Response to Brittany (9/29)

While reading Thursday's reading by Anne-Fausto Sterling, I was disgusted and shocked by the way some of the ways doctors handle intersexuals. For example, when parents ask them if there is anyone else who was in a similar situation with whom they could get guidance from and speak with, doctors usually tell the parents that their child's condition is very rare and for that reason, there is no one, whom they can speak with. I'm sorry, but that is total crap. Sure, it may be a rarer condition...but not that rare. Fausto-Sterling reports that 1.7% of all children born are intersex, which means that in America (where the population is over 300 million) there are more than 5,100,000 people who have been born with some type of intersexual condition. Surely there are people with whom the doctors could refer the parents to in order to help them make a very crucial decision for their child as well as themselves. It is very sad how little psychological support the families of intersex children are offered. I was also appalled by the amount of information they withheld from parents (and the children when they were older) about the child's condition and the blatant lies some doctors told. For example, a girl by name of Angel Moreno had a clitoris which grew when she was twelve, so her mom took her to the hospital, where a doctor then told her she had ovarian cancer and needed a hysterectomy. They removed her clitoris and it was not until she was twenty-three that she discovered that she never really did have cancer, she was intersex (she was XY and did not have ovaries, but testes).