OII member Sophia recently wrote ‘finally there is a degree of understanding that people who do not fit the classical biological definitions of what is male or female are not “dangerous” or “evil” or a “threat to society”’ in reference to the report in Cell on Somatic Sex Reprogramming of Adult Ovaries to Testes by FOXL2 Ablation.
Written too soon, Sophia, I am sorry to report. On the evening of Monday 14th December, CSI:Miami series 8, episode 11, Delko for the Defence, was broadcast and it characterized an intersex person as dangerous, evil and a threat to society. That is the very last thing that intersex people need right now.
Frame grabs from CSI:Miami episode, Delko for the Defense.
The character Zach is a murderer working in concert with a rapist named Justin. The CSI Miami team discovers that Zach has Androgen Insensivity Syndrome – AIS. One of the investigators declares that the prevalence of AIS is 1:20,000. It is then revealed, via a DNA analysis and an off-screen examination, that Zach does not have male sexual organs. It is not revealed what he actually does have down there, though.
Zach’s motivations for murder are detailed in the episode’s wrap-up. According to the episode recap at tv.com, “Zach confesses that killing women is the only way he could really get close to them, since he can’t have sex with them normally. Justin would rape them, and then Zach would come in and stab them.”
What bizarre minds the writers of television procedural cop shows possess! Zach is nothing like any AIS person we have ever met. The statistic quoted for AIS – 1:20,000 – is nothing like any such prevalence that we have seen for AIS. It is the prevalence most often stated, without any supporting hard evidence, for CAIS – Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, though.
The stat for the other major variant of AIS – Partial Androgen Insensivity Syndrome or PAIS – may be very different. PAIS is a range of variations and so none can be said to have the same characteristics.
According to Wikipedia, “People with CAIS are generally girls or women with internal testes, 46,XY karyotypes, and normal female bodies by external appearance with some exceptions. The vagina is not as deep, and there are no ovaries or uterus — hence no menses or fertility. Gender identity is usually female.”
When ISNA – the Intersex Society of North America – became the privately-funded Accord Alliance, turning from an organization of intersex people protesting against non-consensual genital surgery on intersex newborns into a medical organization enthusiastically promoting that very same surgery, ejecting its intersex membership on the way, there were signs things were about to get worse for intersex people everywhere.
Alice Domurat Dreger, one of the two academics who apparently engineered the organizational switch, then began promoting the idea that intersex was a medical pathology and sucessfully pushed for medicine – or at least a small group of western white males – to replace intersex with DSD for Disorders of Sex Development. As a result, intersex people were pathologized as being medically disordered and in need of being cured of their intersex. Psychiatry had handily stepped in long ago to label those intersex rejecting such medical ‘cures’ as mentally disordered via GID – Gender Identity Disorder – and GID(NOS) – Gender Identity Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified).
We just can’t win. When medicine intervenes to pediatrically assign the sex of an intersex newborn, it gets it wrong 30% of the time. Those 30% are then liable to be labeled as mentally ill for pointing out medicine’s mistake. And now the twin stigmas of being falsely labeled as physically and mentally diseased has given birth to a new kind of monster – Zach.
What next in the media’s demonization of intersex?
