— ЛЗ
Hermaphroditic Heresies
In 1993 I PUBLISHED A MODEST PROPOSAL SUGGESTING THAT WE REplace our two-sex system with a five-sex one.1 In addition to males and females, I argued, we should also accept the categories herms (named after ‘‘true’’ hermaphrodites), merms (named after male ‘‘pseudo-hermaphrodites’’), and ferms (named after female ‘‘pseudo-hermaphrodites’’). I’d intended to be provocative, but I had also been writing tongue in cheek, and so was surprised by the extent of the controversy the article unleashed. Rightwing Christians somehow connected my idea of five sexes to the United Na — tions—sponsored 4th World Conference on Women, to be held in Beijing two year later, apparently seeing some sort of global conspiracy at work. ‘‘It is maddening,’’ says the text of a New York Times advertisement paid for by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights,2 ‘‘to listen to discussions of ‘five genders’ when every sane person knows there are but two sexes, both of which are rooted in nature.’’3
John Money was also horrified by my article, although for different reasons. In a new edition of his guide for those who counsel intersexual children and their families, he wrote: ‘‘In the 1970’s nurturists. . .became. . . ‘social constructionists.’ They align themselves against biology and medicine. . . . They consider all sex differences as artifacts of social construction. In cases of birth defects of the sex organs, they attack all medical and surgical interventions as unjustified meddling designed to force babies into fixed social molds of male and female. . . . One writer has gone even to the extreme of proposing that there are five sexes. . . (Fausto-Sterling).’’4 Meanwhile, those battling against the constraints of our sex/gender system were delighted by the article. The science fiction writer Melissa Scott wrote a novel entitled Shadow Man, which includes nine types of sexual preference and several genders, in-
eluding fems (people with testes, XY chromosomes, and some aspects of female genitalia), herms (people with ovaries and testes), and mems (people with XX chromosomes and some aspects of male genitalia).5 Others used the idea of five sexes as a starting point for their own multi-gendered theories.6
Clearly I had struck a nerve. The fact that so many people could get riled up by my proposal to revamp our sex/gender system suggested that change (and resistance to it) might be in the offing. Indeed, a lot has changed since 1993, and I like to think that my article was one important stimulus. Intersex- uals have materialized before our very eyes, like beings beamed up onto the Starship Enterprise. They have become political organizers lobbying physicians and politicians to change treatment practices. More generally, the debate over our cultural conceptions of gender has escalated, and the boundaries separating masculine and feminine seem harder than ever to define.7 Some find the changes under way deeply disturbing; others find them liberating.
I, of course, am committed to challenging ideas about the male/female divide. In chorus with a growing organization of adult intersexuals, a small group of scholars, and a small but growing cadre of medical practitioners,81 argue that medical management of intersexual births needs to change. First, let there be no unnecessary infant surgery (by necessary I mean to save the infant’s life or significantly improve h/her physical well-being). Second, let physicians assign a provisional sex (male or female) to the infant (based on existing knowledge of the probability of a particular gender identity formation—penis size be damned!). Third, let the medical care team provide full information and long-term counseling to the parents and to the child. However well-intentioned, the methods for managing intersexuality, so entrenched since the 1930s, have done serious harm.