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or as some gender theorists refer to them, intersexed. That is, they have some combination of male and female reproductive organs, genitals, chromosomal and/or hormonal makeup. Fausto-Sterling observes, Even if we’ve overestimated by a factor of two, that still means a lot of intersexual children are born each year. At the rate of 1.7 percent, for example, a city of 300,000 people would have 5,100 people with varying degrees of intersexual development. Compare this with albinism [an albino has no pigmentation and therefore has white hair, white skin, and red eyes], another relatively uncommon human trait [in the United States] but one that most readers can probably recall having seen. (51)
The reason we don’t “see” the numerous intersexed individuals to whom FaustoSterling refers is not simply because the parts of the body involved are usually inside the body or hidden under clothing. Rather, as Sharon Preeves notes, so embedded is our belief that there are only two sexes and two corresponding genders, that intersexed infants have been routinely, quickly, and often without their parents’ knowledge or consent, surgically altered to physically resemble either a male or a female (32). The decisions on how to “sex” the infant are usually based on cosmetic factors (will the child look “normal”?) and social factors (if the child is sexed as a boy, will he be able to urinate standing up and will his penis be large enough as an adult to perform sexually?) rather than on the possibility that the child may be in every other respect—chemically, hormonally, genetically—a different sex or a combination of both sexes. For example, an intersexed infant may have a male genetic makeup (xy), but if the penis part of its genitals is considered too small by the medical team in charge, unlikely to pass as “normal” when the child matures, and probably unable to urinate from a standing position (for example, because the urethra opens at the base of the penis instead of at the tip), the infant is most likely to be surgically and hormonally reconstructed as a female. This practice has continued despite studies showing that the size of an infant’s penis or clitoris is unrelated to the size of its adult genitals (Preeves 33). As recently as the 1990s, Preeves reports, transgender activists (a transgen‑ dered person’s gender doesn’t match his or her biological sex) have argued that intersexed individuals should not be seen as abnormalities but as normal people belonging to a different sex category. Some activists have, in fact, suggested that there are really five sexes that occur naturally: (1) female, (2) female intersexed (an intersexed person with more prominent or functional female sex organs), (3) true intersexed (an intersexed person with equally prominent or functional male and female sex organs), (4) male intersexed (an intersexed person with more prominent or functional male sex organs), and (5) male (Preeves 37).
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