Intersex Babies are a Community Matter

There are two types of babies: There are boys and there are girls. Correct? Most people would probably answer, “yes,” but they would be leaving out 1.7 to 4 percent of the population, according to a 2009 study from researchers Zeiler and Wickstrom. That’s the estimated amount of children who are born intersex.

Regardless of which statistic you go with, intersexuality appears to be more common than Down syndrome in both the US and Europe. However, few people know about the condition.

Expecting parents are often eager to learn the sex of their baby, but they do not usually consider that their child could be somewhere on the continuum between male and female. (Most people don’t even know that sex is on a continuum, but it is.

The people who fall somewhere between on this continuum are referred to as “intersex.” This means that their chromosomes and genitalia are not exclusively male or female.

Imagine the surprise of new parents when doctors tell them that it is unknown whether “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl.”

Doctors assist in judging whether an intersex child is more likely to be male or female based on the presence of male or female genitalia and ‘XX’ or ‘XY’ chromosomes. These are common standards by which sex is determined, but parents ultimately decide the child’s legal sex as well as the course of treatment. Too often, their choices consist of multiple surgeries and procedures that cause the children physical and psychological trauma.

According to 2006 research by Anne Tamar-Mattis, intersex children are usually given female bodies, regardless of what other tests indicate, simply because it is easier to construct a vagina than a penis. But what happens when you raise a child as a little girl and she grows up to tell you that she’s a boy?

Gender Identity Disorder is common among people who undergo intersex-related “corrective” procedures in childhood. As cited in 2002 by Chau and Herring, many of these children never feel comfortable or identify with the body given to them.

To put it another way, dressing a child in blue and giving a Hot Wheels set to play with won’t make that person male. Similarly, constructing a vagina for an infant won’t make a child female.

Is it ethical to perform cosmetic surgery on an infant and ultimately decide the child’s sex for her/him? Tamar-Mattis found that “the strongest argument against genital-normalizing on infants is that every intersex person who has spoken publicly on the subject has spoken against surgery.”

Genital mutilation and castration are irreversible. It is impossible to know whether a person so young is male or female, and a drastic decision like surgery should not be undertaken without a person’s consent.