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Published Letters: 1
The first paragraph of this article absolutely shocked me, which is obviously the point. But it got me thinking about how parents should confront this situation. It seems overly optimistic to imagine that no surgical intervention would be a good idea. The author's point of view forgets the cruelty of children and the pressure brought to bear on them from their peers to FIT IN. Even if a child somehow avoids the embarrassment of showering with peers in primary and secondary school, they will still feel like freaks.
In a paternalistic society like our own, males are prized above females. Since a baby displays little gender identification at birth, an argument could be made that parents of a baby with "hermaphroditic" genitalia might do well to raise that child as a boy, being careful to alter as little as possible of the child's anatomy. Even if parents insisted on surgical intervention while the child is a baby and before the "seat" of sexuality (perhaps in the DNA?) is discovered, it seems as though keeping male genitals intact allows for the possibility of transgender surgery at a later date with better reconstructive results.
