How might hermaphrodites challenge existing gender arrangements?

Question

Also A Hermaphrodite is someone with both female and male sex organs for your information.

Answer 1

Yes, we all know what a hermaphrodite is. The condition is too rare (even those augmented by surgery) to challenge anything. Show the politicians a hermaphrodite voting bloc and you may have some influence. Others have done so even though the bloc they represent really does not exist.

Answer 2

I'd say they just make a stronger case for seeing gender and sexuality as a spectrum rather than just diametrically opposed opposites.

Let's talk about the personality/sexuality aspects first:
I read an interesting paper a while ago (sorry, can't remember where I found it. Think it was on Wired News, actually) where a sociologist expresses the opinion that not only gender identity and sexuality, but indeed our entire personality is becoming more and more maleable due to the influences of the digital revolution. Far from just being a medium for the exchange of ideas, she argues, modern man's interaction with technologies such as video games and the internet are allowing us to remake our personalities to fit specific situations, and that we are in essence all becoming multiple personalities. This isn't just about anonimity either, but more a fundamental shift in our relationship with ourselves. Gener, Sexual Orientation and every other aspect of ourselves becomes open to reprogramming as we move further and further away from the biological imperative that makes us straight, gay, transsexual or whatever. It's just an opinion, but interesting. If I find the article again I'll post a question about it.

From a purely biological POV, I just want to correct something another poster said on here about gender being down to x or y chromosomes. Unfortunately it's not that simple. While XX and XY are the most common, you also get people that 'suffer' from Turner Syndrome (X - no second X or Y), Klinefelter's Syndrome (XXY), and XYY syndrome. On top of that you've got various levels of androgen insensitivity to deal with, from us normal transsexuals, to fully androgen insensitive people who are born female, but are actually genetically male. They just never became male because their bodies don't react to the androgens released into the womb. It's not so easy to judge when you know the whole mess of a story...

Sexuality and gender are infinitely more complex than the surface shows. The sooner we all realise that, the happier we will all be. Pseudo-religious guilt-trips have oppressed us all for far too long.

Answer 3

This sounds suspiciously like a homework assignment . . . something for a sex and gender class?

Anyhow, if you can't see how intersexed people (just for your infomation, that is the preferred term; 'hermaphrodite' is fairly old and not that much in usage) challenge existing gender arrangements by not being one or the other and thus upsetting people's ideas of what is fixed and immutable and biological rather than socialization, I don't know what else I could tell you!

Answer 4

True hermaphrodites are extremely rare so would not pose a challenge to gender arrangements. there are those who come under a class of intersex (such as genetic males, who lack testosterone receptors and develop outwardly as girls), but these also are not so frequent an occurrence as to impact the basic combinations of men and women.

Answer 5

they cannot challange anything, its the xx or xy chromosomes that make them female or male, no-one is both, outward appearances are only freakish abnormalities,

Answer 6

I feel sorry for them.