Transgendered

The Challenge of Transgendered Identity: The End of Gender as We Know It?

This article deals with the issue of gender as a social construct that leaves no room for those who are transgendered. With the growing number of individuals who do not identify with the sex they are born with, it is forcing society to take a look at what it means to be male and what it means to be female and how we can begin takeing down what has become normalized by western society.

The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Children

This article deals with the medical side of infants born with both sexs...or rather one sex that can not be identified externally. Within the article we see how the medical world handles these situations, and the theory that infants that will be assigned the sex as male be sergically altered as soon as possible, and females later. The theory supports its reasonings for assigning a sex early, so that the parents can raise the infant properly in its gender role. However, this thoery does not account for those who do not feel they are the gender they were once assigned, and it completely (in some cases) disregards the presence of testosteron and makes that infant a female so as to avoid future embarassment due to a small penis. This article than discusses the social pressures put upon by both parents and docotors to say what the gender is, and its because of this pressure that many of the problems regarding a proper assignment is made.

Terms:
1) Proliferation: the growth or production of cells by multiplication of parts
2) Circuitous(ly): roundabout; not direct
3) Ineffable: incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible: ineffable joy.
4) Teleologically (teleology): the study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature

Questions:

1) Is gender ambiguous?
2) In regards to Money's theory on gender assignment...should this theory be revisited with our current technology, and new guidlines be set in place?
3) How can we begin to change the social normalization of gender to include those of transgendered?
4) I might have missed this, but why not x-ray the infant to determine if there is a uterous or a scrutom that hasn't fallen in a boy?
5) Should surgical re-assignment be granted at a later stage in life so that mistakes aren't made?