í Assignments

Suzanne Kessler, in her essay ” The Medical Construction of Gender, describes how the condition of intersexuality is handled from a medical and cultural standpoint. She provides many examples of how doctors and parents of intersex children go about dealing with children that are intersex. The main point of her text seems to be that in order for doctors and parents of intersex children to deal with an intersex child, a gender must be determined whether or not at a later time the assigned gender would not make sense. She finds this to be a problem because the concept of changing the genitals of a child to what sex a person deems the child to be  goes against her belief that there can only be two concrete genders. Doctors have several protocols when it comes to dealing with intersex children. Kessler describes the complications of how certain sets of chromosomes can affect surgery that is undergone to make a child the gender they are seen as. When children are born with XX chromosomes, surgery can be preformed almost immediately to reduce the phallus size. In cases of XY chromosomes the process of reassignment is much more complicated. These cases require tests to be taken, for example if the child can produce testosterone and whether the phallus can respond to testosterone. Results from these tests can come back negative and the child cannot be seen as officially male. When parents have intersex children, determining the gender of the child can be a major factor in coming times. A common problem with solidifying the sex of an intersex child is described by one of the doctors Kessler interviewed. They explain that when an obstetrician is inexperienced it can lead to miss-gendering children and affect how that child is raised once the parents are told the gender of the child. Parents will commonly go about naming and raising the child as if they are a certain gender far before any conclusive results are made on the official gender of the child. These examples of handling cases of intersex children may be the most important factor as to how the child is dealt with later in their life. At the time of adolescence the child may not go through normal puberty for a girl or boy of their gender which could easily lead to the child having an identity crises. This would no doubt require counseling for the child. Kessler recounts that in order to avoid this physicians would have to lie to the child which in its own way may be the correct thing to do.

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.

Intersexuality is a condition where an individual is born with both male and female features such as reproductive organs or indistinguishable genitals. Throughout the course of history and presently many children have been diagnosed as being intersexed. As society and technology have evolved our understanding of intersexuality has been broadened. Many physicians, patients, and parents of intersexed children similarly understand what intersexuality is and how an individual can develop this condition. Both understand intersexuality as a fetus that goes through development just like any other fetus but with one discrepancy. A fetus can begin to go through intersexuality when it’s reproductive systems do not mature properly or irregularly. In some cases, a child is born with genitalia that resembles neither male of female genitals and in other cases a child can develop both male and female reproductive organs.

As the medical field has evolved there have been many developments in the surgical techniques and in the field of endocrinology. Much of the knowledge on how to deal with intersexuality cases both surgically and psychologically was given to the field by John Money, J.G. Hampson, and J.L. Hampson (Kessler, 1990). Physicians are more knowledgeable on what intersexuality is and how to assist children born with this condition. Presently intersexuality is corrected by physicians through surgery where they determine the sex of the child and perform alterations to make their reproductive organs match their determined sex. Many tests like cytologic screening, chromosomal analysis, assessing serum electrolytes, the evaluation of hormones, steroids, and gonadotropin, and radiographic genitography are used to help physicians better identify which gender an intersexed child is (Kessler, 1990). The medical advancements have granted doctors the ability to construct immature genitalia into fully developed male or female genitalia that greatly resembles natural ones.

The medical field has gone through many advancements in surgical techniques, technology, and in the field of endocrinology. Two factors that have greatly influenced its growth are society itself and the theories of John Money, J.G. Hampson, and J.L. Hampson (Kessler, 1990). It is believed by many that there are only two genders in the world; male or female. This belief has influenced both physicians and parents to deal with intersexed children with haste. Both society and the theorists have put a great pressure on these people to determine a child’s sex and immediately operate. Following surgery, parents are to begin raising the child with social interactions that reinforce their gender upon them. It is believed by many that the sooner you resolve the “issue” of intersexuality, the sooner a child can understand what gender they are. They will learn how people who are that gender are to conduct themselves and act accordingly. These influences have resulted in people interpreting intersexuality as abnormal and as a condition that needs to be corrected. Most importantly, society has impacted physicians, leading them to impose their assumptions regarding gender on their patients.

Kessler, S. J. (1990). The Medical Construction of Gender: Case management of Intersexed         Infants. The University of Chicago Press, 3-26.

At birth, infants are given certain guidelines on how they should be raised based on genitalia. They are given either a pink or blue cap, and this cap comes with certain rules that the parents follow in order to give them a “normal” childhood; but what happens when a child is born with ambiguous genitalia? Intersexuality is something that is often ignored by society, and is considered a deformity.
The fact that intersexuality is considered a deformity that must be corrected in order to live a normal life is perpetrated by doctors. These medical professionals believe that they must fix this supposed problem for the parents to raise the child in the proper environment, and the basis for correcting this is not based in biology. Much like the issue of sexism being backed up by science, the cultural construction of gender is being supported by these doctors that say that a child must live as either a male or a female. It is proven that the majority of the time the condition of intersexuality is not life-threatening, but it is practically treated like it is by these doctors, because they want to place them into a box of either female or male.
When a child is intersex, surgery to fix the appearance of their genitals is often performed. A basis for whether or not the doctor assigns this child as either male or female is the child’s penis size. Because of society’s definition of masculinity involves having an average penis, children who are born intersex who have an abnormally small penis are often given hormone treatment first to see if there is a response. If there is no response, the doctor then decides that the child will be a female and gives the child reconstructive surgery, because they believe that the child could not live their life as a normal male with a smaller than average penis. More emphasis is given on making the child into a male, which shows a desire for more male children rather than female by the doctors. A significant factor that contributes to whether or not the child is “fixed” of their intersexuality is how their genitals perform sexually when they are adults; if the male’s penis can satisfy a woman, and that an originally intersex female’s vagina can receive a penis. This not only has implications on the gender roles of masculinity and femininity, but it also implies that being straight is the societal norm.
Doctors treat intersexuality as a deformity that needs to be corrected, and they place this belief on the parents as well. They desire to fix the child’s genitals as soon as possible, to ensure the child grows up without being psychologically damaged from this experience. Doctors often discourage parents from raising their child as either gender when they are unsure, so that when the child is assigned a final gender, their gender identity matches with their sex. Although it is important that these doctors recognize the difference between gender identity and sex, they imply that something is completely wrong when children’s identity and sex do not match up.

Due Monday, February 20th, by midnight. Word count: 300 words. Please make sure everything is in your own words. Absolutely no quotes should be used. If you paraphrase from the text (from Kessler’s work or anywhere else), you must be sure to include the proper citation (either MLA or APA).

In Suzanne Kessler’s essay, “The Medical Construction of Gender,” she claims that cases of intersexuality point to a lack of imagination on the part of physicians and Western society: a failure to understand how each of the “management decisions” described constitute a moment when “biological sex” is transformed into a “culturally constructed gender” (1990:26). Drawing on the examples in Kessler’s work, describe the factors that impact the way physicians, parents, and patients understand and / or manage the medical condition referred to as intersexuality.

In Linda Schiebingers essay, “Skeletons in the Closet,” the main focus of the discussion is on the anatomy of women and men in the scientific community of eighteenth and nineteenth Europe. These differences became the groundwork for the argued social and political differences between the sexes. Western science was viewed as the correct answer to the questions comparing whether or not women and men, because the greater part of the scientific community consisted of white males there was no questioning the reasoning behind their “observations” about women. The lack of females in the scientific community definitely held back women’s rights from advancing and used anatomy and science to justify the oppression of female minorities and minorities in general. The scientific findings made it seem that women were inferior to men due to their skull size which they linked to be less intellectually inclined. The scientific community always had another explanation to back up the idea that women lesser than men and even used the uterus against the fact that women are more than just child breeding machines. Science is super important because it is the fact behind the ideas and questions that people have so it is imperative that these findings consist of actual reasonable data. The heavy sexist ideals behind the research done by scientists definitely held back women as a whole from progressing at a faster pace because the findings led to institutionalized sexism which is still present in today’s society and will continue to get in the way of females from achieving jobs, awards, and social acceptance that is just handed out to men especially white men of privilege. It is difficult to undo the mistakes of the past but slowly change is underway and has led to major milestones from having the first women president in countries like Argentina to having female scientists working in NASA.

For Londa Schiebinger, the importance of the comparison of anatomy between white women and men in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries stemmed from the social structure at that time. People turned to science and hard “evidence” to really evaluate if women were capable of important tasks outside of the realm of domestic life. Marie-Genevieve-Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville depicted women having smaller skulls and larger pelvises than men. This and the works of many other scientists who supported the same notions, led many people to believe that women were less intelligent than men and were only useful for reproduction. Consequently, women were not being taken seriously in prominent positions in the areas of politics, science, and education. Schiebinger mentions that even with what little progress came with the support for gender equality, there were still some setbacks. For example, she references Andreas Vesalius who stated that everything about the anatomy of men and women were the same except for the reproductive organs. He believed that because women’s reproductive organs were on the inside, they automatically become the inferior gender. In the 18th century, research in the anatomy of the female body was prompted by population increase and a new interest in motherhood. With more information and clearer depictions of women, scientists still believed that women were still unmatched because of their sex organs. The effort put into this new research proved that men were satisfied with the way their gender roles were and would support any research that made them seem more superior than women. In the 19th century, the idea that women were below men and equal to children continued. In a gleam of light, it was found that women’s skulls were actually heavier than males but what became a flaw for women was that so were children’s skulls; further putting them in the same classification. Women and children were always placed in the same category; except women could birth children. Using religion and the Bible as reasoning, many believed males were superior because God put Adam before women and children. What is shocking is that many women at the time were not taken seriously and therefore, could not dispute these findings by these male scientists. Their social status and standard of worth was being determined by people that have never considered them valuable in the first place.

In the piece “Skeletons in the Closet,” Linda Schiebinger discusses the increased attention directed toward the anatomy of women and men in the scientific community of eighteenth and nineteenth Europe.  Although there were objective physical differences between women and men, these differences were then used to establish social and political inequalities for women.  In a period and climate where women began to challenge their subordinate roles in society, the medical community justified the inequalities women faced with their “scientific findings” that women were inferior in the “natural” hierarchy.

The arguments that women were inferior to men focused on the differences in organs between women and men.  Not only were women deemed to be weaker in strength, their smaller skulls were irrationally associated with them lacking the ability to think critically and analytically, as men were able to do.  The uterus was used by scientists and doctors as a sign that a woman’s role was strictly limited to birthing children and later taking care of them.

What it comes down to, which I believe the author does well in explaining, is that anatomy and science were being used to justify the oppression of minorities (women and non-white people).  Nature does have validity in some areas, some facts cannot be argued against.  However, the medical community, consisting of primarily white men, used their “findings” to maintain their higher ranking in the social and political hierarchy, while at the same time, suppressing women’s ability to gain political and social power.   Biological and natural differences stripped many women at the time of activities and interests that would challenge the notion of their inferiority, including obtaining an education and participating in politics.  Although science is known to be objective and fully factual, we must be aware of the bias, and the social factors at the time which directly affected the conclusions of anatomical differences between men and women.

In “Skeletons in the Closet,” the anatomy of white women and men became a critical project for the medical community during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as these differences were used as basis for social and political differences between the sexes. Science began to progress to be the standard of thinking, viewed as the answer to social issues. However, the majority of the scientific community consisted of white males, with barely any females in the group, so there was no dispositions regarding the “observations” about women. An example of these “observations” would be that females would have “smaller” skulls when compared the anatomy of males, which meant that they were less intelligent in the opinion of the scientific community. Even though this was proven to be false later on, that women have a larger skull in relation to their body size when compared to males, the scientific community had another explanation, which was that the female body was similar to that of a child, still promoting an androcentric point of view. These sex differences between males and females not only pointed out physical differences, but also gave way to various ideas such as differentiating masculinity/femininity and the concept of females being prematurely developed.  Other ideas developed, such as it was “nature” that created these differences between the sexes, that females were the complements to males, which would later be used as justification to exclude women from opportunities of higher levels of education/profession. The exclusion in the scientific community not only affected women, but also affected people of color as well. The status of being a white male was considered the “standard of excellence” as some would call it, while being a female or being of a different ethnicity to be of a lower ranking and with none of these individuals in the community to argue their opinions. Even though the scientific community aimed to move from philosophical thinking to a more factual way of thinking, it still retained its roots of being sexist and racist.

The interests of the science of the female anatomy were not random, but sought out to be focused for political reasons. One reason comparing the anatomy of women and men was an important project in the medical community was to provide evidence for the inferiority of women.  For example, the  French anatomist Marie- Genevieve-Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville delineated the female skull to be smaller than a male skull. This was to “prove” the idea that a woman’s intellectual capabilities were less than a man’s.  Similarly the women pelvis were drawn larger than a man’s pelvis. This was done to normalize and prove the idea that women were destined for giving birth.  This gives me an understanding on why the study of both female and male bodies were important.  Scientists and Politicians needed to know the differences in the anatomy of males and females order to impose social norms and laws against women.  d, Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen all attempted to provide proper justification on why women were seen as inferior in their social status. They all used the female body as evidence, claiming it is the weaker body, resulting into them being more lazy, and less likely to want to do “manly” work.  The study of the female body in comparison to the male body, in my opinion, was an important project of study in order for the men to use “scientific” justification for oppression of women. Let’s not forget all these scientists were men. Also there probably were no female scientists because of the lack of education and jobs for women, which relates back to the idea that women were seen as destined as birth givers. Although it was found that women do have the capabilities as men, women were denied of the freedom and rights that were asked for.