What Makes a Lengthy Article Brief?

ABSTRACT

Evidence continues to accumulate supporting an innate basis of human sexual identity as male or female. Selective mustering of these particles of data can congeal into a compelling argument.

Plyers of the law trade present one side of an argument in their legal brief. The reader is overwhelmed by its forceful logic and inevitable conclusions. The reader is dumbfounded that there is an opposition. Until reading the opponent's brief.

That is law. This is science. A peer-reviewed journal is a vehicle for balanced presentation of data with conclusions not outstripping the evidence.

This lengthy article on gender identity is a brief cross-dressed as science. It set out to “pass” but it was “read.”     

Editorial

Abstract

Intersex in Church documents has, thus far, been given very little coverage in its own right. However, it is sometimes presented as a foil to transgender; a "natural" if unfortunate state in contrast to the resolutely "non-biological" state of transgender. This serves to stigmatize transgender, and fails to understand the extent to which intersex disrupts binary, dualistic notions of sex and gender in their entirety. Utilizing opposites such as biological/non-biological is not, in fact, the most useful way to represent the relationship between intersex and transgender. Rather, it must be acknowledged that both conditions profoundly undermine the givenness of certainty and either/or tropes as "goods" when it comes to sex identity at all. This article gives a brief summary of some occurrences of the unproblematized contrasting of intersex and transgender in some Church documents, and suggests that they are being contrasted in the wrong ways.     

Sex,gender, and intersex: anthropological,medical, and ethical critiques and proposals

ABSTRACT

The problems of intersex have received little attention from both Catholic Magisterium and theologians. Early in 2019, the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education issued a document intended to be a pathway for a dialogue on the issue of gender in education. This essay responds to that document as a contribution to filling theological gaps in the consideration of intersex. It first explains and critiques the theological anthropology underlying the Vatican document and then analyzes and critiques Western cultural, medical approaches to intersex persons. It dialogues with the experience of intersex persons and the social sciences that document it and concludes by proposing ethical principles to guide intersex persons, their parents, and their physicians in the care and treatment of intersex.     

Institutional Evils,Culpable Complicity,and Duties to Engage in Moral Repair

Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. The analysis by Claudia Card (1940–2015) of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card's definition of an evil, namely, the non‐medically necessary, nonconsensual “normalizing” interventions performed on babies born with intersex anatomies. It argues that in this instance the complicity of doctors is culpable on Card's terms, and that their culpable complicity grounds rightful demands for them to apologize.     

MEDICAL MANAGEMENT OF INFANT INTERSEX: THE JURIDICO‐ETHICAL DILEMMA OF CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC LEGAL RESPONSE

Technological advances in the field of medicine and health sciences not only manipulate the normal human body and sex but also provide for surgical and hormonal management of hermaphroditism (intersexuality). Consequently, sex assignment surgery has not only become a standard care for babies born with genital abnormalities in the West but even in some Muslim states. On the positive side, it goes a long way in saving children born with abnormal genitalia from numerous legal interdictions of the pre‐sex corrective surgery. Nevertheless, the larger ethical and legal questions that medical management of genital abnormality raises to some extent have not been adequately appreciated by contemporary Muslim responses. This article, therefore, in principle argues against surgical management of intersexuality during early infancy from the Islamic legal perspective.     

Atypical Gender Development–A Review

ABSTRACT

In 2003, the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) ran a small symposium in London, assisted by a Trans Group, founded in 1993, with the aim of moving transsexualism from its current categorisation, in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD 10), as a psychiatric disorder. GIRES was awarded additional funding for this project from the King's Fund-an eminent charity providing funds for medical and scientific work.

The members of the symposium included physicians and specialists in the different areas pertinent to the understanding and the treatment of transsexualism, and also the Member of Parliament who chairs the Parliamentary Forum for Transsexualism. Transsexual people were represented within this group. Members came from the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Japan and the United States of America. Professor Milton Diamond (USA) chaired the group who collaborated in producing the following paper. The team endeavoured to provide a balanced and comprehensive review of what is currently understood, in the scientific field, regarding atypical gender development and transsexualism.     

A diptych reading of Christ’s transfiguration: trans and intersex aesthetics reveal baptismal identity

ABSTRACT

The synoptic Gospels describe Jesus Christ’s transfiguration not as a mode of ontological change, but rather as a means of revelation – that he is the second person of the Trinity. Through a diptych reading of Christ’s transfiguration and crucifixion, I argue that those who experience hate crimes share in Christ’s misrecognition in the midst of revealing truth, which can result in violence and death. Additionally, I offer a constructive, biblical theology of trans and intersex aesthetics that runs counter to neoliberal identity politics by illuminating how the bodily presentation of trans and intersex persons of faith reveal a baptismal truth – that through Christ humanity is adopted as co-heirs with him.     

Intersex(es) and Informed Consent: How Physicians' Rhetoric Constrains Choice

When a child is born with ambiguousgenitalia it is declared a psychosocialemergency, and the policy first proposed byJohn Money (Johns Hopkins University) andadapted by the American Academy of Pediatrics(and more broadly accepted in Canada, the U.K.,and Europe) requires determination ofunderlying condition(s), selection of gender,surgical intervention, and a commitment by allparties to accept the ``real sex' of thepatient, all no later than 18–24 months,preferably earlier. Ethicists have recentlyquestioned this protocol on several grounds:lack of medical necessity, violation ofinformed consent, uncertainty of standards ofsuccess, among others. This suggests that thefaults in the protocol can be addressed andimproved. Through a rhetorical approachinformed by Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca, thedisciplinary pathologization and reconstructionof the body are explored as incidents ofconstraining rhetoric that enact theirpersuasion upon the body of intersexedchildren. This essay shows that thepresumptions, judgments, values, andpresuppositions brought by the physician to theidentification, diagnosis, and curativeprocedures create a network of constraints thatexclude alternative possibilities. The resultis a situation wherein parents, physicians, andintersexed patients have ``no choice' but toaccept the medical treatment guidelines.