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“The Medical Construction of Gender”

In her essay “The Medical Construction of Gender”, Suzanne Kessler explains that an intersexed infant is a baby who is born with undefined genitals. In the late 20^th century scientists could determine the infant’s gender through out a chromosomal and hormonal test, which is normally taken to be the real, natural, biological sex of the infant. Kessler interviewed six different specialists and all of them agreed that the management of the intersexuality cases is based on the theory proposed by John Money. According to this theory, it is crucial that the gender of an infant is assigned immediately, color is use to determines a infant’s sex (pink for female, blue for male), genitals must be made to match the assigned gender, and if an infant needs a correction it should be done as soon as possible, otherwise, the infant could have traumatic memories.

The gender assignment is very important for specialists, parents and infants, because this will determine the kind of interaction that the community, including parents, will have with the child as it grows into adulthood. Another factor that is even more important than the chromosomes is the penis sizes. Scientists consider that a good size of penis is enough to determine that an infant could be defined as male. According to society’s standards, masculinity includes an average penis size in the male case if the child penis is smaller than the norm, or for some reason it cant function as a regular penis, then that child’s genitals re-constructed to look and function like a vagina, a vagina is suppose to have enough space for a regular size penis which ultimately will define the sex in the female case. Social factors are very important because after the physician assign the infant’s gender, parents are encouraged to create the credibility of that gender in their community. The option of a third gender is unacceptable to society, and therefore all children born neither male nor female are considered abnormal and deformed. Kessler points out that hermaphrodites are a third gender category.