Intersex Kayla Flores, Keliʻi Kaʻilipaka, Nolan Kua, Laʻakea Manliguis

1. IntersexKayla Flores, Keliʻi Kaʻilipaka, Nolan Kua, Laʻakea Manliguis Period 3 Biology

2. What is Intersex? Intersex is an individual displaying both male and female characteristics. Most people don’t understand this, and automatically classify intersex people as gay, lesbian, or homosexual. Therefore, society has classified them under these terms without really knowing what intersex is. An intersex individual has the sex chromosome make-up XXY, versus a female’s make-up XX or a male’s XY. Because of this additional chromosome, intersex individuals are born with ambiguous genitalia. For many years doctors have done corrective surgery on both infants and older individuals to determine a certain sex. In most cases, when the parents find out they’ve birthed an intersex baby, they make the decision to take it upon themselves and select a gender for they’re child and have corrective surgery done on the child while in their infantry to solidify the gender. But over time, doctors have changed their perception of doing these surgery’s because they believe it should be up to the child. Our group agrees with these doctors. This standpoint brings us to the problem…

3. Problem Should parents use ambiguous surgery to correct children with certain genitalia? Our group feels that intersex individuals should have the option of choosing their own gender versus having their parents choose one for them without considering the individual it’s being done to.

4. Factors to the problem • Intersex children don’t have any say as infants. • May cause resentful behavior towards parents later in time. • Harder to transition from one gender to another in later stages of life. • Choosing a certain gender won’t automatically make the child a “regular” child. –By this we mean that just because the parents choose a gender, the child won’t automatically adapt to the mindset of that specific gender. The child will always have some curiosity about what it may have been like to be another gender.

5. Why parents make the decision... Our group has come up with a few reasons based off reading, videos, and viewing the situation from a parent’s perspective as to why parents decide the gender of their baby. • Want their child to live “normally” –this reason is closely related to pressures of society. Parents don’t want their kids to feel unsure of who they are, so they have corrective surgery done to eliminate this possibility. • Pressure of society (view next slide for reasoning) • Don’t want their child to be confused growing up about gender

6. Intersex in society Our group feels that society has a major role in the emotional/mental aspect in intersex individuals. In today’s society, people are judged based simply and purely off how they’re dressed. If a person sees something that doesn’t appeal to them, they automatically think the person is weird, or there’s something wrong with them. If a person can assume so much about a person through how they dress, imagine what they think when they find out they’re interacting with an intersex individual? Because society judges every part of an individual so harshly, the pressure of fitting in for an intersex individual is much greater than a “regular” person. This pressure not only falls on the individual, but the parents as well, which is another reason why they may go ahead and allow the surgery. In today’s society, there is no acknowledgement of intersex as a third-gender party, therefore many individuals feel uncomfortable and often need psychological support to help distinguish a gender.

7. Decisions, decisions… After reading multiple articles, watching many videos, and group discussions, our group has come up with a conclusion as to why parents make the decision to perform surgery on their intersex infant. We believe parents make the decision in order for there to be a sense of direction; some sort of placement for the child. By deciding the child’s gender, they believe their child will not have to suffer through the wrath society puts on a human being for being anything other than a boy or a girl. This reasoning may work for kids, but what happens afterwards when the child gets older and wants to switch back? iO Tillet Wright is one of many intersex individuals who went through this same cycle. As a child, she had decided she wanted to be a boy. Living unorthodoxly, this had never been a problem for her parents, and no one outside her household needed to know she was anything else but a boy. She kept what she calls this “charade” up for around eight years. Then in her pre-teen years, she had decided she wanted to be a girl again. This was not a major issue because her parents had decided to let her do the decision making, rather than choosing one for her and then ending up with a son who wanted to be a girl. But, for other parents who go ahead and complete the surgery, it becomes much more difficult to deal with a child who doesn’t feel comfortable in their own skin.

8. Possible Solution(s) • Let the child decide at their own time who they want to become. • To us, this seems like the most viable solution because this way no one really ends up with the short end of the stick. An individual with this type of condition can make the decision that best fits themselves versus having their minds made up by their parents. Yes, their parents could feel a little bothered by their child’s decision, but none the less they should love them for exactly who they choose to be. Plus, the parents wouldn’t need to live with their child’s resentment if the child doesn’t think it was the right decision.

9. Works Cited Huihui, Lisa. Personal interview. 7 Mar. 2013 “Intersex.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 7 Mar. 2013 "Intersex 20/20, Part 2 of 2." YouTube. YouTube, 14 Mar. 2010. Web. 07 Mar. 2013. “iOTillet Wright.” Ted, Ideas Worth Spreading. Ted Conferences, LLC, Jan. 2013. Web. 5 Mar. 2013