r1GS - January 12 2017 The Five Sexes Revisited Anne...

January 12, 2017
The Five Sexes, Revisited
Anne Fausto-Sterling
Fausto-Sterling’s piece is about her work to disrupt the notion of there being
only two sexes. Initially she argues that there are five—male, female, hermaphrodite,
merm, and ferm. She brings up the issue of sex assignment at birth and the
newborns whose ambiguous genitalia can make it difficult. Many doctors had
previously made the error of assigning the babies a gender and performing
irreversible surgery to give them the associated genitalia. Fausto-Sterling had
worked hard to make this a practice of the past. Initially when she brought up her
efforts, she had been laughed at. After some social movement surrounding the issue,
she gained notoriety and some success speaking on the subject and having severl