SOCIETY defines womanhood and decides who fits the role, but the question is how. Is being born with female genitalia requisite? Nature won’t be so easily categorised, and people are born with the genitals of both sexes, or neither, more often than you might think.
The Nation: The parts of a woman
In fact, any of the presumed “female” characteristics – vagina, ovaries, breasts, menstruation, XX chromosomes, oestrogen, the ability to get pregnant – can be absent in a woman, whether by birth, age, design, medical procedure or accident. This contrariness makes a precise definition of a female elusive, as in last year’s case of South African athlete Caster Semenya. …
The WHO’s diagnosis of these “gender identity disorders” has a price tag in term of stigma and discrimination that not all transgenders are willing to pay.
The WHO definition is trouble. It’s partly designed to offer trans people in developed countries the hope or expectation of subsidised gender-based healthcare, especially sex-reassignment surgery.
But if transgenderism is really a psychiatric condition, it could be argued that it should be treated with psychiatric drugs. Sex-reassignment surgery, people could then say, would leave the root of the condition untreated and maybe even make it worse. Basing her argument on conflicting medical opinions rather than solid principles of human rights, Yollada also opened herself to attack by the guest physician, a cytologist who wasn’t necessarily an expert on sexuality. The doctor insisted that gender is determined only by sex chromosomes.
Again, remember Caster Semenya. …
