Week Eight Blog
The medical community "treats" intersexed infants and encourages "norms" that already exist within our society. The first norm that is largely displayed within gender construction is the size of the penis. The article states, "male is defined as having a 'good-sized' penis, more infants will be assigned to the female gender than to the male." When a baby is born with an underdeveloped phallus they see if it will grow when treated with testosterone. If it does grow the problem is resolved, but later there may be problems at puberty where the penis wouldn't develop to an "appropriate" size. Having a small penis would affect his "manliness." Many of the children born with this problem are assigned to be female because a small penis isn't acceptable.
The article also discusses how infants who are born with XX chromosomes but developed a "perfect" penis should keep the male genitals because if they kept the female organs they would become tomboys. This implies that a girl acting like a boy in any way is wrong in our society. It also says that the the perfect penis is more important than what the chromosomes say.
Another aspect of "norms" addressed in this article is "good penis equals male; absence of good penis equals female." In the medical world there is a lack of size and shape requirements for the female genitals, "other than that the vagina be able to receive a penis." Basically they're saying the lack of a perfect penis makes the child a female, or the not perfect choice.
The article also addresses how parents react to the situation and the ambiguity of the child's gender. It's a complicated situation for them because they can't tell people the gender of their baby, and when a child is born people ask about the name and sex all the time. The physicians suggest to not fully answer people's questions and leave them a little frustrated with not knowing rather then telling the truth about not knowing the baby's gender. The doctors also try to make the situation seem not extreme by avoiding words like hermaphrodite or abnormal, but they try to perform the surgeries and create the sex of the child as quickly as they can. All of this suggests that ambiguity of gender isn't at al acceptable and a child either needs to be male or female.