One in 4000 babies born in Britain (and presumably in the U.S.) each year come into the world looking so different that doctors cannot immediately determine its sex. Attitudes and how to proceed from there are changing, and Britain's National Health Service is leading the way.
This information came to light in the wake of South African runner Caster Semenya's gold medal performance at the World Championships, who today learned that she can keep her gold medal although she is still awaiting word as to whether she can compete as a woman in the future.
In the past, and in the present in this country, in many cases, an instant determination is made so that a gender can be assigned to the birth certificate and a gender appropriate name given. But it doesn't stop there. Often the baby is rushed into surgery so they can be made to appear as close as possible to the assigned gender.
Now, in Britain, a different approach is being taken.
Britain is the first to base treatment on the assumption that it should be acceptable for boys and girls to look far from "normal".
Sarah Creighton is a gynecologist who was the first to compare how children who were left to develop naturally did, compared to those who were surgically altered at birth in an attempt to "normalize" their genitals. She found that being yourself was more important than being like others, and that "those who were left as nature made them fared as well, if not better than those who had been normalized."
What about the parents?
This is a shocking time for parents - a 2006 survey by the Scottish Audit of Genital Anomalies found that 95 per cent of parents were desperate for more information on the condition after the birth. Most were extremely worried about "ridicule and stigma" for their baby and the difficulty of discussing it with friends or relatives.
"It can take days or weeks to determine the sex - the limit on naming a child is six weeks and sometimes that has to be extended," Creighton says.
What about relatives, clamouring to know the baby's name?
"We advise parents to say the baby's poorly, they are awaiting tests. All children are then allocated boy or girl, but much more controversial is: do you proceed to surgery? That is hard to undo. We tend to think that surgery is all-powerful and by having surgery you have a cure. These aren't conditions that you can cure."
Now in Britain there is a generation of adolescents who are facing their own choice of whether they want to appear as male or female or remain different. As these children mature, it will be interesting to hear their stories (if they choose to share).
Comments
This is another prime example of a generation going wrong. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a 'naturally' developing child will be far better off than a 'genetically' altered child. Not to mention it doesn't take a genius to figure out the sex of the child. If it's born with a penis, it's a boy! Congratulations! If it's born with a vagina where the penis should be, it's a girl! Congratulations! If it is born with hermaphroditism, then wait until the child develops more to see which genitalia is more, or is, the functioning genitalia and proceed from there. As long as people try to make things over-complicated, they will always remain over-complicated and that's when syndromes are created that give liberals more to gleam over.
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