Thaindian News

Washington, Mar 18 (ANI): An estimated 1 in 2,000 children born each year are neither boy nor girl, they are intersex, and the question as to who should decide what their gender should be has emerged.

Standard medical treatment has been to look at the genitals, determine the gender and then correct it surgically.

But now, many are challenging the ethical basis of surgery, knowing that gender identity is complex, and doctors can sometimes get it wrong, not knowing how a child will feel about their gender assignment when they grow up.

Advocates argue that surgery is irreversible and can have tragic consequences.

In some surgeries on virilized girls with ambiguous genitalia, removing sensitive tissue and vessels can ultimately rob them of sexual sensation as adults.

Today, gender identification is still not well understood, but experts say that when sex cannot be determined, it’s better to use the best available information to assign gender.

It is also better to wait and monitor the child’s psychological and physical development before undertaking surgery, if at all. Waiting until puberty also allows the child to participate in the decision.

“Our chromosomes don’t tell us who we are,” ABC News quoted Dr. Arlene Baratz, a Pittsburgh breast radiologist who has two intersex daughters, as saying.

“We expect XX is pink and a girl and XY is blue and a boy, but we know from children with gender identity conditions that is not always the case, even when their bodies are perfectly typical.

“Today, we anticipate how the child will feel as an adult and what they feel inside.

“That is called gender identity and the gender role is how we live in society as a man or a woman.

“So gender assignment is aimed at putting gender identity and role in sync with each other as the child grows older,” she added. (ANI)