Cut IT off: A “Psychosocial Emergency!”

I know the title of this blog is drastic. I did it on purpose. There is no nice way to say it. I will not comply to this being called “corrective surgery”, when a baby is not sick, and this destroys fertility and sexual pleasure later in life.

But guess what, it happens daily in this world. A little secret you might not know. 1 in 150 genital surgeries are done in infancy and are done ONLY for appearance and to fit this so called “normal”. Surgeries so that we all neatly fit into this male, female binary. The cost: Grave error in gender assignment, assumption of sexual orientation for the person, as well as permanent damage to sexual pleasure, and fertility later in life.

Cary Costello Ph.D., and intersex activist says: “The reasons doctors in the U.S. continue to impose genital reconstructive surgery on intersex children are almost always social, not medical. The claim is that being born sexually intermediate is socially intolerable. Our society views sex as a binary, with male and female being the only legal options to be declared on birth certificates, school records, drivers’ licenses, etc. Having bodies that violate this social expectation, doctors say, we will face extreme stigma—lack of parental love, mockery by peers, panic in bathrooms, rejection in romantic situations—which will be so damaging we may commit suicide. Thus, they argue, we must be assigned to a binary sex, our bodies must be modified to conform to it, and this should be done as soon as possible, to minimize harm.”

All because there are no laws to protect intersex children yet: From Pubmed: “When a child is born with ambiguous genitalia, it is declared a psychosocial emergency, and the policy first proposed by John Money (Johns Hopkins University) and adapted by the American Academy of Pediatrics (and more broadly accepted in Canada, the U.K., and Europe) requires determination of underlying condition(s), selection of gender, surgical intervention, and a commitment by all parties to accept the “real sex” of the patient, all no later than 18-24 months, preferably earlier. Ethicists have recently questioned this protocol on several grounds: lack of medical necessity, violation of informed consent, uncertainty of standards of success, among others….The result is a situation wherein parents, physicians, and intersexed patients have “no choice” but to accept the medical treatment guidelines.”

It is simple. If the child is not in an immediate medical emergency, let their body be until they self-determine their own gender, and only do surgeries with informed consent, and only if they chose to. Advocates for Informed Choice say that these surgeries are being performed simply due to a “False sense of urgency.”. After these surgeries are performed, it is NEVER a guarantee of gender, or sexual orientation of the person in the future. Worse, their body might not sexually work any more, or more devastating, they kill themselves.