A use for gender-ambiguous names
 

This article at Time magazine tells of the changing attitude toward those born w/o a definite sex.

This whole subject is disturbing. Babies born with birth defects that render them without a sexual identity...

Excuse me while I go cry

It shows that God has a sense of humor, IMO.

Astro, kids are born in all sorts of ways. Lots are born alive, but not all, as some "ways" are not situations people can survive with.

(edit) The attitude that these kids have a birth defect may have to change. That's part of the point of this article. Who are we to say they're defective? Maybe there will be a new sex soon, in evolutionary time. People who can check off "M" and "F" on forms. Who go into either bathroom with impunity, or can only go into the "family" bathroom. Kinda like being born on 29 February.

Also, it puts an interesting twist on Gay marriage, IMO. If they marry either sex, are they Gay, or are they Straight? Can they only marry their own "kind"? Or can they only marry others? If they marry their own "kind", does that make them Gay?

It's a real sexual identity question when even your body isn't sure.

Intersexed babies are more common than most people think. In the past, and still today, doctors and parents reassign their childrens' genders based on what they want before the child is old enough to consent. Several groups of people (like people opposed to FGM) argue that it's not ethically acceptable to reassign a child's gender until they are old enough to decide for themselves. As researchers do more studies on intersexed children who were reassigned at birth, they find that it's more than just the genitals that decides what your gender is. And when you mix it up based on what the parents or doctor thinks it should be, that creates a mess for the lives of those children.

There's more to gender than just the genitals. Every person has five genders, which in most cases are all aligned the same. However, when someone steps in and changes one of your genders for you, it's going to cause a lot of confusion.

Can you explain this, please.

I'm going to guess something like
Physical
mental
spiritual
sexual
emotional?

Good thread Denim.

In anycase, in another thread I posted some resources that hopefully might help answer your questions and more. Also anyone who is curious about the intersex lifestyle these are great meta sites to learn all kinds of stuff at:

One

Two

Three

A linked list of articles on Gender Assignment

Ya gotta admit, we don't know good answers on these topics. More research, generated by LEAVING PEOPLE BE, should be gathered. See what these people do w/o drastic action done to them. Kinda like we're seeing what happens with the people joined at the head.

Gladly.

1) Genetic Gender: At conception, a sperm with an X or Y chromosome melds with an egg. This is where XXY, XYY, and XO can occur. These variations are more often somewhat mentally retarded, but not always.

2) Physical Gender: During development, there is a release of hormones which determines the sex of your genitals. If estrogen is released, the embryo develops female sexual organs. If androgen is released, the embryo develops male sexual organs. Problems occur when an embryo is sensitive or insensitive to the "incorrect" hormones. Androgen insensitivity is when an embryo does not react to the androgen hormones the way it should and develops a mixture of gonads. Or in some cases a "female" embryo reacts to androgen or androgen is released instead of estrogen. It's when the hormones are mismatched with the chromosomes of the embryo that intersexed genders occur, they're also known as pseudohermaphrodites. True hermaphrodites are extremely rare.

3) "Brain Gender:" Later in the development of the embryo, another surge of hormones is sent that determines the gender of the brain. The difference between a male brain and female is minute, but it does exist and is not easily determinable unless you use high tech brain scanning stuff like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). If the hormones are mixed up here, you could end up with a female who has a male brain or vice versa. There is a theory that is suggesting this might explain the majority of transsexuals (man in a woman's body/woman in a man's body).

4) "Brain Sex:" is "psychosexual behavior" that appears to be "independent of environment." That means, if you raise a child with the brain sex of a man as if he were a woman, he would still feel and act like a man.

5) Gender Identity: Subjective gender, how we see ourselves.

This is a link to a site that has similar information that has been presented to me by actual transsexuals that are part of an outreach program, so I consider it pretty spot-on. Information is constantly changing, though because this topic/area has been underresearched for so long and new information keeps pouring in.
http://www.transgendercare.com/guida..._is_gender.htm

Thanks motdakasha.

I really wonder in this issue what I would do if I were the parent of a kid like this. How can you not give your child a gender? How long will it take for that kid to decide what gender they want to be? What do people who are opposed to this propose?

Could take 20 or 30 or more years. I don't know how much actual data we've got on this situation with a long time frame.

Just when you thought life couldn't get any more confusing.

hey now, i have a gender-ambigious name.....i make use of it just fine :p

Evolution frightens me.

I'm a human. Gender means nothing to me.

And that's why I'm a freak. Thank you for your time.

1) In our society it's near difficult not to assign a gender. One of the first things a doctor is expected to do one the child is born is to announce it's gender. What, then, does s/he say when they cannot decide if the single visible gonad is not discernable?
2) Assuming the child isn't terribly pressured by society and peers, which is near impossible, studies have shown that children as young as one year old know that there is a difference between genders.
3) People who are opposed to infant gender reassignment propose waiting until the child is old enough to decide for him or herself. On a video about intersex, one child decided to become neuter by removing all gonads and such. That's a pretty uncommon decision, but ultimately, shouldn't it be up to them to decide who they want to be?

On the other hand, people who support infant gender reassignment believe it's in the best interest of the child to know what they are early on. What do you do, though, if they know in their hearts that they are the gender you did NOT assign them to? So, who's best interest is infant reassignment really in?

The thing about that "theory" is intersexed children have been around as long as humans have been procreating. It's just that we're only now able to talk about it a little, but there is still a lot of unnecessary feelings of guilt and shame. "New" sex implies that they never were until just now. Intersex has always been and always will be so long as "mother nature" creates variation and deviation.

What I think we should be saying is this: We are finally recognizing intersexed children, but they deserve more than what we're giving. Our dichotomized language of male/female denies their existence and we need to change it to be more accomodating.

The intersexed child that decided to be neuter, had to fight the hospital that had "shis" birth certificate in court because they told "shim" (a previous human sexuality class created that pronoun for a neuter) the birth certificate could only have male or female on it. Shim finally won in court and Toby's birth certificate now says neuter.
We are so stuck in our ways when it comes to gender. We, especially the medical field, need to recognize that gender isn't binary. We aren't just one or the other. There are people that are somewhere in between.

I'd say thats actually most of us.

But thats just me.

That was beside my point, which was we need to make our language more reflective of the reality of our gender scale instead of binary gender.

But nevermind. I give up.