ABSTRACT ON ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING'S 'THE FIVE SEXES: WHY MALE AND FEMALE ARE NOT ENOUGH'

ABSTRACT ON ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING'S 'THE FIVE SEXES: WHY MALE AND FEMALE ARE NOT ENOUGH'

• Apart from the two traditional Western sexes (male and female), she proposes other three:
  1) True Hermaphrodites (Herms): one testis and one ovary
  2) Male pseudohermaphrodites (merms): testes and some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries
  3) Female psudohermaphrodites (ferms): ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but lack tests
  • The possibilities of variations in between those classic tipes, the percentage to which one has those those organs, are infinite though
  • Intersexuals are believed to represent 4% of the births

• Her article brings some stories of intersexes revealing that since the Middle Ages in Europe they are being forced to choose between two sexes only
  • Most of her cases are from 1930 to 1960, from when compilations on the issue started being donne in a systematical way to when sirurgical intervention to heterossexualize bodies become widespread
  • Some stories also highlight the possibility and naturility with which some persons escape the sex dualism and live their lifes as intersexes
  • She says that contemporary medical practice is an example of Foucault's biopower on what abjected sexed bodies are made docile through medical interventions on the body and the essentialization of two sexs only
    • Society mandates the control of intersexual bodies because they blur and bridge the great divide
• She proposes an utopian model in which medical treatment would be restricted to preserve life instead of adjusting bodies and behaviors to patterns of normality, and treatments in general would be a venture between physician, patient, and other advisers trained in issues of gender multiplicity