Blog 8
In Kessler's piece, she describes how medical establishments come up with different ways of classifying an individual with ambiguous genitals. In this case, the body is used to determine gender and sexual development. The medical field suggests that parents raise children with ambiguous genitalia based on how big the 'penis' is being developed. If the so-called 'penis' is not of a certain size, it's referred to as a 'micro-penis.' Of course, individuals and doctors believe that a micro-penis would not be good for their son's development of becoming a man with masculine traits; therefore, the child's genitals are surgically made into a clitoris, classifying the baby or child as a girl. They want the child to be able to engage in heterosexual sex as an adult and want the child to feel confident about their genitalia. Doctors also encourage parents to not name the child until they are certain of what the sex is. In this case, they might suggest that the parents wait to perform surgery to officially determine the child's sex until the child starts to develop. Then, they base what the child's sex should be off of what he/she starts to look like, what activities he/she likes to do, and how the child acts. In the end, parents and doctors hope that the choice they made for the child's sex is appropriate. In certain cases, parents feel ashamed later in life because they believe they've chosen the wrong sex for their child. Parents wish they would've left the surgery to determine the child's sex until later in life when the individual is grown. Waiting for a long period of time could also increase the risk and difficulty of surgery since the genitalia will be more developed. All in all, one's sex is related to its gender and leads to an individual's desires. An example would be a woman with a vagina is identified as a woman with femininity and she desires men.