. In Frey Brown’s “On the Social Construction of Sex”, she describes that sex assignment is determined by gender. Meaning that an individual is determined to be male or female based on the genitalia that is most “dominant” according to societal expectation. That is to say, males are considered males because they a born with male genitalia, a penis. Females are considered females because they are born with female genitalia, a vagina. However the biggest fault in this logic becomes apparent when an individual is born with both. What binary gender do the qualify to fit under then?
When this happens to occur parents are often pressured by doctors and societal standards to pick a sex for their child. As if it were that simple. Unfortunately, as Brown mentions “The first thing that typically happens is that this situation is declared to be a medical emergency” even though there are little to no health risks. Confused parents are often told that they are at liberty to choose the sex of their child and that anything impeding this decision can be easily fixed through surgeries and hormonal treatments. The problem is that it is not uncommon for an intersex individual to grow up feeling out of place in the gender that was chosen for them. They struggle with identifying with the body the find themselves in. Children are forced to act according to the characteristics that are associated with their assigned sex, characteristics that oftentimes contradict their natural ones. These gestures and attributes are those that are enforced and expected by societal and cultural norms. However, when an individual refuses to act according to these norms the blame is almost always placed on them. They are treated unfairly over something they never had control over.
The majority of individuals that are born as intersex are never given a choice in regards to their sexual assignments. Their basic rights as human beings are taken from them the moment they are born. Doctors and parents should not be seeking to remove and take away anything that is not causing an obvious and immediate health risk. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. It should be as simple as that however, society has not failed to convince people that in order to live a “normal” life you must fit into the unrealistic expectations that our culture has set. We live in constant ignorance. We would rather force our child to live in a body that they cannot feel a connection to rather than get educated about what it really means to be an intersex individual. We would rather watch our child live a life of conformity than to teach them the value and the importance of being different. We would rather allow society to tell us how to raise our children than to show society that it has no control over how our child decides to live their life.
Society and the media should spend less time criticizing and ostracizing that which they do not understand and instead spend more time encouraging people to get educated about the things they question and most times cannot comprehend. It is time to move past the ignorance and gain some type of enlightenment when it comes to this topic. Be proud of who you are and as the individuals in this video have put it, there is nothing wrong with being “intersexy” and proud.
