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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:24am on 2013-05-16

Gerald N. Callahan, author of Between XX and XY, interviewed by Thomas Rogers in Salon (published 2009-07-07):

Thomas Rogers:  In the book you argue that we need to think of sex as being fun -- and not just for reproduction. What does that have to do with the intersex?
Gerald N Callahan:  We have mutilated thousands of children a year [through genital surgery], and parents and physicians have felt the drive to do that because their No. 1 goal is to maintain reproductive function. If we think the sole function of genitalia is reproduction, then nonreproductive genitalia is, in some sense, a bad thing and something needs to be done about it. If we think that genitals serve a lot of functions beyond reproduction, maybe we wouldn't feel like it was so necessary to try to make people look alike.
Thomas Rogers:  But don't these doctors also do these procedures to allow their patients to have a normal sex life?
Gerald N. Callahan:  I realize that on behalf of parents and physicians there's an enormous motivation to try to offer to this child as many opportunities as possible. But Dr. Alice Domurat Dreger [an associate professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine], whom I quote in the book, had interacted with an enormous number of intersex people, and she had met only one person who was pleased with the surgery -- most thought they had lost, not gained, something.

[I've had this in the queue for ages; I'm using it today because a friend recently linked to this article about a lawsuit related to the topic.]

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There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
dharma_slut: They call me Mister CottonTail (Default)

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posted by [personal profile] dharma_slut at 04:26pm on 2013-05-16
When we told the pediatrician that we would not circumsize our baby boy, she tried all kinds of arguments to get us to do it. MY argument, personally, was that in my experience, sex with an uncircumsized lover was much more comfortable and friction-free, and I wanted to give his future lovers that possibility.
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selki: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] selki at 10:28pm on 2013-05-16
I hadn't heard that perspective before. Thank you.
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