Schematic representation
The Phall-O-meter is a satirical measure that critiques medical standards for normal male and female phalluses. [1] [2] [3] The tool was developed by Kiira Triea (Denise Tree) based on a concept by Suzanne Kessler and is used to demonstrate concerns with the medical treatment of intersex bodies.
The Phall-O-meter was developed by Kiira Triea [4] [5] based on a concept by professor of psychology Suzanne Kessler. Kessler summarized the range of medically acceptable infant penis and clitoris sizes in the book Lessons from the Intersexed. [6] Kessler states that normative tables for clitoral length appeared in the late 1980s, while normative tables for penis length appeared more than forty years before that. She combined those standard tables to demonstrate an "intermediate area of phallic length that neither females nor males are permitted to have", that is, a clitoris larger than 9mm or a penis shorter than 25mm. [6]
The meter was printed by the now-defunct Intersex Society of North America as a means of demonstrating concerns with the medical treatment of intersex people. [5] [7] [8] [9]
In her 2000 book Sexing the Body , Anne Fausto-Sterling describes how members of the intersex rights movement had developed a "phall-o-meter". [10] Fausto-Sterling notes that, despite the existence of normative tables, clinicians' practices are more subjective: "doctors may use only their personal impressions to decide" on an appropriate clitoris size. [11] Similarly, in a paper presented to the American Sociological Association in 2003, Sharon Preves cites Melissa Hendricks, writing in the Johns Hopkins Magazine, November 1993 on subjective clinical norms and their relationship to surgical management: [12]
In truth, the choice of gender still often comes down to what the external genitals look like. Doctors who work with children with ambiguous genitalia sometimes put it this way, "You can make a hole [vagina] but you can't build a pole [penis]." Surgeons can decrease the size of a phallus and create a vagina, but constructing a penis that will grow as the child grows is another matter [...]
Copies of the Phall-O-Meter are now held by the Wellcome Library in London, [13] and the Smithsonian Institution. [14]
While the scale as used by the Intersex Society of North America was a satirical tool for activism, numerous clinical scales and measurement systems exist to define genitals as normal male or female, or "abnormal", including the orchidometer, [15] Prader scale [16] and Quigley scale. [17]
Clitoridectomy or clitorectomy is the surgical removal, reduction, or partial removal of the clitoris. It is rarely used as a therapeutic medical procedure, such as when cancer has developed in or spread to the clitoris. Commonly, non-medical removal of the clitoris is performed during female genital mutilation.
Anne Fausto-Sterling is an American sexologist who has written extensively on the social construction of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, gender roles, and intersexuality. She is the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University.
The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) was a non-profit advocacy group founded in 1993 by Cheryl Chase to end shame, secrecy, and unnecessary genital surgeries on intersex people. Other notable members included Morgan Holmes, Max Beck, Howard (Tiger) Devore, Esther Morris Leidolf and Alice Dreger. The organization closed in June 2008, and has been succeeded by a number of health, civil and human rights organizations including interACT.
Intersex medical interventions (IMI), sometimes known as intersex genital mutilations (IGM), are surgical, hormonal and other medical interventions performed to modify atypical or ambiguous genitalia and other sex characteristics, primarily for the purposes of making a person's appearance more typical and to reduce the likelihood of future problems. The history of intersex surgery has been characterized by controversy due to reports that surgery can compromise sexual function and sensation, and create lifelong health issues. The medical interventions can be for a variety of reasons, due to the enormous variety of the disorders of sex development. Some disorders, such as salt-wasting disorder, can be life-threatening if left untreated.
The history of intersex surgery is intertwined with the development of the specialities of pediatric surgery, pediatric urology, and pediatric endocrinology, with our increasingly refined understanding of sexual differentiation, with the development of political advocacy groups united by a human qualified analysis, and in the last decade by doubts as to efficacy, and controversy over when and even whether some procedures should be performed.
Pseudohermaphroditism is an outdated term for when an individual's gonads were mismatched with their internal reproductive system and/or external genitalia. The term was contrasted with "true hermaphroditism", a condition describing an individual with both female and male reproductive gonadal tissues. Associated conditions includes Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome and forms of androgen insensitivity syndrome.
Disorders of sex development (DSDs), also known as differences in sex development or variations in sex characteristics (VSC), are congenital conditions affecting the reproductive system, in which development of chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomical sex is atypical.
Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".
The Prader scale or Prader staging, named after Andrea Prader, is a coarse rating system for the measurement of the degree of virilization of the genitalia of the human body and is similar to the Quigley scale. It primarily relates to virilization of the female genitalia in cases of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and identifies five distinct stages, but in recent times has been used to describe the range of differentiation of genitalia, with normal infant presentation being shown on either end of the scale, female on the left (0) and male on the right (6).
Alice Domurat Dreger is an American historian, bioethicist, author, and former professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, in Chicago, Illinois.
Hermaphrodites with Attitude was a newsletter edited by Cheryl Chase and published by the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) between 1994 and 2005. The full archives are available online. In 2008, ISNA transferred its remaining funds, assets, and copyrights to Accord Alliance and then closed.
Morgan Holmes is a Canadian sociologist, author, and a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario. She is also an intersex activist and writer, and former member of Intersex Society of North America. Holmes participated in the first public demonstration by intersex people, now marked by Intersex Awareness Day.
Tiger Devore, previously known as Howard Devore and Tiger Howard Devore, is an American clinical psychologist, sex therapist, and spokesperson on intersex issues. He was a member of the defunct Intersex Society of North America. Historian Alice Dreger credits him with starting the work of the intersex movement.
Gottlieb Göttlich was an intersex man in the 1800s who became well-known for his condition, as it was the first time many medical practitioners had seen such a case.
Intersex, in humans and other animals, describes variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".
Intersex, in humans and other animals, describes variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies". Intersex people were historically termed hermaphrodites, "congenital eunuchs", or even congenitally "frigid". Such terms have fallen out of favor, now considered to be misleading and stigmatizing.
Max Beck was an American intersex advocate, who was active in the now-defunct Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). On October 26, 1996 in Boston, Beck participated in the first known public demonstration against human rights violations on intersex people. The event is now annually commemorated and recognized as Intersex Awareness Day.
Intersex people in the United States have some of the same rights as other people, but with significant gaps, particularly in protection from non-consensual cosmetic medical interventions and violence, and protection from discrimination. Actions by intersex civil society organizations aim to eliminate harmful practices, promote social acceptance, and equality. In recent years, intersex activists have also secured some forms of legal recognition. Since April 11, 2022 US Passports give the sex/gender options of male, female and X by self determination.
Suzanne Kessler is an American social psychologist known for the application of ethnomethodology to gender. She and Wendy McKenna pioneered this application of ethnomethodology to the study of gender and sex with their groundbreaking work, Gender an Ethnomethodological Approach. Twenty years later, Kessler extended this work in a second book, Lessons from the Intersexed.
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