Where’s the Rulebook for Sex Verification?

I absolutely have to share this amazing article that just popped up in The New York Times today, spurred from controversy in regards to champion runner Caster Semenya's sex:

Where’s the Rulebook for Sex Verification?

The only thing we know for sure about Caster Semenya, the world-champion runner from South Africa, is that she will live the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion after track and field’s governing body announced it was investigating her sex. Read More >

This article is so good. Sex is messy. And quite the conundrum at times when one doesn't fit the gender binary myth. This is exactly why I've never felt comfortable identifying as "female-to-male" - it feels like a reinforcement of the binary. And an inaccurate descriptor. Yes, I was assigned female at birth - but that didn't make me a cisgender woman. And hormone therapy doesn't inherently make me "man". I'm the same gender now as I was then - even if we lack the language for it presently and the best that I have available to me is 'genderqueer'. It seems clear to me anecdotally and via the overwhelming evidence in the world around me that sex and gender are far more diverse than we're led and bias to believe.

I just happen to live in a day & age where there are barely any words in our language to even refer to any gender or sex that's not strictly within the binary. Yet it's a false dichotomy and gender just isn't that simple. There's clearly a lot more going on and a whole bundle of natural variation throughout history, manifesting in various ways despite the social circumstances and limitations.

Articles like this are great - spurring discussion and thought about what's commonly understood as a pretty simplistic subject. Also interesting:

Medical Management of Intersex Infants and Children
Changing Perspectives and Revised Protocols

The medical management of Intersex infants and children was nearly a set in stone set of protocols for the last half of the 20th Century. The birth of a child with ambiguous genitalia was considered a medical and social emergency. Within a very short period of time a sex was assigned to the infant and plans were being made to perform surgery to normalize the genitals and match them to the assigned gender.

Once an assignment had been made and surgery performed, appropriate hormone replacement therapies would be planned and instigated. Parents were advised to accept their child as assigned and not to speak about the circumstances of the birth.

Thus was a population of unhappy Intersex born and raised in a veil of shame and secrecy that is only recently coming to the public's attention. These people have come forward to speak out for the rights of those youngsters now facing the fate they've lived through and deplored. An overwhelming call for immediate change in the medical management of Intersex people is a controversial and emotional issue which needs to be resolved quickly. The fates of roughly 1000 babies a year hang in the balance. Read More >