May 25, 2004
Kamloops Daily News


As a child, Ester Morris had no control over the surgery
that was meant to make her into a "normal" female.  Now an
adult, she is speaking out so that others won't have to go
through the same emotional trauma.  "I was not allowed to
accept myself. I was told what was normal and how I should
be."

Each day 200 intersex babies are born around the world, on
average. They have anatomies that confound and alarm their
parents.  They are born healthy. Fingers and toes are all
accounted for but when the parents ask "Is it as boy or a
girl?" doctors don't have an simple answer.  They are
somewhere in between.

"We are not so quick to judge other parts of anatomy.  We
teach children to respect diversity, yet adults create a
'state of emergency' over the size and shape of genitals,"
says Morris.

Approximately 1 in 1,000 babies born can't be categorized as
male or female.  The condition is as common than cystic
fibrosis but you won't find any runs or charities for
intersexuals.  They live secret lives because of society's
abhorrence of sexual ambiguity.

The world wants sexuality to be simple but as homosexuals
have demonstrated, they are not.  Gender is a deep-seated
label that follows a child through life.  Rough and tumble
is accepted for boys.  Girls will be handled more gently and
smiled at for being quiet, inert, and complacent. 

The need for gender assignment is so strong that doctors,
with the consent of parents, surgically "assign" gender to
the child.  They will alter a child's genitals to conform to
their notions of normalcy regardless of future consequences. 
If only things were that simple.

Not just intersexuals suffer.  Dr. John Money was sure of
his prognosis when he was approached by Janet Reimer from
Winnipeg.  She had twin baby boys - - one was the subject of
a circumcision gone wrong.  Bruce Reimer's penis had been
virtually destroyed in what should have been a routine
procedure.

No problem, said Dr. Money of Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore.  He persuaded Janet that her boy could be raised
as a girl.  Nurture and not nature determines a child's
gender, the doctor argued.

At the age of 21 months, Bruce's testicles were removed.
When Bruce was released from hospital, his parents were told
to raise him as a girl. The family was told not to divulge
anything to anyone. They went home with a girl they called
Brenda.

Dr. Money pronounced the experiment a resounding success. 
He published his achievement in the Archives of Sexual
Behaviour.  Dr. Money didn't bother to ask the Reimers how
things were going.

If he had asked, he would have found that, after puberty,
Brenda was developing wide shoulders and a thick neck. 
Brenda got into fist-fights and didn't like playing with
girls.  Other children started calling Brenda a freak.

Eventually, Brenda was told the whole story of the botched
circumcision.  After three suicide attempts, Brenda was
allowed to become a male again, this time under the name of
David.

After a troubled life, David Reimer committed suicide at age
38 on May 4, 2004.

Sexual assignment does not assure gender assignment. 
Although the terms are often used interchangeably, sex and
gender are not the same thing.

Social scientists use gender to refer to a particular social
identity, status, and cluster of roles, that are usually
determined on the basis of sex.

Doctors have been working on the wrong end of the baby. 
Geneticist Anne Moir argues that the difference between
males and female is in the brain.  Moir explains how the
embryonic brain is shaped as either male or female at about
six weeks.  That's when the male fetus begins producing
hormones that organize its brain's neural networks into a
male pattern.   In their absence, the brain will be female.

Not surprisingly, there are endless variations in degree of
brain sex, and nature places a male brain in a female body
and vice versa.

Intersexuals  need to be accepted as part of the normal
range of nature's spectrum, not as a problem that needs to
be fixed.  Adult intersexuals want the right to decide their
own sexuality and gender.

"I think of intersex as a civil rights movement still in the
stage of breaking the silence," says Ester Morris.

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