Talk:History of intersex surgery

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[edit] npov

If you have a question about the contents, please have the courtesy to ask here. I assure you I am not exaggerating the cultural context of the 70s. alteripse 01:59, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

DanP Your edits to the sections make it more bland and not as easy to understand the main points. What POV are you removing? Please go mess with other articles. alteripse 00:50, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's pretty obvious that this article contains mountains of opinion stated without regard NPOV policies. My edits were fairly minimal. Which ones did you find objectionable? DanP 01:45, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

1. There is a valid use for what you erroneously call "scare" quotes. Such quotes are used to make the reader conscious that the word is not a universally accepted point of view. That is exactly how they were used, and I don't see how you could argue that a significant segment of public opinion didn't change in just that way as described. The quotes suggest those are the extremes of the opinions, not the most common view nor the viewpoint of the author. That is a style issue.

1. I have had it up to here with your unsupported allegations of "POV. " Spell it out and let's discuss it. I can support every word I have written. alteripse 04:00, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) The tenor of this comment is inappropriate: discuss the article, not the authors, and do not engage in personal attacks. Cleduc 04:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Constructing a culture of victimhood

• The following sentence has a POV issue: "The politically proven tactic of constructing a culture of victimhood brought them the expected academic and cultural champions," -- expected by whom? What individual or group espoused this "tactic" and "constructed" a culture? Cleduc 04:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for agreeing with me that unsubstantiated claims of pov are inappropriate. I am fixing the punctuation problem so I can read what I wrote last week. Brief answers:

• • expected academic and cultural champions a very common type of academic career building in us in 80s and 90s was exploring pov of anyone perceived as an oppressed, victimized or socially marginalized group. This can be seen by perusing publication lists of academic books from the period, contents of academic journals, programs of meetings in the humanities (such as the MLA). If you want a reference that describes this general trend and fashion, see Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 1997) for a very lucid chapter on the Theory approach to gender and identity group politics, the tension between academic pov and political advocacy, and the social responses the movement elicited. Probably one of the first academics to get publicly involved as an advocate was Anne Fausto-Sterling, but she was followed by others. The sentence above perfectly describes their approaches and the consequences. Anyone attempting to pose an issue in this frame could expect support from many academics regardless of details or accuracy of claims and especially regardless of the knowledge of the academics (the prime example of the latter claim of course was the Sokal affair).
  • What individual or group : ISNA is a good example but there were others, such as a group that called itself "hermaphrodites with attitude". Interestingly isna has removed much of the more outrageously false accusations from their web page and now seem quite sensitive to the accuracy of the claims of their critics. This was not always the case, as will be remembered by those familiar with their website since the late 90s.
  • constructed a culture: a culture is a body of shared attitudes, stories and views with shared interpretations and meaning. Again, the phenomenon is well-described in Culler's book. You will find little or no evidence to support the existence of the culture of which isna is an example (it might be called victims of medical treatment of intersex) prior to the mid-90s. alteripse 21:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Digging a bit deeper: who specifically says a group was constructing a culture of victimhood? Did the mentioned "patient advocacy groups" specifically state that as a goal, or is that someone else's interpretation of their actions? The point here is that the sentence states that this happened empirically, but not from whose point of view (I infer another point of view that this attitude arose out of larger societal forces and not by the actions of a specific group). The article would be better served to cite who (group, researcher, or person) draws this conclusion. Otherwise, I'm afraid it sounds like speculation (original research). Please note I'm not questioning accuracy, and I am not a subject matter expert -- I'm questioning sources, and point of view. Cleduc 23:01, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Groups like ISNA and academics like Fausto-Sterling taught intersex patients and the western public to see them as victims of medical treatment. It was one of the stated purposes of her articles and of organizations like those mentioned. You could describe it from a different pov of course. For example, These victims of the oppressive medical system that enforced society's heterosexual hegemony suffered in silent isolation until groups like ISNA connected them with each other, and raised their consciousness and political awareness. Heroic academics like FS championed their cause to the open-minded youth of the West, opening their eyes to the evil mutilations being perpetrated by the heterofascist and sadistic medical doctors... You may think I am exaggerating but I am not, and you can find examples of that kind of writing removed from various wikipedia articles. I am not making any of this up and the article describes all points of view; I did omit some of the more bizarre and ludicrous because the reality-oriented portion of isna advocacy was valuable and the organization has dissociated itself from some of the more preposterous claims (see their website). FS has admitted in print that her widely quoted statistics are very inaccurate and were basically invented by some undergraduates under her guidance trying to come up with the largest numbers possible for political advocacy purposes. (ref in the article I think-- if not I will put it in). The other article she is known for, in the NYAS magazine which she advocated social recognition of 5 sexes, has been repudiated by her and isna. It is hard to caricature some of these people because what they have actually published is so ridiculous. alteripse 21:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we can craft a phrase that encompasses two POV: "Critics argue that patient advocacy groups cynically constructed a culture of victimhood to woo favor from the usual academic and cultural champions, while the patient advocates argue that they simply connected patients and gave them a voice to raise consciousness of the impact of such procedures; regardless, the ensuing mass media coverage of these groups' views had great impact." Cleduc 03:09, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Well I have no evidence for explicitly calling them cynical. I assume the patient advocacy groups believed it just like the many of the people who leave impassioned but uniformed edits on this topic in wikipedia. What was striking was the ill-informed nature of much that was written with passion on this topic, even by academics. You can see examples in the intersexuality article regularly. The problem is that these are conditions that create unhappiness and problems for affected people and their families. Some of the surprising and distinctive aspects of the phenomenon were

1. how quickly the academics and the media accepted the "victim" view;
2. a victim has to have a perpetrator. since many political groups based on sexual identity argue that no difference of sexuality should be considered bad in any way, it must be the treatments and doctors that are bad.
3. Because recognition and championing of a proclaimed victim group was such a fashionable and central route to academic success, it attracted academics who were astonishingly uninformed and ignorant. It was precisely what happened in the Sokal affair: many of the most fashionable academics will support utter and literal nonsense if it is cloaked in the language of victim support;
4. The motives of the doctors were no different than the motives of the doctors who correct cleft palates but these aren't patently evil so they were ignored and new motives and "offenses" were invented;
5. The principal fault or failure of the doctors from 1970 to the mid-90s was a lack of critical and ongoing surveillance of the outcomes of these conditions with various managements so standard management could either be defended as best or alternatives could be tried. This is a real fault, but many of the critics had so little understanding of the issues that they preferred to invent other ones.
6. A significant irony of the whole thing is that one of the changes in our understanding resulting from this re-evaluation of the last decade is that hormones and biology may have a significant influence on gender identity and sexual identity. This concept was anathema to the fashionable academic world from the late 1960s until recently, and those who proposed it were accused of evil political motives like "attempting to suppress deviancy".
7. The mass media amplified the issue because the media is interested in any titillating sexual story. Again, if it had been about outcomes and changes in management of cleft lips and palates, every women's magazine and talk show wouldn't have covered it and every undergraduate in the country wouldn't have a passionate conviction about it.

I suppose I should rewrite and make some of these points more explicitly. It makes a good narrative but I was trying to describe all perspectives, not generate edit wars. alteripse 07:05, 27 September 2005 (UTC)