Arts
Leah Wittenberg's Environmental Cartoons
"I" Is For Intersex
| "I"
is for Intersex To Be Born With Ambiguous Gender |
| Healing the War
Between the Genders: The Power of the Soul-Centered Relationship By Linda Marks, MSM HeartPowerPress 2004 |
by Lynn McNicol
The
gay rights movement in this country is typically dated back to the Stonewall
riots of 1969, when lesbians and gay men refused to be pushed around any
more by police raiding the bar. In later years, transgender individuals
have found greater acceptance in our "family," and bisexuals
have as well, to some extent. Thus, the LGBT acronym.
But it's only been
fairly recently that people born with intersex conditions have found the
support to approach a more public forum in which to deal with the damaging
treatment many of them have had to endure, often at the hands of medical
professionals. October 2006 marked only the second annual Intersex Awareness
Day.
Sources on the Web indicate that much
of what people born with intersex conditions ("anatomy that someone
decided is not standard for male or female," according to the Intersex
Society of North America) must face is the great shame visited upon them
because their bodies do not "conform." Many (and this continues
today) have received surgery as infants to make their bodies conform.
Many of these people say the surgery has been traumatic to them, emotionally
and physically.
In the current issue of Spirit of
Change magazine (Fall, 2006), social worker Linda Marks writes with insight
and compassion about people born with intersex conditions. In part she
refers to her book, Healing the War Between the Genders.
Marks, of Newton, Massachusetts, points
out that gender is perceived as being so basic to our sense of identity
that we fear any deviations. That fear is expressed in the medical interventions,
misunderstandings by the general public, and violence towards people whose
gender expression or physical appearance don't conform.
However, Marks sees a positive side
of what Native American cultures call "two-spirited" people.
"What if we could view gender
as a process and not a condition?" she writes in Spirit of Change.
"And what if we could imagine that the emergence of people whose
lives and examples force us to think more deeply into the essence of gender
are actually spiritual leaders of a sort, inviting us to look more deeply
into the nature of what it means to be human?"
I have not read Marks' book, but her
approach invites me to look further. To begin to understand the world
of those born with intersex conditions, I think her book Healing the War
Between the Genders would be a good place to start.
To read Mark's article,go to www.spiritofchange.org. Also, see www.intersex-awareness-day.org, www.intersexinitiative.org, and www.bodieslikeours.org.