Intersex Awareness Day
Each year an estimated one in two thousand babies are born with anatomy that doesn’t clearly mark them as either male or female — with what is known as an intersex condition. It’s a situation that’s hard to talk about; it challenges our preconceptions about how things are “supposed” to be. This provocative documentary demystifies the issue of sexual difference. At a time when five babies a day in the United States are having “gender reassignment” surgery, it argues that there is little evidence that such surgery is beneficial to the child. The program profiles several people born with ambiguous sexual anatomy, who have managed to deal with some very difficult family and social issues, but today are living “ordinary” and productive lives. It also includes a young mother who is matter-of-factly creating the conditions for her intersex baby to do the same.
Utilizing the documentary “One in 2000”, Dr. David Rubin from Women’s and Gender Studies will facilitate a discussion on the question of ethics as it presents itself in the form of intersex bodies, and where we need to be rethinking sex classifications as a whole.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Buttrick 202, 7:00pm