Tag: Intersex

M. C. Crawford is 8 years old.  He was Identified as a male at birth until doctors determined that he had ambiguous genitalia, with parts of both female and male reproductive structures.  When a court terminated the parental rights of his mother and he was abandoned by his father, he was placed in state custody.  At 16 months old doctors removed his penis and one testicle, leaving enough to form a clitoris and labia.  A bit after that the child was adopted in South Carolina by Pam and Mark Crawford.

The first thought that I had was, let’s make sure they don’t do the surgery.

—Pam Crawford

Unfortunately the Crawfords were too late.  They raised M. C. as a girl until about a year ago, when he told his parents he wanted to be raised as a boy.

On Tuesday lawyers for the Crawford family said they were filing suit against the Department of Social Services.

Recently the World Professional Association for Transgender Health released new guidelines for transition related medical care and therapeutic assistance for transgender and gender nonconforming people at a health symposium at Emory University in Atlanta.  This is version 7.  Version one was written in 1979 by Dr. Harry Benjamin.  One of the main changes is its title.  Called the Standards Of Care For Gender Identity Disorders in the last version (February, 2001) and all previous versions (1979, 1980, 1981, 1990, and 1998), it is now called the Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People.

The sharp-eyed will notice that they dropped the words “Gender Identity Disorder”.  I can’t claim to have read every word yet, but I have been informed that the word “disorder” has been expunged.  The condition is now referred to as gender dysphoria…which I recall many of us using back in the early 90s (see The Uninvited Dilemma:  a question of gender by Kim Elizabeth Stuart.

My own feelings are not out of line with those of Sebastian and Annika at Autostraddle.