Intersex film

[Mrspenguinsschoolforfreaks]

Just wondering if anyone has seen this? It looks interesting and has generally good reviews https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/every-body-sympathetic-guide-through-stories-intersex-people

There no such thing as intersex, no child has "male and female biological traits", and absolutely no way 1.7% of the population are "born intersex".

Intersex?

There's a v small percentage of people with DSDs-differences of sex development.
They are all one of the two sexes.

From the blurb this does not seem a balanced look at people with DSD.

However, it also appears to look at how people with DSD are subject to, what I consider unethical practices/experimentation by doctors.

"Intersex" is not a great term.
According to the ICD10 it's an appropriate synonym for a condition in which a person has both testicular and ovarian tissue. This is astonishingly rare
https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes/Q00-Q99/Q50-Q56/Q56-/Q56.0
"Ovotesticular DSD is the rarest disorder of sex development in humans and has an approximate incidence of less than 1/20,000. At least 500 affected individuals have been reported."
https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/ovotesticular-disorder-of-sex-development/

Social scientists use the term "Intersex" to refer to a whole range of conditions, including PCOS, which is where the 1.7% statistic comes from. If the linked review is correct this film uses the social-scientific sense of the term.
I think this sort of ambiguity risks spreading more heat than light but I do agree with @Sisterpita that it's good to start public conversations about surgeries performed on infants with ambiguous genetalia for cosmetic rather than functional reasons (i.e. to look more "normal").

< 1/20,000? It's about 1 in 14 million, if there are 7 billion people on the planet.

It's really frustrating that an important documentary starts off with a completely wrong figure. I can't remember where the 1.7% figure comes from but I can remember that it includes women with endometriosis.

I do think the protocols around treatment need looking at as the treatments for this small group are ethically complex.

The exact same surgeons are now doing ‘gender affirming care’ instead - you really couldn’t make it up!

Trans activists have taken over the ‘intersex’ movement as a way to try & promote their belief in gender identity - & most intersex activists do not have a DSD

Yes, trans activists are hopeless when it comes to “intersex” appropriation, they can’t even see how stupid they are with it:

Trans activists: “trans children know who they are and should be given medical procedures as soon as possible with no age limit!”

Also trans activists: “Intersex children should be left alone with no medical procedures until they’re adults, you shouldn’t be forcing them to do so to conform with gender norms!”

I agree with the latter but the fact they can’t see the difference shows how stupid they are.

I'd also question their using the expression 'a guide to the intersex experience' - what, only one experience that everyone shares?

this is usually fairly clear and most surgeries have nothing to do with assigning a sex, but are to normalise appearance

This is completely true. A friends child was born with DSD. He is male and the surgery was entirely to make his male genitalia look like other boys ( so ensuring his urethra came through his penis and descending his testicles) and to remove a functionless internal female organ which had a 97 percent chance of becoming cancerous ( so no, these surgeries are not all aesthetic).

There is huge politicization around DSD that this film appears to be part of

Yes, a braver film would compare the experiences of people like Caster Semenya, who claims to have only found out at 18, with a western family with a boy with same condition diagnosed in utero, or other such big differences in experiences.

So yes, children born with DSD have a sex which can be identified and should be raised as that sex. The horror stories are where the child’s sex has not been correctly identified and they have had surgery to give them the appearance of the opposite sex, and then raised as that sex. With all the awful life long psychological and medical consequences of that.

This truth is very uncomfortable for gender ideologies. Which is presumably why they are trying to rewrite and control the narrative.

Here's the origin, and the debunking, in 2002, of the 1.7% 'as common as red hair' figure.
It's the abstract of an article, full reference below:
Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%.
Sax L. How common is intersex? a response to Anne Fausto-Sterling. J Sex Res. 2002 Aug;39(3):174-8. doi: 10.1080/00224490209552139. PMID: 12476264.

So when I see 'as common as red-haired people' I know the writer hasn't done proper research.

The 1.7% stat comes from Anne Fausto-Sterling.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Fausto-Sterling

oops cross post @MarieDeGournay
The Wikipaedia entry on her is actually pretty good.
"Fausto-Sterling's sexual continuum argument has not gained the same prominence in the biological sciences as it has in gender studies."
🤐

Didn't she say something like that she wasn't going to defend the 1.7% figure, which sounds like an academic-y way of saying 'fair cop, guv'.

@ancientnames Its more than their sex not being correctly identified.

There have been 2 threads on Sophie Ottaway who has bravely told her story. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4880545-a-very-sad-tale-infant-gender-reassignment
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4890810-sophie-ottoway

Sophie was correctly identified as male but her doctor persuaded her parents to let him operate so she presented as female. Sophie went through a drug induced female puberty. Her real sex was hidden from her until she was an adult.

I always think about Sophie when the DSD arguments are used.

Most DSD related surgery is to normalise appearance & try to maintain function & has nothing to do with assigning a sex

Yes, this is the point I was making. ( probably clearer if both my posts are read together).

it can't be at all easy to be born with that kind of setup, if those three (all of whom, by the looks of them, have a y chromosome & are therefore male) want to describe themselves as the technically incorrect 'intersex' then fair enough. their circumstances have less than nothing to do with 'the trans debate'.

@DSDaisy I hope these days babies like Sophie are treated as you say open and honestly.