Guest Speaker

Last week, was a very interesting experience. A transgendered individual who had once been a man but is now a woman came to speak to our class. The inner struggle for a transgendered individual to figure out what their gender role is and how to live as who they really are. It was amazing to learn about what is known as intersex, where an individual with both sets of genitals or genitalia that resembles neither male nor female. On the video we watched, the majority of individuals that were born this way were made into girls but often many of them believe that they are truly males. In addition, sadly, their clitoris is commonly removed because as an intersex individual it appears large and cosmetically unattractive. One would wonder if the operation performed on individuals whom are intersexed could be considered as genital mutilation. Every person on the video was upset that the procedure had been performed on him or her and wished that they had been given the opportunity to decide for themself what their gender was. By making such a crucial decision before development could complete and not allowing the individual to make the decision on their own, many of the individuals underwent gender identity crisis.