[2.] Health is threatened through inadequate hygienic and surgical practice which can cause massive infections leading to infertility, chronic urinary tract infection and, possibly, death.
[3.] Of the ten doctors involved in my case, one, the endocrinologist, was a woman. Of those who have published in the field, two are women: Patricia Donohoe and Jean H.S. Emans.
[4.] It is generally true that most infants diagnosed as intersexed will be assigned the feminine gender and forced to conform, anatomically, to the female sex because surgeons consider it easier to "...make holes than build poles" Dr. John Gearheart qtd. in Hendricks 1993.
[5.] A CNN broadcast aired at the time of the Cairo convention on FGM and reported in Time , September 26, 1994, showed a little girl being held down by her father while the local plumber clitorectomized her.
[6.] I will, however, provide two examples of violent means employed to construct an 'adequate' male body: one which possesses a 'proper' penis.
[7.] I have placed 'truth' in quotation marks because the 'truth' that is assumed is that intersexed patients are monstrous and that truth would probably be very damaging. But what about the truth that genitals, like ears and noses, are highly variable in appearance
[8.] Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is an intersex condition in which the individual is chromosomally male but does not react to male hormones, and thus, never develops sexual characteristics of typical males. For evidence of the deceit advised in dealing with intersexed patients, see: Edmonds 1989, Emans and Goldstein 1990, Dewhurst 1980, Fausto-Sterling 1992, and Hendricks 1993. For a case in which, specifically, an AIS patient is dealt with in the Manner see: Kessler 1990.
[9.] I have italicised 'operate' to call attention to how the removal of the same tissue is viewed as a mutilation when done by one culture and as a medically valid procedure when done by another -- to inflect the term with a double-meaning which incorporates both the surgical procedures and cultural modes of management.
[10.] See bibliography.
[11.] I am not at liberty to release the name of the surgeon but he is one of three mentioned in a Nov. 1993 article "Is it a Boy or a Girl?" by Melissa Hendricks in Johns Hopkins Magazine.
[12.] See bibliographic references for Emans and Goldstein 1990, Dewhurst 1980, and Edmonds 1989.
[13.] Anne Fausto- Sterling writes that " A commonly cited reason for performing a clitorectomy after clitoral reduction or recession is the presence of painful erections and/or cosmetic dissatisfaction. In the latter case surgeons complain that the clitoris remains too large and visible." [1993, 7-8]
[14.] Although the membership of ISNA is varied in regards to class back-ground, education and specific medical histories and etiologies, all members have been severely traumatized at both the physical and emotional/mental levels as a direct result of medical intervention(s).
[15.] "Monster is the term he uses to refer to himself. He calls ISNA the "Monster Club".
[16.] I have heard this damage described by one individual, who has had sixteen surgeries, as leaving him with an organ that is as tough and insensitive as wood .
[17.] It may seem that I am using highly loaded language here -- after all, parents may choose to have a child's cleft palate surgically altered without being charged with mutilation. The difference is that surgeries for cleft palate are used to repair a physical condition which might otherwise threaten the health of the child. Conversely, intersex characteristics are very rarely health-threatening and correction-- when it is required to avert urinary tract or bladder infections, or to ease the passage of fluids--does not require the removal of a phallus or of labia.
[18.] A comment on my draft version of this paper suggested that parents might decide to have their children revised under the auspices of ensuring normal sexuality in order to protect them from societal homophobia. According to this logic, we might never let our children out of the house in order to protect them from all sorts of risks -- an extreme example of imprisonment perhaps, but the surgeries to which intersexed children are submitted are an extreme form of imprisonment/impairment.
[19.] Indeed, this reinstatement has happened to me several times as I have read the comments of my fellow class-mates on my draft of this paper. Often without thinking about the implications, statements such as "Don't you mean deformed?" have been written beside my comments about the construction of intersexuality as a disease.
[20.] In Hendricks, 1993, Dr. Gearheart provides readers with this very sensationalist view of the life of an intersexed infant.