Seminar on Inter-Sex Humans

I just attended an interesting topical seminar on what is traditionally known as hermaphrodites or individuals who fall into the nether region of being neither male or female. The historian scholar cum LGBT rights activist gave an entertaining talk on how traditional medicine viewed these people with a critical and judgmental eye. It has actually happened in the past that when a baby "boy" was born with a penis significantly smaller than average, surgeons would remove the offendingly small member and pronounce the baby a girl. Similarly, if a baby "girl" was born with an oversized clitoris, that too was removed. People get very nervous with boundaries are blurred and nice neat categories can not be established.

The speaker is now very much involved with individuals with gender issues, whether biologically derived or not. She also champions their rights and tries to enlighten health practitioners on the best way to deal with such individuals. It is no longer acceptable, she believes, to try and just pick one gender or another for the intersexual being and then surgically try to mold that person into that particular gender. To back up her claims, she gave some tragic examples of people ultimately committing suicide to escape the pain of feeling as if they were inferior due to their ambiguous sexual characteristics. More understanding, more communication and more sensitivity need to be applied when dealing with such complex issues.

I enjoyed the talk for the most part and it got me to think somewhat about my own ideas of gender. It seems that I have never truly questioned that I was a female and a girl and although I despise certain aspects of being a girl, I have more or less accepted it without too much internal agony. How much of my perceived gender and idea of self was nature? How much was nurture? If it is true and that on a biological spectrum of gender, with most of the people falling more or less in between the spectrum from being ultra female to being ultra male, where do I fall? Was I at one point more androgynous and only progressed towards being the girly girl that I am through years of being told (aka brainwashed) that I am a girl and I have to understand the roles that come with being a girl?

What if egads, I was born as a boy but with a small penis? And it was cut off? And now I think of myself as a girl without understanding my true origins?

Funny story - a person who by all accounts was a woman went to the doctor complaining of hernia. When the doctor opened her up, they discovered, not a hernia, but a pair of testes growing inside of her. They removed them promptly but thereafter decided that she is really a male. They pronounced her a homosexual pseudo-hermaphrodite because she was attracted only to males.