HERESIES

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The Battle of the Five (or Maybe More) Sexes

By Walter Truett Anderson

<waltt@well.com>

Date: 11-27-96

The battle of the sexes is no longer one between men and women. A recent article in the respected magazine The Sciences points to evidence of at least five distinct biological sexes among human beings, and our cultural definitions of gender need to embrace that reality. The issue goes beyond semantics and affects the fate of the one out of every 2,000 babies born with "abnormal" genitals. PNS associate editor Walter Truett Anderson is a political scientist who has authored numerous books on the environment and lifestyle. His latest book is "Evolution Isn't What It Used To Be" (W.H. Freeman).

Although it might seem that everything having to with sex is out in the open by now, there is still one issue left in the shadows -- hermaphrodism. People who are neither physically male or female seem at best a medical curiosity for most of us. But for the roughly one-in-two-thousand babies born with "abnormal" genitals, it's a matter of vital importance. So too for their parents, the doctors who treat them, and a small but vociferous group of activists who are asking that we reexamine our most fundamental ideas about sex and gender.

As a first step, it's important to note that those two words -- sex and gender -- aren't synonymous any more. Today any number of people of different persuasions -- feminists, gays, lesbians, cross-dressers, people who have had sex-change operations -- will tell you that sex is a biological term, gender is a cultural one. Sex describes your reproductive organs, gender describes the role you live out in the world. Sexually you may be defined male while gender-wise you are defined female, and vice versa.

So how many sexes are there? Two, most people would assume, perhaps going to three to include something in the middle called hermaphrodism. But very few assumptions about such matters are entirely safe these days.

In a recent article in the respected magazine The Sciences, a historian presented a persuasive body of medical data to prove that there are actually five distinct biological sexes among human beings (the two standard ones and three distinct forms of hermaphrodism). Sooner or later, Anne Fausto-Sterling argued, our culture is going to have to get past its hang-ups on the subject. When that happens, some people will be male, some people will be female, some will have sex-change operations in one direction or the other, and some will choose to define entirely new social and sexual roles -- with entirely new genders.

Children born with organs that don't quite conform to standard concepts of normality are usually steered toward one or another of the two official genders. That practice -- particularly the sex-organ surgery commonly employed to make the hermaphroditic baby resemble a "normal" male or female -- is now being challenged by organizations representing adults who were subjected to such procedures in infancy.

Cheryl Chase, executive director of the Intersex Society of North America, compares the surgery to the genital mutilation of young girls -- a practice widely condemned around the world and recently outlawed in the U.S. She brands Congress' failure to outlaw involuntary surgery on hermaphroditic children "outrageous," and her organization is lobbying for further legislative action. Doctors, not surprisingly, resent this and claim that their aim is merely to produce happy, well-adjusted children.

The whole issue is heating up as activists become more vocal. A protest group called "Hermaphrodites with Attitude" have announced plans to picket hospitals where the surgery -- which they call intersex genital mutilation, or IGM -- is performed. "Doctors are now cutting into five intersexed infants every day," says a representative of the group. "If we can save just one helpless child from IGM, it's worth it."

Says Chase: "IGM has robbed us of our genitals and our sexual feeling. Most who survive IGM are also psychologically scarred for life, while others have committed suicide. Cutting infant genitals to fit heterosexual norms is not medicine; it's mutilation in every sense of the word and it's got to stop."

Hermaphrodites were, as a group, virtually silent and nearly invisible until very recently, and it's too early to tell what might result from their newfound activism. There is not likely to be any immediate resolution of this conflict on either side, because the activists show no signs of backing down. Clearly, it will take a long time for their message to convert anxious parents who want to have a "normal" child.

What's also clear is that the "battle of the sexes" is no longer simply between men and women.