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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.
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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