Gender

Gender Society views sex and gender as dichotomous. Traditionally one is thought of as either a man or a woman, male or female, masculine or feminine, but these social constructions imply that anything in between does not exist. The fact that medical records of intersexed infants being born exist disproves this cultural construction and opens up an entirely new area of debate. Robert Crouch in his article ‘Betwixt and Between: The Past and Future of Intersexuality’, states that medical practitioners feel a certain social discomfort with intersexuality and view it as a social emergency. Culture requires us to deem a new born as either a male or a female. Therefore when a case of an intersexed infant occurs physicians react to it with the aim of rectifying it which would enable them to classify it with one of the two available genders. Similarly Suzanne Kessler in her article ‘The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants’ notes that natural or biological sex is altered into culturally created gender. Alice Domurat Dregger in his article ‘A History of Intersexuality: From the Age of Gonads to the Age of Consent’, gives his reasoning behind this that the acceptance of intersexuality prompts gender, intersexed, sex, medical, therefore, social, money, make, intersexuality, either, case, article, two, theory, society, problem, physicians, one, new, male, infant, gonads, genders, female, fact, exist, due, dichotomous, cultures, culture, cultural, construction, born, between, been, appearance