HIST 460/560, Winter 2007
Reading and Discussion Questions, Week 8
Alice Domurat Dreger, “Ambiguous Sex”—or Ambivalent
Medicine? The Hastings Center Report 28 (May/June 1998):24-35.
1. Who was John Money? What was his approach to sex reassignment? What
was the John/Joan case about?
2. What is intersexuality?
3. What ideas about the nature and nurture of sex and gender guide an
approach to intersexuality that features surgical intervention shortly
after birth? What alternative approaches can you imagine?
4. Why is Dreger critical of efforts to normalize unusual sexual anatomies?
5. What does she mean when she describes the basis of treatment protocols
as “an anatomically strict psychosexual theory of gender identity”?
6. Dreger describes medical professionals responding quite differently
to intersexed newborns who are genetic females and those who are genetic
males. How does she explain this asymmetry? What assumptions about gender
and sexual orientation are built into this difference?
7. What distinguishes anatomical variation from anatomical deviation?
Do you think that the border between them needs to be clear? If so, why?
If not, why not?
8. What ethical problems does Dreger identify with dominant approaches
to intersexuality? What does she mean by “monster ethics”?
Do you think that the ethics of treating intersexuality are different
for medical professionals, for parents, and for intersexed individuals?
Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed (pp. 1-129)
1. Briefly outline the 20th-century history that Meyerowitz traces for
the concept of sex.
2. What part did transsexuality play in distinguishing sex, gender,
and sexual orientation? Explain how each of these relate to nature and
nurture.
3. What is the difference between intersexuality and transsexuality?
4. Why does Meyerowitz believe that the early cases of sex change occurred
in Europe? When did these occur?
5. Who was Harry Benjamin?
6. Who was Christine Jorgensen? What main point does the author make
about the Jorgensen case in relation to the history of journalism and
celebrity?
7. What does the history of sex reassignment surgery in the United States
tell us about changing conceptions of selfhood in the post-1945 era?
8. What nature-nurture conflicts divided surgeons, psychiatrists, and
psychologists in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s? How did these shape the
relationships between doctors and their patients? How did the professional
understanding of gender during these years compare with the feminist
definition of gender that prevailed after 1970?
Elizabeth Reis, “Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in
America, 1620-1960,” Journal of American History 92 (September
2005):411-441.
1. Why does Reis argue that the view of hermaphrodites as “impossible” persisted
for more than three centuries in U.S. history, even as a variety of other
beliefs about intersexuality changed?
2. “How nonconforming bodies are treated is a historical question.” Explain.
3. What perception of ambiguous genitalia prevailed during the colonial
era?
4. How did worries about deception and fraud shape medical approaches
to intersexuality during the 19th century? How does Reis link this anxiety
to the evolution of ideas about racial categorization and identity?
5. How do you think that changing conceptions of nature and nurture
influenced ideas about gender and sexual orientation? Did they make it
easier or harder to imagine that identities and experiences might be
ambiguous or unpredictable?
6. When surgical approaches to ambiguous sexual anatomies were first
developed, what was their typical goal?
7. What differences does Reis document in cases that doctors
categorized as predominantly masculine as opposed to predominantly feminine?
8. What does Reis identify as especially unusual and significant in
the 1903 case of E.C.?
9. This article concludes that the enduring insistence on a two-sex
model both humanized intersexed individuals and made them invisible.
Explain.
10. Read the quote from John Money that Reis uses at the end of her
article. What point does the author wish to make with it? What points
about the nature and nurture of sex and gender was Money trying to make?
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