The third sex: The truth about gender ambiguity

[tk2kewl]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-third-sex-the-truth-about-gender-ambiguity-1922816.html

Neither wholly male nor entirely female, there are more than 30,000 'intersexed' individuals living in Britain today. Here, they talk about their lives.

There is way too much to this article for me to try to create a meaningful excerpt, but the last line is the best:

... in the simple, succinct words of Dr Milton Diamond: "Let's see if we can change society, not nature."

[eridani]

1. Maybe one of these days, when asked if your newborn is a boy or a girl--

--it will be perfectly OK to say "We can't tell. We'll have to wait until s/he is old enough to talk so we can ask."

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

7. Yes, because children only just learning to speak totally understand their gender identity.

:eyes:

[eridani]

12. People have gender identities early, AFAIK n/t

[KittyWampus]

16. I'd love to read some research on that. How early babies/toddlers express gender identity

and HOW that is done.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

19. And how much of that is received from the parents?

If your parents tell you you're a meeklarkrobitz, you're going to believe you're a meeklarkrobitz.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. As Nature Made Him / There are so many more questions than answers...

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/reviews/000220.20angiert.html

X + Y = Z An account of the John/Joan case, in which doctors tried to turn a baby boy into a girl.

[tech9413]

3. I tried to explain to a RW freind of mine this concept

Spent hours on the phone with him trying to explain that gender identity as with sexual desire are on a sliding scale with infinite possibilities. The whole subject came up because I don't have the same libido as him and he got the idea in his head I was gay. Too many people don't get the idea that sexual identity, as sexual desire, isn't an either or situation.

[el_bryanto]

4. yeah - it's pretty common

People get skeevy about it.

Bryant

[JackBeck]

5. Thinking outside of the gender binary is difficult for many people.

I recently delivered a new training I developed at my organization on Sexuality and Gender in Augusta, GA and the group got stuck on the concept of third gender.

When looking at other societies and cultures, non-gender conforming individuals have been integrated and accepted within their communities for many years. I feel as though we have a long way to go in this country.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

9. It's difficult because of the physical reality.

"If it's got a penis it's a boy, if it's got a vagina it's a girl." Really it's not difficult to understand why some people have trouble accepting deviations from that. Especially with very young children who have no concept of sexual or gender identity.

[JackBeck]

11. But there also exists the physical reality that individuals are born with both sets or organs.

And then doctors making a choice of identifying them as male or female, when in reality they are intersex.

Among the group in Georgia, there was a resistance to the idea that this even occurs in the first place, even after sharing the names other cultures use to identify these individuals.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

20. Well, obviously there's going to be a predisposition to seeing it as a birth defect.

However that's not really an accurate description, as it doesn't deal with the underlying root cause, which is probably an anomalous hormone problem.

[slampoet]

6. There are muslim texts dealing with prayer and the third gender dating back to Charlemagne

but somehow We in Western societies deny this has ever happened before and that it is happening now.

[fishbulb703]

8. Classic confusion of the words gender and sex.

[el_bryanto]

10. I'm not sure about the term third sex now that i think about it

Because doesn't that define a whole range of options? From Non-sexual, to trans-sexual (in both directions, or somewhere in the middle) and so on? The third sex implies that these groups are unified - and I think right now they may well be (because of our discrimination against them) but assuming we move past that, their values and desires should spread and divide i would think?

Bryant

[CommonSensePLZ]

13. What happened to "hermaphrodite"? And it's not just penis v. vagina

I say big deal, this is nothing compared to some weirder stuff in science: There are animals that change gender throughout their lives.

Anyway, I think in these cases the only real way to determine a human being's gender is a chromosome test:

XX = female
Xy = male

[el_bryanto]

14. but what if an individual disagrees with their chromosome test? nt

[KittyWampus]

15. Androgen?

[JackBeck]

17. Hermaphrodite is considered an offensive term in the intersex community.

http://www.isna.org/faq/hermaphrodite

Also, when conducting a chromosome test, you are trying to determine a person's sex, not gender.

[HippieCowgirl]

22. Not always accurate

What if the chromosome is XXY? Or XXX? Or XYY? Or Turner Syndrome?

It happens more often than one would think.

[Rozlee]

18. A little off topic here. Maybe it's just a local or regional fluke

But, Pleasanton, TX, some other small Texas towns, some area hospitals in San Antonio, and definately my own family, are having a disproportionate amount of boys. Of twelve births of cousins, nephews, etc. in the last five years, only two have been girls. Of my three grandchildren, only one is a girl, and one in utero is a boy. They say it's maybe a fluke. But, the first thing that popped into my head was phytoestrogens in plastics and other pollutants. But, then again, maybe it's only a fluke. The next year or so should tell. But, my sister in Canada told me she's noticed something pretty similiar.

[gleaner]

21. The gender you were born with does not necessarily ...

determine your sexuality. It is more than having certain organs or not having them. Gender identity is inherent not learned but I wonder if there is also a spectrum where sexual identity spreads from being strongly preferential to men or women to bisexual with stronger or weaker attractions present with the primary sexual identification. This sounds really awkward, but I am trying so hard not to offend anyone or be a clumsy fool.

I have often thought that we have within all of us a certain amount of same gender attraction. It is present all through nature in other species so why not ours? That is where I fail to understand the people who pronounce any sexual behavior other than straight sex with a different gender as "unnatural," when it seems the most natural thing in the world. We have many other inherent differences between us. Height, eye color, temperament running from calm to agitated, so why wouldn't that apply to sexuality as well? And what would be wrong with it if it did?