Socialisation and gender stereotypes should be limited when raising any children, raising intersex children without gender or as a “third gender” is problematic.

While people should be less startled by people who don’t fit sex and gender cultural norms, the Intersex Society of North America, explains the problems with trying to raised children in a “third gender”. Firstly, what would be the boundaries of a “third gender” – where would the cut-off points be to who fits into the category of intersex or male or female? Also, our main aim should be trying to make society a safe place for intersex children and labelling them as a “third gender” may not help them.

Moreover, “gender normalising” surgeries have been performed on intersex children since the 1950s, recently some people who underwent these have begun to speak out against them as a human rights violation. In this sense, rather than focusing on how to raise our children, we should advocate greater education and support for parents of intersex children.

Intersex is an umbrella term used for a variety of situations in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the boxes of “female” or “male”. For example, some intersex people have both ovarian and testicular tissues. Other intersex people have combinations of chromosomes that are different from XY and XX.

Sometimes surgery is performed on intersex children to make their bodies fit binary ideas of “male” or “female”. However, there is growing activism that we should accept intersex children and not perform unnecessary surgery which is arguable a violation of their rights. InterACT provides more support and resources for intersex children and parents.

Those born intersex should be raised gender neutral until they can choose which gender they identify with.

• When babies are born it is a legal requirement to declare the sex of the baby. Whilst doctors may assign this sex at birth for those who are intersex, this isn’t to say they will grow up identifying with this gender identity. Doctors may also undertake surgeries on intersex babies to conform them to either gender, this is of course at the parent's discretion.
• Some have argued that we need to determine whether a baby is either male or female in order to ‘eliminate psychological distress for both the patient and the parent.’ However, I can’t agree that this course of action, as opposed to letting them decide themselves is the best approach. Whilst I can imagine parents are attempting to do the best thing for their children, adopting this heteronormative approach to gender and their children’s bodies can be damaging in the long run. This could cause more psychological harm than good.
• As such intersex children should be raised gender neutral until they can decide for themselves. Would it not provide more psychological comfort to allow them to identify with a gender when they have a capacity to understand and choose?

Many intersex children were forced to one side of the gender spectrum by their parents causing greater psychological harm.

Some were even given surgeries based on those assumptions.

We cannot dictate the gender of others, intersex or not.

As an intersex person, if I had been raised gender nuetral I wouldn’t have had as much socialization to undo as an adult.

We shouldn’t shove gender “norms” on any child.