From: TragicDawn-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 18:51:15 EST
Subject: male or female???


One of my friends sent me this article and I found it interesting:::

In the sixties, due to a tragic surgical accident, an eight-month-old baby
lost his penis. Doctors recommended that this baby boy be raised as a girl,
believing that individuals are gender-neutral at birth and that healthy
psychosexual development is dependent on the appearance of the genitals. 

Whoa! Only 30 years ago doctors thought gender was so pliable that exchanging
blue wallpaper for pink, pants for dresses, and trucks for dolls was enough to
make a boy into a girl. In 1973 researchers published a report that portrayed
the little boy who lost his penis as having accepted his new identity as a
female. People who believed that sexual identity was purely a product of
upbringing held this as a huge victory in the nature vs. nurture debate.

However, in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, researchers
expose the reality of this atrocious gender experiment. The girl lived an
isolated life filled with obtrusive, humiliating medical examinations until
the age of 14. At that time a growing conviction that she was not a girl led
her to refuse to live as one any longer, and she felt extreme relief upon
being told she was in fact born as a male.  

This individual's pain can provide a lesson to society. It's time to reexamine
our assumptions about what it means to be a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. A
child born with ambiguous or injured genitalia (about one in every 1,000
births) should not necessarily undergo a series of painful surgeries.
Researchers suggest that parents and children be referred to appropriate and
long-term counseling rather than to immediate surgery and sex reassignment.
Taking this "wait and see" approach gives the child time to develop -- both
emotionally and sexually. Then, when and if the time comes, the individual can
choose their own gender, instead of having society impose one on them.