The Ethics of Intersex:

 ← Rethinking the “Average”

Northern Voices Editor: 

GIVEN that in the Guardian on the 26th, November 2017, the writers Ben Quinn and Dulcie Lee concluded that 'Choosing whether one is a man or a woman is a matter of self-identification, trans activists assert', we at Northern Voices thought it may be as well if we published an account of an earlier study in 1967 by Harold Garfinkel of the transformation of what was then believed to be an intersex person into woman with a 'manmade' vagina.  I say 'intersex' because that is what Agnes in 1967 passed herself off as, she later after the operation admitted 'to one of her doctors that she had been taking very high levels of estrogen since the age of 12'. We think the case of Garfinkel's girl called Agnes, a transexual who passed herself off as intersex, is relevant to the recent debate that is raging among anarchists, feminists, trans folk and even within parties like the Labour Party.

 A 1960s Ethnographic Study of a Girl Called Agnes

Posted on March 8, 2012  https://growingupinamerica.wordpress.com/.../the-ethics-of-intersex-a-1960s-ethnogra.

AGNES was a 19-year old woman with an accidental penis appendage.  Studied by anthropologist Harold Garfinkel and written about in a 1967 report titled Studies in Ethnomethodology, Agnes became recognized by her researchers as an example of “passing.”  After undergoing a sex transition operation at UCLA in 1959 that amputated her existing penis and transformed it into a “manmade” vagina, Garfinkel’s research presents Agnes’ construction of her own personal history of femininity, draws attention to the secrets she refuses to disclose to anyone, and paints a portrait of a woman raised as a boy and fighting to fit into a society of “normal” gendered people.

At 17, Agnes (then identified by society and her family as a male) left home to live with her grandmother for a month–leaving one day with all of her belongings, changing into “female” attire in a booked hotel room, and creating a new life for herself as a woman.  Because she was living in a society that “prohibits willful or random movements from one sex status to the other,” (125)  Agnes consciously learned the accepted and expected mannerisms that accompany being a woman.  She “passed” effectively–noticed in bars and mistaken for a wife when she ventured out with her brother. She gained a boyfriend and avoided (for as long as possible) the day when she would have to tell him about her “vestigal penis.”

In interviews about her experiences both before and after the UCLA “castration,” Agnes identifies as a natural woman living in an environment that does not recognize her penis as accidental.  She is the victim of a mistake made by nature and corrected by man.  After the operation, Agnes still fights to conceal her past.  She has lived a life of concealment and aversion (hiding breasts as a 12-year old “boy” due to a later diagnosed excess of estrogen) and  claims to have 19 years of her life to “make up for.”

Her stories to researchers are filled with positive overtones and rosy colors.  She claims her sex transition was easily accepted by her parents and her boyfriend, and easily constructs a plotline that gives an impression of herself as she wants to be seen.  Garfinkel struggles with separating the truth of Agnes’ story from its reality.  He seems to cringe at her stories of learning (from her boyfriend) about the norms of femininity–that she should not give her opinions too readily and should fulfill his sexual needs.

Reading through the conflicted and often confusing accounts of Agnes, I was most shocked by her determination to subscribe to the black and white traditional definitions of man and woman.  Despite her own personal ambiguous “sex,” she is dismissive of homosexuals and transsexuals.  She is extremely uncomfortable when these categories are seen as parallel to her life, and she recurrently refers to them as “abnormal.”  She does not want to be classified with “them.”

Unlike many transexuals known to work toward raising public awareness and acceptance, Agnes only wanted to fit easily into the mainstream.  She did everything possible to become the media representations of housewives and ladylike women that were ubiquitous in the 50s and 60s (and today.)  She didn’t long for a greater social openness or even think that she should not have to hide her “condition.”   As Garfinkel explains, avoiding any examinations or inquiries that could reveal the presence of her penis (prior to castration) became a game.  Agnes learned the script of society’s stereotypes and rules to a T.  This was the act of “passing.”

Reminiscent of the “passing” that occurred during the Harlem Renaissance as light-skinned African Americans reaped the benefits of being acknowledged as white in American society, I was uncomfortable with Agnes’ cover-up. I wanted her to be accepted by society as a woman, but I also wanted society to accept sex and gender more openly.   I wanted it to be seen as a choice–to give the opportunity to identify with what Agnes referred to as her “natural” femaleness.  Perhaps this is more true in our modern age, but I think that the black and white boundaries of male and female still exist (even if they have blurred a bit.)

Watching an MTV reality show called “Plain Jane,” these stereotypical boundaries are more than evident.  A grungy-looking brunette with glasses and a monotone black and baggy wardrobe stands beside a smokey-eyed and stiletto clad British fashionista guru.  She walks through a street fair with an ear piece feeding her tips from the glamorous tutor about how to flirt–given advice like “guys like to hear themselves talk!   Ask him questions!”

By the end of the show, the formerly drab 20-something has been made into a Va-Va Voom hourglass model in a bright purple dress and honey-colored tresses.  She flirts through bright red lips and bats hyper-extended eyelashes.  She is a complete success.  I look at her as she delicately forks her salad, and I see the stigmatized version of the beautiful woman made real.

I think then about the Irish “Real Rape” stereotype I learned about recently in a policy class at NUIG. Until 1990, men could not be raped. Even today, legislation does not allow for the possibility that a man can be raped by a woman. Until the 1980s, “marriage rape” did not exist in Ireland.  This traces back to the idea of women as property–the consent of marriage synonymous with the consent of sex. In 2011, the false belief that rape usually is perpetrated by a stranger, at night, and with resistance from the victim results in cases that don’t fit this outline are quickly dismissed.

We read facts like these (and see black and white stereotypes play out on screen,) and we recognize that they are troubling.  And yet, they persist.  How could (or should) we change the way society perceives?

Agnes might have told us that we don’t necessarily need to.


Agnes’ story carries with it a twist ending.  At the time of her operation at UCLA, it was believed by her doctors and researchers that she possessed male organs, but that her estrogen levels were naturally on the same level as a “normal” woman.  They saw removal of the penis as the most “humane” thing to do–particularly because Agnes was experiencing extreme depression at the time.  They agreed to perform the procedure with minimal fees if Agnes participated in ongoing follow-up research.  Agnes agreed.

Despite years of interviews and research, Agnes still had secrets.  After she was finally settled into a new life as a married woman with nothing recognizably “unnatural” about her outward sex, Agnes revealed to one of her doctors that she had been taking very high levels of estrogen since the age of 12.  She was a biologically “normal” male until she stole her mother’s pills at this young age.  The supplements were taken at just the right time–halting the developments of male puberty and beginning the development of breasts.  Scientists believed that her “feminine” skin, breasts, voice, and convincing “passing” were a result of biology.  This added knowledge made clear that her transformation was an even clearer choice.

How does this change her story?  Does it discount it, or give it even more credibility?

I don’t have the answers, but this week will be full of wondering.

******

Studies in the Anatomy of the British Left

by Brian Bamford

IT is now almost 50 years since Harold Garfinkel wrote his book 'Studies in Ethnomethodology' in 1967.  Garfinkel's book was a systematic attack on the kind of sociological and ideological thinking that was prevailing in much of the social sciences at that time, and which amounted to 'cookbook analysis'.  With a  functionalist or Marxist cookbook one didn't need to think critically or empirically about social phenomena or real life events; all one needed to do was to produce a suitable recipe to deal with the world.

In his essay in The Independent on the current thinking of the 'radical left' Bailey Lamon seems to have uncovered the latest facet of the phenomena of 'cookbook thinking' among some of the current half-baked student community of scholars at the beginning of the 21^st century.   Claiming to have been 'involved in activism since the Occupy Movement of 2011', Bailey Lamon makes a perceptive observation in which he contrasts the world of what he calls the 'oppressed groups,... such as the homeless, abused, addicted' with that of the half-baked students and activists, who in their wisdom claim to be able to diagnose the problems of those that suffer and to prescribe cures and generally to cleanse us all of our imperfections.  Mr. Lamon addresses the challenge to such clever-dick thinking which besets seemingly most of the British left:

'If you’ve ever worked with oppressed groups, such as people who are homeless, abused, addicted or suffering from mental health problems, there's one thing you learn straight away. They usually don't frame their worldviews in terms of academic theories students learn in gender studies classes in university. For the most part, they tend to not analyse their experiences in terms of systemic power and privilege, concepts such as “the patriarchy”, “white privilege”, or “heteronormativity”.

'While many of these folks know that they're directly impacted by class inequality, they don't sit around pondering capitalism, reading Marx, or tackling the effects of “problematic behaviours”. They are not concerned with checking their privilege.  No.  They are busy trying to survive. Getting through the next day. Meeting their basic needs. They don't bother with policing their language and worrying about how their words might unintentionally perpetuate certain stereotypes.  They are more concerned with their voices being heard.'   
Young students today are desirous of passing exams and the easiest way to accomplish this is in finding some ideological formula or recipe knowledge to spout out pretentious doctrines and slogans such as 'patriarchy'; 'white privilege' or 'heteronormativity'.  What these bumptious people lack in experience of poverty; life in the workplace; the prison yard or living on the streets, they try to compensate by pseudo-intellectual blather.
Mr Lamon writes about some of the people he encountered in the Occupy Movement: 
'Yet I witness so many “activists” who ignore the realities of oppression despite saying that they care about those at the bottom of society.  They think that being offended by something is equal to experiencing prison time or living on the streets.  They talk about listening, being humble and not having preconceptions.  Yet they ignore the lived experiences of those who don’t speak or think properly in the view of university-educated social justice warriors, regardless of how much worse off they really are.'
These people are so convinced that they, and only they, have the key to the universe and that what they believe must be self-evident that they do not accept that their views should be subject to any form of forensic examination.  Consequently as we have noticed on many occasions they believe that they have the entitlement to coerce others to swallow whatever fashionable fad that they have embraced.
God help the British Left!
See http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-this-radical-activist-is-disillusioned-by-the-toxic-culture-of-the-left-a6895211.html 

Thatcher, Society & the Market

WHAT THATCHER SAID ABOUT SOCIETY:

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987:

'I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. "I have a problem, I'll get a grant." "I'm homeless, the government must house me." They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.'

ON Monday's PM program on Radio Four, Baroness Gillian Shephard, in a confrontation with the former Labour MP, Clare Short, denied that Margaret Thatcher had ever said, 'There is no such thing as society!'. The next day on the same program the full quote in which she said it twice was read out: she said 'There is no such thing as society... there are individuals and families!' Essentially, she was claiming 'society' is an 'abstract' concept, and therefore individuals and their families must take responsibility for their own destinies and plight and not blame things that happen onto 'society'.

Significantly in another interview Thatcher challenges the interviewer who uses the term 'the market theory'. She said that 'the market is not a theory' but a reality, and that historically there has always been 'a market'. So there we have it, for her society is an 'abstraction' and the market is 'real'.

The 19th Century French sociologist Emile Durkheim considered society to be somehow more than the sum of its constituent parts: that is more than a random collection of individuals and their families. His view, and that of other social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Talcott Parsons, Harold Garfinkel, up until the present, is to consider that society is not abstract but acts upon individuals and influences their destinies: in Durkheim's case he even tries to show that such apparently individual acts as suicide are socially construed. This belief in the importance of the social construct is apparent even in the works of novelists such as Dickens and Balzac. Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, wants to argue that it is 'the market' not 'society', that is the main motor driving the human race even if the destiny is a sociological abyss.

Left wing writers like the play-write Bertold Brecht admitted that capitalism and the market were economically dynamic and creative, but often socially destructive in a devastating way. Yesterday, in the International Herald Tribune, AC Grayling wrote:
'The curious feature of Thatcher's legacy is that although she struck an axe-blow deep into the heart of Britain, it is society, not the political sphere, that remains deeply divided by a widening gap between rich and poor.'

Mr. Grayling adds:
'the country's politics have almost ceased to be ideological, as ... (a)ll the main British political parties now strive for the center ground, and the differences between them are about managerial style, not questions of principle.'

AC Grayling sums-up the legacy of Thatcherism thus:
'She began the deregulation of banking that led ultimately to Britain's contribution to the global financial crisis of 2008. She reversed the trend of greater social integration and diminishing of the wealth gap that characterized Britain in the three decades after 1945. Post-war convergences in class and wealth disappeared and former divisions resurfaced as consumerism and social incivility followed quickly on her brusque reorganization of British society.'

And now, we are left with the debris of Thatcherism: the secular all embracing religion of consumerism, welfare dependency, Mick Philpotts, and a sharp division between owner-occupiers and those young people who fail to get on the housing ladder. The market cannot be ignored but all societies find it necessary to place some form of moral side-constraints on economic exchange in the market place, either through village customs; traditional practices; an appeal to some form of religious authority; or laws and statutory regulations.