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assignment 03

In Suzanne Kessler’s essay, “The Medical Construction of Gender,” inter sexuality is described to be when a baby is born with genitals that aren’t specifically male or female. Members of medical teams have practices when it comes to managing this issue. Such as announcing the babies gender during delivery, discussions with the parents after the baby is born, and discussions with the patient during its teenage years is only apart of the outside of the medical issues. It relies on the cultural comprehension of gender it self. According to the article their are different categories for this deformation, for example the “true inter-sexed” is where ovarian and testicular tissue are present in the same or opposite gonad, or if the infant has two ovaries/testes, this goes by female or male   pseudohermaphroditism.

Physicians understand inter-sexuality in 3 different concepts. One would be how it is surgically taken care of , some smaller male genitals that may not be clearly recognizable could be enlarged, or a female’s genitals could be constructed to be different in appearance from normal ones. As well as gender identity, physicians believe in order for this perception of belonging to the female or male category to happen successfully that gender must be assigned as early as possible, between 18 months and no later than 2 years of age. Experts must be sure that parents don’t have any doubts about whether their child is female or male, gender hormones must be given during puberty, and patient should eventually become informed about this situation during appropriate timing, therefore the child will not question his or her identity later on. Physicians also inform parents not to identify the child’s gender until it has been specifically allocated. Different methods to handle this situation are also given to the parents of these intersex children, physicians give parents ways to deal with other people who might not exactly understand the situation, “Why dont you just tell them that the baby is having problems and as soon as the problems are resolved we’ll get back to you” ( Kessler, 13). Or until the problem is resolved choose not to speak about it to others has been suggested. These are some factors that impact the way physicians, parents, and patients understand and manage the medical condition as inter-sexuality.