Ban Intersex Surgery for Children: Yes or No?

[Yonadav]

OK. You acquire expertise pretty rapidly I guess.

Except I didn't say that. Doing research doesn't mean Ive become an expert. It means I've read what experts had to say. Do you have an argument to make that doesn't mainly involve my character?

No, no argument to make. It's a discussion, and probably should have been a discussion from the beginning without anyone strongly taking sides. And what I am discussing with you is that maybe you shouldn't go from 0 to 120 with an issue that you saw on TV and you are pretty far removed from. There are some issues that I know an awfully lot about and they have a direct bearing on my life, and sometimes a television inspired google warrior decides to wade into my water and start swinging hard on the issue, thinking that they are doing me a favor. What they are doing is frequently the opposite of a favor.

[GrandizerII]

[Rev. Rye]

I haven't done much research on intersex children, but I can remember watching a documentary on TV well over a decade ago, and I think it might be relevant. A boy was born with one testicle. I'm not sure if the kid was intersex or anything (I have not been able to resurrect the documentary), but I can remember that they decided when he was about five or six, they would remove that one testicle. They claimed that it was cancerous, but apparently, his mother looked in the records and it was apparently healthy. Apparently, they decided they'd just keep the kid on steroids (or some other kind of androgen.) I can remember hearing the mother recount an incident where her son asked her "will I grow up to be a big boy, Mommy?" and she said "Yes," but to hear her describing the incident, you could tell she was lying to him and was nervous about the day she'd finally tell him the truth.

Then, years later, I discovered that this is a common thing to happen to intersex children. I am torn between the barbarity of the whole thing and the fact that, well, the whole situation is so bizarre that living with the ambiguity just makes everything all the more confusing.

[fredd bear]

[GrandizerII]

That story about the young boy was heartbreaking. He wasn't even intersex.

[Rev. Rye]

That story about the young boy was heartbreaking. He wasn't even intersex.

Yeah, the story of David Reimer is a depressingly fucked-up one. And looking through the Wikipedia article again, I just discovered that, as icing on the already fucked-up cake, he made his twin brother simulate sex with him and even took photos of this horseshit once or twice. Seriously, this reminds me so much of the last 15 minutes or so of One Hour Photo so much it's not even funny.

Or were you talking about my story just before his?

[GrandizerII]

That story about the young boy was heartbreaking. He wasn't even intersex.

Yeah, the story of David Reimer is a depressingly fucked-up one. And looking through the Wikipedia article again, I just discovered that, as icing on the already fucked-up cake, he made his twin brother simulate sex with him and even took photos of this horseshit once or twice. Seriously, this reminds me so much of the last 15 minutes or so of One Hour Photo so much it's not even funny.

Or were you talking about my story just before his?

I was referring to David Reimer's story, and erroneously thought it was the same story you posted about earlier, but then I read again to realize they are different accounts. Both stories are distressing for sure.

[Rev. Rye]

Yeah, the story of David Reimer is a depressingly fucked-up one. And looking through the Wikipedia article again, I just discovered that, as icing on the already fucked-up cake, he made his twin brother simulate sex with him and even took photos of this horseshit once or twice. Seriously, this reminds me so much of the last 15 minutes or so of One Hour Photo so much it's not even funny.

Or were you talking about my story just before his?

I was referring to David Reimer's story, and erroneously thought it was the same story you posted about earlier, but then I read again to realize they are different accounts. Both stories are distressing for sure.

I wish I could find that documentary or that case elsewhere. For some reason, googling "removing healthy child testicle" just throws up a bunch of resources about testicular torsion or questions about "will I still be able to perform after I get my testicular cancer treated?" A little further shows stories about mothers worried about kids who had unhealthy testicles removed. The case I think was in the 1990s, early 2000s at latest. And while I'm going on vague memories, I suspect that the mom looked a bit younger than this:

I think it was on TLC back when they were still somewhat educational.

[Aoi Magi]

This isn't a subject I can weigh in on, and maybe this is way off-topic but this reminds me of an episode of The Orville which centred around a healthy female baby being forcefully turned into a male because their society had only male members and females were shunned. In that case the parent's made the decision due to social pressure, and in our society of the past too things weren't very different. I can understand a parent making such a decision in the hopes of sparing their child a life of being a social outcast, and I can also understand how deeply painful such a life-altering decision can be for the person who had to grow up with a body and gender identity that they do not agree with.

Honestly, I don't think there's a general solution to this, rather it has to be taken on a case by case basis.

[GrandizerII]

This isn't a subject I can weigh in on, and maybe this is way off-topic but this reminds me of an episode of The Orville which centred around a healthy female baby being forcefully turned into a male because their society had only male members and females were shunned. In that case the parent's made the decision due to social pressure, and in our society of the past too things weren't very different. I can understand a parent making such a decision in the hopes of sparing their child a life of being a social outcast, and I can also understand how deeply painful such a life-altering decision can be for the person who had to grow up with a body and gender identity that they do not agree with.

Honestly, I don't think there's a general solution to this, rather it has to be taken on a case by case basis.

The problem is that many intersex people, after going through these surgeries when younger, experience various forms of trauma, seeing that society is unable to accept them for who they are because they want every individual to either be clearly a man with a penis or a woman with a vagina. And in addition, even parents report feeling regret later on when they realize they had been lied to by their doctors and thereby had to face the dreaded moments of confessing to their own children the fuckups they allowed.

The issue is complex for sure, but the solution is generally simple, if you put top priority on the basic human rights of the individual: let the intersex children decide for themselves once they have informed consent about the whole thing. It's not like parents always know what's best for their kids. And as for social pressure and such, intersex individuals shouldn't have to pay for the cruelty of society. People need to fucking learn to show support and understanding for these people and not let convention dictate how these individuals should be like.