Guide to Medical Intersexuality Vocabulary

                                The Murk Manual
                                       
How to Understand Medical Writing on Intersex
   ambiguous genitalia
          Genitalia that refuse to declare their sex to doctors--no doubt
          on the principle that under interrogation by the enemy you
          should give only name, rank, and serial number.
          
   androgen
          Andro=male; gen=making. Androgens are administered to infants
          to prevent their becoming androgynes. See testosterone.
          
   androgen insensitivity
          The condition of infants who callously refuse to respond to
          testosterone treatment; the cause of many an endocrinologist's
          hurt feelings.
          
   circumcision
          A mass-market edition of intersexed surgery, priced for the
          common man. The reasons for circumcision are too numerous to
          treat here, but T.V.N. Persaud of the University of Manitoba
          recites one ingenious opinion:
          
     Some conditions, such as phimosis, often lead to circumcision at a
     later age that could have been prevented if it had been performed
     earlier.
     
          
          Physicians thus exhibit the same prescience as the Monopods in
          C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, who boiled potatoes
          before planting them in order to save doing it when they were
          dug up.
          
   clitoral recession
          See female genital mutilation. Despite Webster's false cognate,
          "recession" is derived from "rescission," the noun form of the
          verb "rescind." Endocrinologists, like certain Congressmen,
          like to rescind budgets they feel are too large, even when this
          means cutting off essential services.
          
   clitoromegaly
          Micropenis in the female. A longer definition would be
          superfluous, since this condition is apt to be cut off before
          the patient can pronounce it.
          
   cryptorchidism
          A condition in which the testes (-orchid) are hidden (crypto-).
          Hidden from whom? Obviously, from the doctors. Cryptorchidism
          is thus practiced by those discriminating infants who do not
          wish to put pearls before swine.
          
   distress
          A condition caused in parents when their intersexed children go
          unmutilated.
          
   estrogen
          1. A character in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, who was
          just pining away for a doctor to come change his sex. 2. A
          character in Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, who
          bloody well wasn't.
          
   female
          1. A male intersexual when the endocrinologist is through with
          him. 2. A female intersexual whom the urologist has not seen
          yet.
          
   female genital mutilation (FGM)
          The scarring or removal of the clitoris, performed by witch
          doctors and condemned by all right-thinking people. If the
          clitoris is a bit larger than average, however, it is performed
          by accredited surgeons and covered by all major insurance
          plans.
          
   gynecomastia
          Enlargement of the breasts in a patient whom we have decided to
          call male. In a patient whom we have decided to call female,
          the same trait is called "excellent breast development."
          
   hypertrophy
          Literally, too much meat. How much is too much? More, madam,
          than your sister has; less, sir, than you will have when we are
          through.
          
   hypogonadotropic hypogonadism
          A condition in which the gonads are small owing to a lack of
          the chemical signals that activate them. To be distinguished
          from hypergonadotrophic hypogonadism, in which the gonads are
          small owing to an excess of the chemical signals that activate
          them. The progress of medical science makes possible these
          ingenious explanations of formerly murky phenomena.
          
   hypospadias
          A condition in which the meatus of the penis exits elsewhere
          than the tip. The etymology of this term is worthy of great
          meditation: hypo=too little; spadix is the Latin for sword. If
          only the infant's sword were larger, he would be able to fight
          off the surgeon.
          
   idiopathic
          Found in solitude. A condition that boors never allow to
          persist in women or in symptoms.
          
          
          Contrary to previous report, idiopathy does not mean "stupid
          medicine," there being no need of a special term to identify
          that thriving Science.
          
   Klinefelter's Syndrome
          One of that large class of syndromes named for people who did
          not have the syndromes. Even Lou Gehrig's Disease has been
          renamed for some doctor who probably couldn't even hold a bat.
          
   lusus naturae
          A freak of nature. It may at first surprise the reader that
          this term is not applied to people who cut up perfectly healthy
          genitals; but while that behavior is certainly freakish, nature
          has nothing to do with it.
          
   male
          See female. Whatever you may say of medical Fascism, it does
          make the males run on time.
          
   micropenis
          Clitoromegaly in the male. Cutting off the micropenis and
          rearing the child as female is a common way of producing a
          satisfactory psychological adjustment;
          
          
     For it's a fact the whole world knows
     That Pobbles are happier without their toes.
     
                                    Edward Lear
                                         
   presenting
          Having. As in, "The infant presented a hypospadiac micropenis"
          (said by doctors) or "The jogger presented a large wallet"
          (said by muggers).
          
   primary hypogonadism
          Primary hypogonadism reduces the body's sex hormones due to
          undeveloped testes or ovaries; see micropenis, which it
          sometimes causes.
          
          
          It is not clear to the compiler of this Manual why some doctors
          feel that primary hypogonadism should be followed by a genital
          election.
          
   pseudohermaphrodite
          Pseudo=false; a pseudohermaphrodite is one whose falsely
          ambiguous genitals cruelly mislead the doctor into hopes of
          publication. So, at least, says pseudoscience.
          
   res ipsa loquitur
          Legal, not medical, Latin: "the thing speaks for itself." A
          sponge left in a patient's body speaks for itself, and is well
          paid to do so; but for the sex organ removed from the body,
          nobody will speak.
          
   rights
          Wrongs. In medical literature, the 'rights' of the intersexed
          refer exclusively to their right to be modified, never to any
          right to remain as they are. For example, one text calls for
          hypospadias to be "corrected" even when it is purely cosmetic,
          on the grounds that "by the age of five every boy has the right
          to be a 'pointer' and not a 'setter'."
          
   stenosis
          Narrowness. A condition of meatuses and minds.
          
   surgical sex reassignment (infant)
          Making a sow's ear out of a silk purse. Known to cause
          deafness.
          
   testosterone
          An androgen taking its name from the test in which it is
          applied to a micropenis. Micropenises that do not grow must be
          cut off; if they do grow then no further treatment is needed.
          Compare the water ordeal, beloved of witch-hunters, in which
          witches that float must be drowned, while those that sink may
          remain as they are. We Americans may be justly proud at the
          advances in our enlightened Society.
          
   urologists
          Those benefactors of humanity who, with considerable
          difficulty, distinguish intersexed infant boys from intersexed
          infant girls. These infants, when grown, may with equal
          difficulty distinguish urologists from butchers.
          
     I pray that some day I will have the means to repay, in some
     measure, the American Urological Association for all they have done
     for my benefit. I am having some trouble, though, in connecting the
     timing mechanism to the fuse.
     
               Quoted by Megan Holmes, from a letter by an anonymous
                                    intersexual

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