In response to Mr. Becklo’s defense of the bathroom bill. June 18:
Mr. Becklo assumes that one’s biological sex is always either male or female and that everyone born into this culture clearly belongs to one or the other category. In the natural world categories are not so simple, and there is a wide spectrum of variation of sexual organs in infants, some of whom have organs associated with both sexes. According to the Intersex Society of North America, the total number of people whose bodies differ from the standard male or female model is one in 100 births. That’s a lot of people.
Hermaphrodites have lived in every human society. In many societies they have been accepted and highly valued, but in our sharply dualistic society, religious doctrines have arbitrarily defined for everyone what is right and wrong, good and bad, male or female. The cornucopia of life differences surrounding us are considered “abnormal” or “perverse,” or even “diabolical,” Consequently for many years doctors took into their own hands the decisions to surgically “normalize” the gender of an infant, sometimes without the knowledge of the parents.
Our culture is beginning to acknowledge that we live in a world of endless variety and constant change, full of differences that, when we embrace them, mutually enrich our lives. I thank Mr. Becklo for expressing his thoughts, and thank The Recorder for providing a forum for our differing opinions, because it is in dialogue with views other than my own that my mind begins to open.
Lorraine Pearson
Greenfield