The convening argument is that some people are born without gender that they belong to. However, doctors do not their gender at the time of birth. The example is Mark‘s story. Mark had a story on the film that the doctor did not know what his gender was. But Mark realizes his gender at the age of 21. He was brought up as a girl instead of a boy. So I think Mark‘s story was convincing to me. It is convincing because people in industrialized and non-industrialized nations realized and wanted to pass the message that middle gender is exiting. I think it’s true that human beings can either be a male, female and intersex. The point that the video was telling us is the existence of more than one sexuality identities not only in the United States but in most part of the world.
Thing did not convinced me was about the eight year old boy Noah who likes to wear a girl cloth on the film. He wanted to be a girl but I did not saw him changing as a girl on the film. On the other hands, young boys do sometimes like women and men clothes at the time they are young, which does not make them as girls. When I was about the age of eight or seven, I sometimes wear my elder sister cloth but both mother and my sister said she said no. I had no idea which cloth is for which gender. I think wearing female clothes happen in some cultures however, it does not make someone to be a girl. That did not make me a girl or middle sex. I was not a girl at that time, but it maybe depends on a person. This was all about social construction of gender issue.
Five Sex article is related to the Middle Sex film. Social construction and how people structured things in the society come to this following story. A twenty three years old man name Suydam, who is from Connecticut, had been denied to vote because he was considered as female. This was a terrible story when I read it. It considered some people less human than other. The articles say more about how Western society and culture has been to only two genders and ignore other. According to Fausto Sterling in his article, five sexes “Why Male and Female are not enough”, he explained that intersexuality itself is old new thing. Intersex had been there since the beginning of the human history. According to Plato, “there were three sexes and these are male, female and hermaphrodite but the third was lost with time”. This I think may be true because we have more than just two genders. However, people get confused because they do not look back into the history of humans. Here is the film Intersex and Hermaphrodite; and how many people in the world are born with intersex.
Here is an example that I see via the CNN news in 2008 of how society construct social problem. Caster a long distance runner, who is also from South Africa, was forced to undergo genetic testing by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IIAF) in 2008 simply because her look does not conform to what is popularly understood as “classically” feminine. In 2008, after the Beijing Olympic, people have hotly debated her musculature and facial hair. While in her defense, Caster states that she was born as and lives as a woman.
However, the reality is that there are really five sexes, but we try to force people representing all five into two gender-identities. As Anne fausto-sterling explains in her outstanding article “the Five Sexes,” the five sexes are male; female; true hermaphrodite; and two kinds of pseudo-hermaphrodites. In the article, it is mention that a true hermaphrodite has one male gonad and one female gonad. Finally, there are not only two sexes but more as I understood via reading and watching video along with lecture in this course.
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Citation:
The five sexes: Why male and female are Not Enough science April 1993. Anne Fausto-Sterling
I think Caster is a great example of what we have been talking about in class! Nice job!
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