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Assignment 3

Suzanne Kessler’s, “The Medical Construction of Gender” focuses on the harmful ways western society’s social construct of gender has influenced medical knowledge and decisions in regards to intersexuality. When a child is born intersex, they have genitalia that does not possess female or male qualities and are therefore gender ambiguous. It is then up to the family and medical professional(s) to make gender decisions on the child’s behalf. As imaginable, making gender decisions regarding someone who cannot yet think for themselves has its many flaws. Gender biases and societal pressures often get in the way of ethics and the ultimate welfare of the intersex individual.

A definitive gender is required on every child’s birth certificate. Yes, every child. This rule does not exclude those whose genitalia is ambiguous to gender during infantry. This requirement is one of the many aspects of pressures imposed on the medical community in regards to early assignment of gender. Pros of early gender assignment argue that parents need to know the gender of their child in order to begin to properly raise it as male or female as early on as possible. However, this is only true if one deems gender identity necessary in raising a child. By that logic, gender identity is necessary in developing any kind of significant relationship with any gender ambiguous person.

Intersexuality in infants is also subject to gender bias. Due to our patriarchal society’s preference of men, many families and doctors alike find themselves bias toward deeming intersex infants male. This can ultimately be extremely detrimental to the individual because the decision made for them during infantry regarding their gender has a 50/50 chance at being wrong. In fact those decisions are very often wrong, and the individual must face a society that will ostracize them for a gender issue imposed upon them before they could even possess conscious thought.