Gendered Development (chapter 5) by Pamela Murillo

Sex is a social construction and it starts off from the moment we are born. It’s a boy! Or it’s a girl! Society has established ways to categorize people, either you are a male or a female, black or white, but cannot be in the middle. It is not socially accepted that individuals break the rules, and usually whenever that happens, individuals are looked bad upon and most of the time rejected. This chapter mentions that in our society there are three assumptions about sex; One is that there are only two sexes, second one is that sex exists as a biological fact not taking into account people’s beliefs, and third is that sex and gender naturally go together. Interestingly enough there are many people out there that are misinformed about gender and sex. Many believe that there are only two genders, and as I mentioned before those are male and female. However, the book mentions that 1.7 percent of babies vary in some way from the biological norm of the two common known sexes. People that are born with any variation from the two sexes are called intersexed. When a babe is born intersexed, doctors force the parents to make the decision of weather they want a girl or a boy. Usually their decision is based on weather the kid’s sex organ appeals to be more a female or a male like. Since the kids are too young to decide for themselves, they do not have a say in having the surgery done, and is when they reach puberty or adulthood that they start facing the consequences of that act.

As we also saw in the Oprah show, there are people out there that didn’t have the surgery done when they were born. They feel happy with themselves although they are aware of all the discrimination they face in order to remain who they are. The book explains how some people feel “trapped in the wrong body” but since society is so strict when it comes to this topic; most just remain hidden in the dark. There are many different types of sexual disorders out there that are not socially accepted. For example, there are people that are born with androgen insensitivity syndrome, which is most of the time, a person with a female organ and female features but with internal testis. Their body produce enough estrogen that make them look female, although they do not have a uterus inside but instead testis in the folding of their labia. This is just an example of one of the syndromes mentioned in the book, but there are other major ones out there as well that people have to deal with. It is not really hard to come up and find out for your self who you are, and what you want in reference to your sexual life, but it is really hard to maintain a regular social life and having to deal with what “society” is going to say.

Intersexed people demonstrate that there are not only two categories for sex. But is sad to know that intersexed children are largely dependent on social factors. Kids have to face discrimination, teasing, disrespect, and bulling when they undergo these conditions. In class we saw an example of two young 8-year-old kids that were born male but they felt inside as females. They had made the transition from being boys to being girls regardless of what society and their parents thought of them. They were so mature and open about it. It made me feel so proud of them and think that we as adults have to be as brave as them when we want something with such a big desire. The book also mentions that there are other cultures such as India that accept the variation of having only two sexes. Our society is so narrowed minded and so conservative about this topic, that they rather ignore it and push/force people to the categories we already have established. If we change our mentality we can possibly change the future to end sex discrimination against those who “cannot fit” into society’s norms.