Is it a boy or a girl?


An upcoming documentary (Tuesday July 28, 2009 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld) deals with intersexuality and how families cope with it. Although DSD was mentioned in the context of Group IV project, I think it would be interesting to contrast this type of case with the original idea of parents that wish to change the sex of their child to fit their own expectations, which would put the real intersexual case in its proper context, as a medical and social issue.

...The majority of parents of intersexed children still choose surgery to avoid social stigmatism, but many intersexuals are critical of the choices made for them when they were infants. While Dr. Nihoul Fekete thinks parents should determine the sex of their child at birth and that surgery should be performed right away, Vincent Guillot (Paris), the founder of Organization Intersex International, calls the surgery he had as a child a "mutilation". He describes himself as neither male nor female. (From the CBC report)

Here are a couple of sites with interesting information perhaps useful for your project:


Comments

Minh-Tam Le said…
The decision whether to turn your newborn into a boy or girl is difficult. What is the correct choice? Should the parents wait for the baby to grow up? What are the key reasons behind their final decision? I have watched segments on Discovery Health where parents chose the sex of their baby by examining if the baby is leaning more towards the female or male side? There have been cases where the child grew up more fond of the other gender and had to go through surgery as an adult and take estrogen/testosterone pills.

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