Anonymous what is the radfem response to dealing with intersex babies, my partner is starting her specialist training in paediatrics and we were discussing the ethics of gender assignment at a young age, I was surprised at the proportion of babies this effects.

Wait until they’re old enough to decide for themselves, or best case scenario: if there was no need to categorize people in specific gender boxes, intersex individuals wouldn’t even need medical intervention in most cases. It would just be like, there’s individuals with xx, xy, xxxy, etc. chromosomes, there’s individuals with a dick or a vulva or neither or inbetween. The only reason there’s medical intervention at all is because the patriarchy has such an intense need to categorize people into two sexes, because otherwise nobody knows who to oppress and who not to oppress - and this is also why it’s still important to not pretend like your biological sex doesn’t have consequences in the form of vulva = oppression, and penis = ruling class (I’ll no doubt get a question about it so I might as well just say it now).

- Pi