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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