I am not Intersex (to my knowledge) but in the matter of basic bio-ethics and human rights these are not complex or difficult issues.
This post is prompted by this article http://www.healthcanal.com/surgery-rehabilitation/9595-Study-recommends-that-parents-physicians-share-decisions-sex-development-disorder-surgery.html but this is not the first time i have spoken on this issue.
It really is astonishingly simple. Children are not property. Property you can do whatever you want with. Children you cannot. You may have rights over property as an extension of yourself, but a child is not property.
A child is a person. A person in a state of effectively temporarily suspended personal responsibility. Like someone in a coma, someone who is drunk, someone otherwise not currently capable of making decisions for themselves you have a responsibility to their well being so that when they sober or wake up or are cured or grow old enough they can make their own choices. Hear that doctors? Parents?
You are obligated to ensure they can make those choices. You are obligated to their needs untill they can make their own choices. You cannot do whatever you want to them. You cannot have sex with the person in the coma, you cannot tattoo the person who is drunk. You cannot impose over them that they be how you would prefer they be or think they should want. If you think Susie would look better blonde you cannot dye her hair while she is sleeping. You aren’t there to impose your choices over them but to maximise their capacity to make choices for themselves and to maximise the choices they can make for themselves.
Those are their choices to make. And it doesn’t matter that they are presently unable to make those choices. You just have to look after them untill they are capable. So that they will be capable. You keep the comatose person fed intravenously, you hold the drunk persons hair out of the way while they vomit and be sure they don’t fall into the toilet and drown, you feed and clothe the child and ensure they get an education allowing them to make informed decisions.
This is really quite simple on a day to day basis. Now at times a decision must be made on behalf of someone who is your responsibility, in such an emergency it’s quite simple still, the decision you must prioritise is the one that maximises the latter choice of the person in your care.
So lets see how that works for childrens genitals. Well clearly you don’t have sex with children for starters.
But if you are not having sex with your child, as i found myself explaining to one woman during the Australian Human Rights Community Consultation, then your preferance in appearance of a circumcised penis has no bearing. The mother does not know what the preferance in penis appearance of that childs future partners if any will be. It’s not her bussiness.
The child is totally capable when they grow up to decide whether they want to be circumcised or not. They do not need that decision made for them before they are equally able to make their own decisions about being sexually active.
Imagine if a parent wanted their child tattoo’d. What if that child didn’t like that tattoo when they grew up?
A child may obviously come to regret having their body changed to suit the tastes of their parent/s. A choice made for them when they couldn’t decide for themselves and which in an adult is no-one elses choice but their own. So thats wrong.
Even when such body modification is religious or cultural in origin an adult has the right to change religions, to embrace them, to abandon a culture or embrace it. And so a child should not be put through such body-modifications which they later in life may regret was done to them before they can make those choices for themselves. It’s simple and beyond that it’s concrete. Anything else is an abuse of that childs rights. A failure of the parents responsibility to their child as a free decision making autonomous individual. The child can always choose to undergo that ritual circumcision, scarification, tatttooing, or any other cultural or religious practice when they are old enough to do so of their own free will. A child is a person and not property.
And so we come to Intersex Infants. And by now i already have a water-tight case of what is right and what is wrong. That which maximises the childs adult choices = right. That which reduces them = wrong. So where for survivals sake a child needs surgery the minimum required is all that may ethically be done before the child is considered capable of deciding for itself. Thats it. Nothing else is ethical.
Elective surgery on Intersex Infants is not Ethical. It should be imediately banned. Made a serious crime in fact. Circumcision on infants too should be illegal, whether on females or males, and for the exact same reasons.
Your childrens genitals are not your property. A child is a person. And a doctors duties are not to a parents wishes or preferances but to the childs future options. Thats all there is to it.
And when you understand these basic principles it becomes clear that availability of hormone blockers to delay puberty for Transgender children are quite appropriate because that action maximises the childs own choice in exactly the same way that the innaction of not surgically altering an intersex person without their consent also maximises their choices.
So while one is action and the other inaction the very same Human Rights Principle requires of Parents and Doctors a clear course of action.
Yet another reason not to circumcise an infant is that if a boy is born with gender identity issues and later desires to transition to female, the foreskin can help to surgically create a life-like vagina by providing existing erogenous tissue. As you said, “That which maximises the childs adult choices = right”
Agreed. The children should decide for themselves how they want their own genitals to look. They are the ones that will actually use them!
Thanks for writing about this. I read this this morning thinking it would be something else entirely, and it angered me to no end.
When will people finally get it through their heads that the person who’s living the life ultimately needs to be the person who decides how they should be able to?
Listen, It’s great to see another post Batty (How’s Tamsin?), but I have to disagree just in the tiniest way.
I am one of these children – you may or may not remember that.
But saying no to all forms of male circumcision is out of the question, and I’ll briefly make mention why.
#1. Nazi Germany outlawed it – saying it was to no benefit for the infants – a backward ancient filthy-rat-Jew religious rite. To outlaw what is chosen almost exclusively for religious reasons is to enact an erasure of identity. It’s antisemitic at the very least. You consider circumcision something to keep until the child is old enough (12? 13?). At the very least, among Jewish people it must be done on the 8th day, or the child is to be considered cut off from his people – a stranger among what would have been his own.
#2. Although I appreciate your defense of intersex infants, you do not speak for all of us – especially when it all comes down to equating not operating on intersex children = good parenting, and good parenting = hormone blockers for trans-adolescents.
#3. Okay, okay. There is controversy regarding circumcision; I get it. Arguments that have been raised in favour of circumcision include that it provides important health advantages which outweigh the risks, has no substantial effects on sexual function, has a low complication rate when carried out by an experienced physician, and is best performed during the neonatal period. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2231533/?tool=pubmed)
Those raised in opposition to circumcision include that it adversely affects penile function and sexual pleasure, is justified by medical myths, is extremely painful, and is a violation of human rights. (http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/milos-macris/)
#4. Remember! Not Your Decision About Other Families’ Children’s Circumcisions – your argument only makes sense on that issue to others in an anti-circumcision majority culture such as Australia, China, South Africa, etc.
#5. Just forget about the circumcision part – that’s part of a bigger war full of men who are butthurt because they have no idea what uncircumcision feels like, and they cry about their ignorance… is your battle in this piece about protecting intersex children from unneeded genital mutilation? Average Men from Suffering Embarrassment of a Circumcised Penis? Or is this really about Inhibiting Adolescence In Trans-Teens? You waver between the three topics without excellent evidence to back up why your thoughts are correct to have them all interlinked. Good work otherwise!
Hi Elle. Tamsin’s doing well.
Thanks for your carefully thought out critique!
I’ll consider and respond to each of your numbered points.
1. No it’s not Anti-semitic. The Nazis did all sorts of things, they made Fanta, should we be against orange flavoured fizz because the Nazis did it? No the reason right is right and wrong is wrong is not based on whether Nazis did it but upon whether it’s Ethical or not. Many cultures around the world have body-modification not just Semitic peoples. Some Indiginous Australian groups go way further than foreskin removal but literally cut the end of the penis in half so it resembles their totemic ancestor-lizards penis.
Where a religious or cultural practice is Unethical it’s not wrong to say it’s wrong to impose it on someone before they can give informed consent. Those same things when chosen for the self are fine good and right.
Religions have rules like killing witches as mentioned in the Bible. Banning the murder of those who follow Wicca is not being bigoted towards Christians but treating everyones religious rights as equal rights.
Only when the practice can be done on someone giving fully informed uncoerced consent can it be Ethical, and if it can’t be done ethically it’s wrong, so there’s no ethical witch-murder and no ethical infant circumcision. Judaism is far from the only one that’d have to adapt to that.
The religious and cultural rights of the parents do not outweigh the same rights to accept or reject those practices of the child nor the childs right to control over their own body. When of age the child can still choose the circumcision, the cliterodectomy, the penile bifurcation, the ritual scarification patterns with a stone tool and ashes etc of their own free will, those should not be illegal for adults who may choose it for themselves, only when done to children who get no choice.
2. I’m not speaking for all or really any Intersex people, I’m speaking to what is Ethical and what is not. And it really is simple in this case.
3. The crux is not whether it has benefit. If the child decides it’s beneficial when grown up they can elect the procedure, just as they may choose it for cultural or religious purposes and if the child decides the risks are too great or benefit insufficiant or mythic they may choose not to have it. The majority of alleged benefits can be gained when the child is old enough to elect the procedure anyway so it still should be the childs choice. Its Unethical to impose the permanant choice on the child which could be delayed and left to the child to choose or reject.
4. This is not about my choice but what’s Ethical or Unethical. And Australia is only recently become a majority non-circumcision country. Ethics are not based on religion or culture. Every culture and faith has both Ethical and Unethical practices. And all Unethical ones are Human Rights Abuses, and thats with recognising that the right to religion and cultural practices are human rights! See the child has those rights too and they may choose religions and cultures different from their parents desires. A jewish-raised child has a right to choose not to be jewish and just as equally a christian child, a muslim child etc. And any of them may choose the religion and culture of another including any and all practices and traditions and beliefs.
5. It’s all about Principle. Where one principle defines the rightness and wrongness of many different things. Forget male circumcision for a moment and think about cliterodectomy done against the girls wishes with a stone tool and no anesthetic. What makes that wrong? Think about where a girls virginity is lost in a ritual of rape by tribal elders. What makes that wrong? Which Human Rights are involved in each case. Why? What makes the wrongs wrong? Now ask why it’s right for an adult to have consenting sex, for an adult to have a tattoo or body piercing. What makes those right?
In all cases it’s wrong when someone has a permanant choice imposed over them which they may later regret was done to them and which could have been left for them to later decide for themselves. Where it’s right its someone old enough to make an informed uncoerced decision for themselves choosing those things.
All these are linked by this same basic Ethics and Human Rights priniciple. What makes the right right and the wrong wrong are the same in each case. From someone in a coma and sex, to a drunk friend and hair-dye, to Intersex surgery, to religious female-circumcion etc it’s all the same simple basic rule. Basic simple Ethics. Basic simple rights.
I fully agree in this; genital ‘correction’ of Intersex children should be banned and be on the level of grievous bodily harm, as is female circumcision and should be male circumcision.
As I did write on FB with a link given by a shared friend, but only focussed on IS. The idea that the genitals of a child should fit within what the parents and the doctors are comfortable with within their view is absolutely disgusting!
[...] Battybattybats dissects an enraging medical article that pretends to sensitively address physically intersex infants by advocating for surgery but calling for sensitive consultation between parents and doctors. [...]
You know I agree with you 100% Bats, and Elle I’m doing fine thank you. (Just leaving this small note to show I’m still active on the site)