a) David Riemer was the cause of botched circumcison, not intersex condition and all it proved was that gender identity is hardwired or at least stronger than mere environment.
b) Try searching under intersex, intersex conditions, ambigious genitalia instead of hermaphrodite. There are at last count 6 living fully functional hermaphrodites. Intersex and ambigious genetialia is however a fairly common medical condition (About 1 in 2000 births). It is likely that you know someone who has had an intersex condition. However, due to the intense shame and social misunderstanding of what intersex condition actually is, many go to great lengths to hide it (as often intersex is misinterpreted as transsexual - and since more than twice as many transsexuals were killed in hate crimes in North America last year than gay, lesbian, bisexual, racial and religious hate crime murders combined that might give you an idea of why someone might not want to be mistakenly linked which such a group - or another stat example - Your chance of being killed in Canada last year= 1 in 400,000; your chance of being killed last year if you were a transsexual-1 in 150)
Doctors used to "assign" gender at birth, except that the overwhelming amount of evidence in case studies has show that gender identity has at least a strong biological factor if not entirely hardwired (as was demonstrated in the Oct-Nov issue of Molecular Brain Science 2003). Now, many doctors will register the child as I instead of M or F and wait until a clear gender identity is demonstrated before making surgical decisions.
Still, due to the varied nature of different intersex condition it is not always that easy. For instance in one condition, the body is complete incapable of accepting testosterone, which no one knows until the "boy" hits puberty and starts growing breasts (As estrogen production is uninhibited) as well as no adams apple or genital development. In another case, a "faux" male genital may actually hide a recessed real male genital set which doesn't become apparent until 13 when the "girl" suddenly produces testosterone, has thier voice drop and grows facial hair.
Still other cases have involved testosterone insensitive, genital ambigious babies who have been judged females with certain parts of the genitals enlarged, or even have "faux" female genitals and only find out that they are genetically male when going to the doctors to find out why they aren't getting pregnant (not to mention the 8 years without a period).
Lisa from Swansea, down the road, was a misdiagnosed intersex person, you may have heard her sing on Galaxy Quest or Lord of the Rings. The doctors misdiagnosed her as being male with testosterone insensitive with an estrogen imbalance. Which caused them to pump her with more and more testosterone in teenage years, giving very premature male-pattern baldness, strong jaw and other facial features. Then at 17, she was reassessed and was found to be biologically female. She accepted the female identity as the doctors were the ones that were trying to make her male. Of course, the testosterone has given her an EIGHT octave range but a body which appears both male and female.
Even then, there are other cases where even the chromosomes are unclear as one internal organ will show female chromosomes while others show male.
If we accept that the spirit, the mind and the consciousness - that which seperates humans from other animals, is the core of "who we are" then correcting gender irregularities or body/brain confusions through medical means seems the best possible solution. No one doubts that a woman who has had her breast taken over by cancer cells, needed to be removed and reconstructed is any less a woman than before, or a woman who is sterile or has had a complete hysterectomy is somehow a 1/2 woman. Therefore, it seems silly to me to view corrective surgery or hormone treatment as anything but a blessing for those who live in today's modern age.
For those who worry or get upset about "changing what God has created" then I suggest you take out your rage on diabetics who in any major catastrophe will be dead very soon due to the modern processed needed to aquire thier insulin. Or perhaps start trying to invalidate the help given to the millions of women already on hormones due to severe problems regarding their period or menopause.
As for this "who can and who can't marry" - it is all starting to sound a bit Third Riech when everyone is so worried about the "impurity" of improper mating that legal and moral determinations need to be made lest the "wrong" people join together. Do you really think God is writhing in the Heavens because assuming God considers gender important at all, that a few people might have a different view of someone gender than God does and they get married without some sort of Christian Morality Police getting a divine message to stop such a thing from happening?
Can we work on the homeless, hungry and abused first please and come back to this when we have solved those problems?
