In A Heartbreaking Instant, A Chinese Man Tries To Kill His Intersex Baby, Twice

By Cake Staff:

China may have had one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but when it comes to its stance on LGBTQ people, it demonstrates an almost medieval stagnation. Even though one in every 2,000 children are born with sex characteristics that are neither typically ‘male’ or ‘female,’ Chinese society still views them as abnormal. And since May of this year, a father in Beijing has already made two attempts on his intersex infant’s life.

Yang Xiaoqing and her husband were told that their newborn had an “atrophic sex organ” and was “neither a boy nor a girl.”

The husband’s immediate impulse was to label the child a ‘monster’ and suffocate it. His wife intervened on two occasions, and when he couldn’t stomach doing it a third time, his father took over, abandoning the child outside the village. The culturally sanctioned murder of newborn children who do not match up to their parents’ expectation is not new, and nor is it specific to Chinese society.

In India, where son-preference is rampant, the misuse of sex determination technology has helped already occurring female infanticide to advance into female feticide. Other methods have also been used. As recently as May this year, a three-day-old girl was abandoned at a metro station. Children born with disabilities are equally vulnerable.

For intersex children, the alternative to murder is the more ‘benevolent’ violence of ‘corrective’ procedures, where they are surgically forced into the ‘male’ or ‘female’ gender. Intersex bodies are extremely diverse — the presence, absence or variations in chromosomes and sex organs means that almost no two bodies are exactly alike.

Hearing intersex people talk about their identity really drives home the point about there being a spectrum. But the medicalization of the gender binary has been a source of trouble. Intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis, has often tweeted their resentment of intersex surgeons. “Doctors are bad at listening to intersex patients” seems to be a common complaint.

But really, it’s the families that play the biggest role in producing intersex-stigma. According to Pagonis, the only thing parents of intersex kids need to do is “take them home and love them … just the way they are.”

Imagine how differently things might have panned out for Yang’s baby, if all parents did this. Both the father and grandfather of the child were turned over to the authorities, but Yang Xiaoqing is in a very tough spot, as the two men appear to have been her main support system. She knows that new conflicts are on the horizon. “I worry about most is that my son may suffer discrimination when he grows up,” she says. And she isn’t wrong to.

While China can boast of events like the ShanghaiPRIDE, the level of discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people in the country is still numbingly high. At little over a month old, Yang’s child has already had three encounters with it.