I had never heard of the term, “Intersex” or never really knew that people could be born with both male and female genitalia. It wasn’t until when I took a human sexuality course that I got to learn about the intersex bodies. Intersex bodies seems to be this secret that people are too afraid to talk about, due to the gender identity gap that is associated with it. A lot of people who are intersex find it very difficult to speak about their body, because from an early age they were told not to talk about their body. I remember in my human sexuality class, we watched this documentary which basically illustrated how patient care practice deals with intersex families.  Doctors would tell the parents of the child, that their only option was surgery, as a way to normalize performing surgery on intersex people without any medical reasons. This again brings this whole idea of medicalization where doctors have a say over the body, rather than the body itself, where in this case doctors have a say over whether one should assigned be male or female at birth.

Even tough intersex bodies have more to do with biological characteristics and less with gender identity, I also think it has a lot to do with gender identity. When we assign male, or female at birth based on genital characteristics we do not ask anyone to choose, you can only be one or the other. Later on, in life people become more aware of their body and who they are regardless, so something I can’t seem to understand is why do doctors think that they need to fix, what wasn’t broken in the first place.