The author of "Between XX and XY" on people born neither male nor female -and why everyone's a little bit of both
July 7, 2009 | In the fall of 1998, Lisa May Stevens, a 32-year-old from Idaho, went on a camping trip. Stevens had been told for most of her life that she was a boy, but in her 20s had discovered the truth about her sex -- that she had been born a hermaphrodite, and that doctors had conducted surgeries on her genitalia as an infant. After learning the news, she consulted her priest, who said that while God usually condemns suicides, for her he might make an exception. A decade later, on the third day of her camping trip, she put a pistol under her jaw and pulled the trigger.
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Much of Callahan's book is spent exploring our understanding of intersexuality, from the physicians of ancient Greece to today's neuroendocrinologists. He also weaves in the stories of people who live in the stretch between the classic male and female endpoints. "Truthfully, I think the most important thing I would like people to understand about me is that I am a person," Kailana, who is hermaphrodite, tells him in a diatribe of anger, grief and courage.
Callahan, an associate professor of immunology and the public understanding of science at Colorado State University, is an accomplished and versatile writer. His work has appeared in everything from Nature to the Southern Poetry Review. As a result, the book has an appealingly literary flair, even in the descriptions of complicated biology. Sometimes it verges on purple prose, as when he describes Los Angeles as a place of "limp palm trees curdling in the oily light", but for the most part the language is nicely polished.
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Am I a he? Am I a she? Oliver Roberts speaks to three South Africans about the torment of achieving identity when you are both male and female.
Sally Gross has been many things in her life, including a revered political activist, a philosophy lecturer and a Catholic priest. She also spent time in the Israeli army.
Gross was born a man and still is; but she’s also a woman. At least, she decided to become a woman in the early ’90s. She went into hiding in the south of England to adapt to wearing dresses and makeup and turning right instead of left when visiting a public bathroom.
She didn’t have any surgery to change her sex, though — it wasn’t necessary. Gross doesn’t really have a gender. She is both. She is what’s commonly known as a “hermaphrodite”, though the preferred term is “intersexed”.
This condition — atypical sexual differentiation — occurs in about one in 50 people. These figures make it feasible that between 45000 and 90000 South Africans are intersexed. According to www.intersex.org.za, we have one of the highest occurrences of intersexed people in the world.
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By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Excerpt from article:
And so we extend the idea just a little bit. Because if homosexual/bisexual behavior is universal and by design, if gender mutability is actually deeply woven into the very fabric of nature itself, and if you understand that nature is merely another word for God, well, you can only surmise that God is, to put it mildly, much more than just a little bit gay. I mean, obviously.
But let's be fair. That's not exactly true. God is not really gay, per se. God is more... pansexual. Omnisexual. Gender neutral. Gender indeterminate. It would appear that God, this all-knowing and all-creating and all-seeing divine energy that infuses and empowers all things at all times everywhere, does not give a flying leather whip about gender.
Or rather, She very much does, but not in the simpleminded, hetero-only way 2,000 years of confused religious dogma would have us all believe.
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This is a service of the Organisation Intersex International
Dear Reverend Al Sharpton,
The Organisation Intersex International (OII) is the only global, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-religious organization for the mutual encouragement, defense, support and human rights activism of Intersex people, their families, friends and allies. We are an inclusive and non-hierarchical peer-group alliance of Intersex, Transsexual, Transgendered, Androgynous and other people who share common concerns about the human rights of any and all people who are being deprived, abused or attacked because of their real or perceived sex or gender differences. Because of our international membership, we also recognize that sex and/or gender variant persons 'of color' often experience additional human rights problems in various countries and cultures globally. Since these problems cannot be separated-out from, and are usually linked-to sexism, they are also part of our human rights concern.
We monitor the global news and especially the scientific, legal and medical news for developments which impact, or have the potential to impact, the lives of our members, their families, friends and allies, and any one else who may be affected. And, if something comes to our attention that should be addressed, we try to alert people about it. This is why we are sending you this notification.
We are very concerned about a psychology professor at the Northwestern University making "diagnoses" of a person who has been one of the most important inspirations to androgynous people worldwide, Michael Jackson. J. Michael Bailey has written one of the most offensive and unprofessional "diagnostic" essays about Michael Jackson that we have read. We feel there are ethical guidelines that psychologists are required to follow and that J. Michael Bailey has felt free to dismiss all ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association by writing this article.
We would appreciate your help concerning this matter.
Kind regards,
Curtis E. Hinkle, Founder of the Organisation Intersex International
To read the article by J. Michael Bailey: Click here
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