Intersexual Rights

Letter to the editor, The Sciences, July/August 1993

The letter in which Cheryl Chase announced the Intersex Society of North America and invited intersex people to write to its San Francisco post-office box — generally regarded as the public founding of the U.S. intersex movement.

Editor’s note

In the March/April 1993 issue of The Sciences, the biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling published “The Five Sexes,” arguing that the two-sex model could not hold the full range of human bodies. In the July/August issue, among the letters it drew, was this one. Writing as Cheryl Chase, its author spoke as an intersex adult about what “corrective” infant surgery had cost, and invited others to find one another.

The closing paragraph carried a return address — a San Francisco post-office box for the newly formed Intersex Society of North America. Historians of the movement treat that invitation as ISNA’s founding act: an organization brought into being in print, asking intersex people and their families to write in and be counted. Chase (later Bo Laurent) led ISNA until it closed in 2008; its work continues through interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth.

Transcription

As an intersexual I found Anne Fausto-Sterling’s article “The Five Sexes” [March/April] of intense personal interest. Her willingness to question medical dogma on intersexuality is unique and refreshing. I understand that she has not had the chance to meet with any “corrected” intersexuals; I think I can provide some perspective on the experience.

Surgical and hormonal treatment allows parents and physicians to imagine that they have eliminated the child’s intersexuality. Unfortunately, the surgery is immensely destructive of sexual sensation as well as one’s sense of bodily integrity. Because the cosmetic result may be good, parents and physicians complacently ignore the child’s emotional pain in being forced into a socially acceptable gender. The child’s body, once violated by the surgery, is again and again subjected to frequent genital examinations. Many “graduates” of medical intersex corrective programs are chronically depressed, wishing vainly for the return of body parts. Suicides are not uncommon. Some former intersexuals become transsexual, rejecting their imposed sex. Follow-up studies of adults to ascertain the long-term outcome of intervention are conspicuously absent.

I am forced to wonder whether our culture’s concept of sexual normalcy, which defines the sex organs of as many as 4 percent of newborn infants as “defective,” is not itself defective. Intersex specialists are busily snipping and trimming infant genitals to fit the procrustean bed that is our cultural definition of gender. But Ms. Fausto-Sterling has been wrongly informed that few intersexuals escape medical intervention. The ones I have located have told me they feel lucky to have escaped with their bodies intact. How did their parents shepherd them through the mine field of puberty? Generally, in the culturally sanctioned way: with embarrassed silence.

Medical dogma on sex assignment of intersexuals centers on the “adequacy” of the penis. Because a large penis cannot be constructed from a small one, female assignment is preferred. Because a large clitoris is considered “disfiguring,” extensive surgery is employed to remove, trim or relocate it. Whereas a male with an “inadequate” penis (small, but with normal erotic sensation) is considered tragic, the same person transformed into a female with reduced or absent genital sensation and an artificial vagina is considered normal. The capacity to inflict such monstrous “treatment” on children, who cannot consent, is ultimately a clear expression of the hatred and fear of sexuality that predominate in our culture.

I must take issue, though, with the terms true hermaphrodite, female pseudohermaphrodite and male pseudohermaphrodite. They are a heritage of Victorian medicine—and without prognosticative value. They reflect the Victorian belief that human sexual nature rests entirely in the gonads, a concept of gonadal determinism belied by the relative success of intersex medicine in sex reassignment.

I encourage intersexuals and people close to them to write to us at the Intersex Society of North America, Post Office Box 31791, San Francisco, California 94131, where we are assembling a support group and documenting our lives.

— Cheryl Chase, San Francisco, California

Textual note

Copytext is the printed letter in The Sciences (July/August 1993, p. 3). A lightly revised version later circulated on ISNA’s own website (isna.org), and constitutes a distinct variant witness. Representative substantive variants in the web text include: “opportunity to meet” for the print’s chance to meet; “I believe that I can provide” for I think I can provide; “parents and doctors” for parents and physicians; “Some are transexual” for Some former intersexuals become transsexual; and a closing that names ISNA but drops the explicit postal address. A full collation is deferred; the print copytext is authoritative here.

Transcription is diplomatic: original spelling, capitalization, hyphenation of compounds, the spelled figure “4 percent,” and the em dash at “medicine—and” are preserved. The three Latinate terms are italicized as in the printed original; the magazine set the headline in full capitals.

Source and citation

Field	Value
Catalog id	letter-sciences-1993
Creator	Bo Laurent, writing as Cheryl Chase
Published in	The Sciences (New York Academy of Sciences), July/August 1993, p. 3
Section	Peer Review: Letters from Readers
Source format	Scan (image-only PDF) of the printed periodical
Preservation master	sources/letters/sciences-1993/the_sciences_1993_peer_review.pdf
Rights	Author’s own words; letter-to-editor rights retained by writer. No third-party material reproduced in the letter text.
Review status	Cleared — published

Chase, Cheryl. “Intersexual Rights.” The Sciences, July/August 1993, p. 3. Intersex history archive, item letter-sciences-1993.