The Sex Binary

There are two sexes.  We all know this, right?  We live in a society dominated by binaries.  You’re either sweet or sour; nice or mean; smart or stupid. We also have men and women.  It’s widely accepted that a person is either a man or a woman, boy or girl.  There are personality traits that are associated with each sex.  This is where we get the word “gender.”  We are gendered to behave a certain way based on our genitals.

So, what if someone told you that there is actually more than one sex?  How would you react? Would you just pass them off as a crazy person?  Consider, what if that person had a Ph.D and had done extensive research to back up their claim?  Would it be so easy to dismiss?  Would you accept the fact that people can be born with unusual chromosomes but consider those people to be defective?

**side note:  Yes, I did just construct a paragraph entirely out of questions.  I apologize for this as I know a lot of question marks can sometimes be distracting.**

I’m a heterosexual woman, recently married, and interested in having children someday.  However, I fully accept that fact that the odds of my having an intersex child are just as good as the odds that I’ll have a child with Downs Syndrome.  Regardless of what kind of child I have I will accept that child for what it is and love it regardless of whether or not it fits into accepted societal norms.

I just had a conversation with my husband about this over our lunch break and he started to talk about how intersexed people have “defective” genes.  Because the word defective is a pretty negative word, I was really objecting.  My point was that while being an intersex individual may be unusual (however, not statistically more unusual than having Downs Syndrome) it does not mean that anything is wrong with that person.  It caused a semi-big fight which ended with my husband saying, “I guess I just can’t talk to you about anything important.”

Anyway. . . what would your reaction be if you had a child who didn’t nicely fit into a gender box?