Lately, we have been discussing things about human and sex in Anthropology10. I am starting to realize that classifying humans as either male or female is becoming a must in our society today. Based from the majority of the human population, a male and a female body are different from each other. These two bodies have different characteristics. Even the genitals of a male and a female are different from each other. Maybe because of this knowledge, the society biologically classifies human as either male or female. Our sex is determined through our primary and secondary characteristics or physical traits and by our sex chromosomes. The way a person lives greatly depends on his or her sex. That is why from the moment we are born, our sex is identified. As stated earlier, one way of classifying sex is through physical traits like the genitals. When a person is born with a penis, he is a male. When a person is born with a vagina, she is a female. Today, we are faced with a problem on how we will identify the sex of those persons born with ambiguous genitalia and persons that contain a sex chromosome that is not strictly XX or XY.
Let us be aware that not all humans can be classified as a male or female. There are people who have ambiguous genitalia or ambiguous sexual identity. We call these people intersexual and hermaphrodites. Let us also admit that these people may not be common but they are also not rare. Approximately one in two thousand are born with ambiguous external genitalia annually in the United States. What do we do now with these people?
When an infant with ambiguous genitalia is born, the medical community’s standard procedure is to assign a sex on the infant. The physician will perform a surgery on the infant’s genitalia and sculpt it to the appropriate genitalia of the chosen sex. Since female genitalia are easier to fashion, physicians have opted for a female form. Physicians advise the parents to raise the child in a manner consistent with its surgically altered genitalia without regard to the sex identity that might have otherwise naturally developed. This “innovative therapy” became a standard procedure without its outcomes being tested and through informal acceptance. This standard procedure started when reports on the Joan/John case said that the sex assignment done on Joan/John had produced successful results. However, the problem is that the physicians failed to see the long-term effect of the surgery on Joan/John. Joan/John suffered a lot of problems due to the surgery. These consequences were never published. Because of this, the medical community believes that sex assignment is the best answer for infants with ambiguous genitalia or ambiguous sexual identity. They do not look on the possible consequences that this procedure may produce to the child. Thus, sex assignment does not really guarantee that the infant will have a happy life when he or she grows up.
There are a lot of other problems caused by sex assignment. First is that the medical community makes the situation look like that sex assignment on the child is an urgency. Physicians tell parents that not performing sex assignment on the infant may cause social problems because our society is not ready for intersexual and hermaphrodites. They don’t know that assigning a sex on an intersex infant or a hermaphrodite may also cause problems. Second, physicians advise parents to keep the sex assignment done on the infant as a secret. These can cause problems. For example, an intersexual raised as a female is showing “tomboyish” traits. The person will not understand his or her full personality and identity because he or she does not know that he or she is actually an intersexual or hermaphrodite. And if he or she learns that sex assignment is performed on her, he or she may get angry and sad because he or she will realize that the society does not accept people like him or her and that his or her most beloved parents have betrayed him or her. Third, the child’s right to open future is lost. The child’s right to choose what he or she wants to be is lost because the people around him or her has already dictated who will he or she be. His or her choice is lost.
For me, sex assignment on infants with ambiguous genitalia or ambiguous sexual identity is not the answer to the problem. Sex assignment will only cause more social problems and it doesn’t really guarantee success. Through the use of Anthropology, we can perhaps understand what the problem really is. The problem is with our society. Our society has no space for people who are intersexual and hermaphrodite. A simple example is our comfort rooms. We only have rooms for females and males. We are not aware that there are other people out there who are not really male neither female. Performing sex assignment on these people means that we treat them as abnormal and that the reason we are assigning sex to them is to make them normal. This is wrong. Who dictates what is normal anyway? It already becomes natural to us that persons should be identified as a male or female. We must realize that we should question now this hegemonic power of our society to tell us that there are only two sexes. We are not aware that what is supposed to be a biological classification is becoming a social influenced classification. The reason why society tells us that there are only two sexes is so that we can be useful. Male and female are very important because of reproduction and Christianity. That is why even though some of the intersexual and hermaphrodites cannot reproduce, our society still try to make them look like a female or male because this is what is normal for our society. We should learn how to understand these people because it is not their fault that they are born with an ambiguous genitalia or ambiguous sexual identity. There is actually nothing wrong with them. It is our society that tells that there is something wrong. Sex assignment on an infant is not good because the right of the person to determine his or her life is gone. If sex assignment is to be done, it should be done on a much later age when the person has already decided what he or she wants to be. He or she then will have the choice to be a male, a female or remain intersexual or hermaphrodite.
