origin of gender

intersex describes people who exhibit atypical physical features which would typically distinguish male and female.  this can be a genetic sex reversal (xx male or xy female), genital ambiguity, sex development differences or a person with physical characteristics of both male and female sexes.

androgyny is different - this refers to people without gender-specific physical sexual characteristics or sexual preferences or gender identity, or some combination thereof.

i just watched a fabulous argentinian movie called xxy.  the lead character, alex, is an intersexed 15-year-old.  she is living as a girl, but she has male and female parts and doesn't know if she likes boys or girls.  she takes loads of pills to maintain her "girlish" characteristics, including corticoid so she doesn't grow a beard.  no one knows her 'secret' except her parents and her best friend, who is a boy.  her parents were faced with the decision about whether to have "corrective" or "normalizing" surgery to the moment she was born.  they decided to forego the surgery and moved their family to a remote area.  they understood that teaching your child to be afraid or ashamed of their own body is one of the worst things you can do.  during the movie, alex is faced with making the decision for herself - does she want to be a boy or a girl?

this movie brought up some interesting questions:  what makes someone male vs female?  how much of our gender is determined by genetics vs environment?  if a baby is born with ambiguous genitalia, who decides if (s)he will have surgery?  if the parents wait, at what age are children old enough to decide their gender for themselves?  why is there so much pressure to assign a specific sex (one of two choices) to a newborn?

assigning sex is an extremely powerful concept.  and it is scary.  and there has not been sufficient long-term studies of people who have had "normalizing" surgery at birth to determine whether this is the best practice.  in fact, the surgery is standard pediatric practice despite having its basis in research done on hermaphrodites and a single set of identical twins originally tracked more than two decades ago.  thus, it is argued that there should be a moratorium on the surgery until more is known about outcomes of past interventions.

in addition, once parents choose to assign a sex (potentially reassign sex), they are told to raise their children without ambiguity.  and, as a result, many adults who have had these operations in infancy have never been candidly informed of their medical histories.

excuse me, i need to call my mom...