(Untitled)

[morganica]

did you know that some form of genital reassignment surgery is done to about five infants every day in North America

Comments

[petulant_derek]

I saw an interesting documentary about this subject on Showtime a few months ago. It was very enlightening. Mostly, the focus was on people who are clearly a certain gender physically, but feel as though they are the opposite sex of what their body is. It was heartbreaking to see people who feel "trapped" in their bodies.Some of these people were recipients of genital operations at birth and the reassignment went the "wrong way".

Genital alteration is a touchy subject. Our society defines gender by the external genitals, and there are a lot of self-confidence and self-esteem issues related to that as well. I would want my child to live a normal life, have a healthy sexual outlook, and not be self-conscious about his/her body...

[morganica]

my freshman year in college, i saw a documentary on the discovery channel that sounds like it was similar to the one you mentioned.
it really opened my eyes to the fact that we, as humans, created genders. we created the limitations through our lack of understanding and open-mindedness.

it definitely made me question the way that people condemn homosexuality as being an evil lifestyle... i mean, if genetics can cause sexual ambiguity to manifest itself physically, who's to say that it can't manifest itself enough to cause hormonal/emotional/psychological ambiguity without manifesting itself physically.
the only thing i've concluded on this subject is that neither i, nor anyone other than God, is quite qualified enough to make a final judgement on such things.

i think it's fascinating.

[petulant_derek]

No doubt that gender is a very social construct. I think it would be a fascinating (albeit unethical) experiment to take children and raise them in a totally isolated environment without any social concepts such as marriage, dating, homosexuality, etc and see what their sexuality is like. I suspect it would a lot less rigid than what we have today. While sexual behavior is ultimately for the propagation of the species (thus making heterosexual activity "natural") I think that other forms of activity, including homosexual behavior, might be much more prevalent and gender identification might be less of a factor if social pressures and mores were removed from the picture.
I certainly believe that genetics plays a very, very strong factor in sexual preferences and patterns. As God is the designer of our genetic code, its hardly right for us to be judgemental of other people - and thus his design. :)

[philcantspel]

I think I saw the same documentary on Showtime. I definitely would not alter the genitals of the child. Whether or not you go through the surgery, the child will know that they are different. It would be up to them later in life if they felt more one way or the other to go through the surgery. It's their body, and not anyone else's. Especially when it comes to gender identity, the child will not know for sure until probably after adolescence. If that would be an issue to you, then you shouldn't have children because you're supposed to love them unconditionally.

[bottlerocket]

chances are, you know someone who has had genital reassignment surgery...whether they know it or not.

I only know seven people. So chances are, no, I don't.

[morganica]

perhaps i should have said "aquainted with," or "have met."