Monday 5 October 2009

The ANC Youth League (and others) Speak Out on Intersex

From the Star:
"What does the youth league know about hermaphrodites? The imperialists must not impose this on us if they have hermaphrodites where they come from. They must enjoy living with their hermaphrodites, because in South Africa there are no hermaphrodites."
- ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema

Of course we're much more intelligent, as is shown by The Story of 'R'. We don't close our eyes and pretend there is no evidence, we get rid of it. :
He was in his early twenties. Melbourne-born. A tiny baby with a micro-penis. An officially undersized willie that, unlike a fish, could not be thrown back. It is part of a medical mythology that is passed around the profession like an urban legend. “Boys with micro-penises can’t grow to be real men if their willies are too small to insert into a vagina,” runs one myth. Another is they’ll grow up thinking they are not ‘proper’ men. They might even think they’re female.

When babies are born with micro-penises physicians pinch the organ between their thumb and forefinger to ensure its stretched length is over three millimeters. If not, the baby’s testicles may be removed, a vagina fashioned from the baby’s colon and the boy raised as female. ‘Real men’ do not have micro-penises.

The practice of rearranging babies’ genitals and raising them as one or other sex is called ‘pediatric gender assignment.’ Its one of the medical devices used to conceal the existence of biological diversity in human sex development.

Doctors in Melbourne had attempted this with ‘R’. Had tried to trick him into thinking he was a girl. They’d failed. And that’s why ‘R’ was angry. Sometimes he vented by punching holes in walls and windows. Eventually his partner, fearing for herself, persuaded him to see a therapist.

On his second visit the therapist thought ‘R’ might like to discuss his gender identity issues. She wondered if he was having difficulty dealing with his lesbianism.

“I’m not a lesbian,” ‘R’ replied. “I’m a man! I don’t have any identity issues!”

“That’s what I mean,” the therapist answered. “You’ve got a vagina, you were raised as a girl, but you identify as a man.”

When ‘R’s therapist attempted to to turn his problems into gender issues she was following a script that is repeated every time an intersex baby is identified.
...
...transgenderism and psycho-feminist gender theory are not science – they are pseudo-scientific narratives. The most recent product of an ancient cultural bio-variant phobia, only lately cobbled together from John Money’s theories. To this day its primary function is the erasure of biological variation in sex formation.

All attempts to mislead ‘R’ into thinking he was a girl had failed. ‘R’ had not deciphered the continuous multiplicity of signs that pointed in the direction of his being a girl, including his possession of a vagina, to conclude he was female. The attempt to give him a disordered ‘gender identity’ had failed miserably.

In the view of his anger (to his) therapist ‘R’ couldn’t win. He was a lesbian. He had a disordered identity because it wasn’t the one gender theory had predetermined for him. The exchange made him even more angry. He stormed out and made his enraged way home. At his front door he eyed up the glass window pane for a moment. He screamed his outrage… and he punched.

‘R’ had his hand and forearm swathed in plaster. Two days earlier he’d tried to punch out the reinforced glass window in his front door. That one angry punch had broken most of the bones in his right hand.

But a rational person should understand his anger.

"My theory trumps your reality."

There's been too much of that. Ideology - be it political, religious, or philosophical - riding roughshod over Facts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Every girl wants to believe she is Jamie Lee Curtis.

Anonymous said...

Don't know what Jamie Lee Curtis has got to do with it?

Don't know how R's experience got to be a TS Human Rights Issue either.

Nicely written account of an individual human tragedy. One life ruined by tunnel visioned adherence to dogma, ideology and the 20th century's version of humoural medicine.

Congratulations to the author. Shame about the lack of credit.

Cheers

Joanne