"Five Sexes vs. Two Sexes"

This weeks readings from "Sexing up the Body" by Anne Fausto-Sterling were really tackled the medical way in which intersexuality and intersexuals are dealt with and have been dealt with in the past. The first chapter we read this week of "Of Gender and Genitals" really gave insight of what happens when a child has an abnormality regarding sex and how that is dealt with. The doctors feel that the babies must leave the hospital with a sex label and so they have to act fast to make the baby as they determine its "natural sex". This chapter also gave us diagrams and tables about the various abnormalities and how the genitals of boys and girls in the development stage are very similar. With the similarities in sex organs I think it is easy for things to sometimes get mixed up but the rushing to surgery to correct these things may be the right thing to do especially since the individual is not fully grown. As I read all the different abnormalities the one that garnered my attention the most was Turner Syndrome. The fact that you can have a O chromosome never occured to me I always thought in terms of X and Y. This got me to thinking that people really need to be more educated and aware of types of Intersexuality. Another thing that really grabbed my attention was the fact that technology and environment are contributing in our sexual make-up. This to me is really a scary thought I mean I have heard people say that diets and people eating chicken that they pump with growth hormones are speedy up our growth and that is why girls are getting their periods younger and younger but to changing out sexual makeup is a whole other issue. I think that more research has to be done it that area to make the statement concrete. Also this idea of prenatal testing and fixing so that your child doesn't come out intersex is absurd. The side effects are horrible and it may affect your child in the long run I think parents should allow the individual to be born yet before making any rash decisions.

When the author poses the question "Should there only be two sexes?" she answered it herself. She decided that there should be five sexes, female, male, herms, merms, and ferms. This caused outrage from many different communities who felt that she was going too far. The truth is that we cannot ignore this population of intersexuals because they are amongst us and it is getting harder to put people into boxes and keep them there as the lines become blurred it pushes peoples boundaries and levels of comfort ability and the only way to get pass this is to get educated and to become aware and to acknowledge that are more than just two sexes and in the same token more than just two gender. We must began to reconstruct these notions to include all peoples.