User:SMDaley/sandbox

I've decided to edit the section "Experience of medical procedures and photography" on the Intersex page, and maybe the "Gender Dysphoria" section as well.

Talk about how individuals are impacted when growing up-i.e. how they are told, what they are told, what doctors or parents withhold.

Edit made 2:54 am 11/21/2013 to the "Experiences of medical procedures and photography" --Parents will socially raise their child as either the male or female that they were surgically made to be, without telling them what sex their chromosomes dictate they are. This often causes confusion later on in life when children experience puberty or a relationship where they are confronted with the fact that their genitals do not function as they are told they should in sexual education and by friends. In the short documentary "XXXY", two intersex individuals talked openly about believing that intersex individuals should be raised as such and then allowed to choose whether or not they wanted surgery performed. A physician also featured agreed with these two and encouraged an end to surgery on infants. Children who were born intersex and then had surgery first as newborn infants and then continuously through their childhood and adolescence report experiencing severe emotional confusion and/or devastation, and the parents of these children are also impacted emotionally by the decisions they made to have their child undergo surgery from infant through adolescence

Contacted 11/21/13 by an editor about editing a medical text, giving guidance on how to improve what reference used and given advice to start a talk page

11/21/13 discussed with Ashley where we could most effectively put more edits

11/21/13 added a new section to the talk page on the Intersex article so everyone editing the article could get advice from the editor, and so we all had a better chance of keeping our edits on the page

11/25/13 edited Ashley's addition to the Conditions section of the Intersex page to fix the references list that came up in the wrong place

11/28/13 added to the "Not In Our Genes" page about Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin's book. Added the section the "Breakdown of Patriarchy" In the chapter “The Determined Patriarchy”, Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin analyze patriarchy in science by breaking down the arguments used by determinists to “prove” its natural existence. The three authors of this piece break down the structure of the deterministic argument into three parts: statement of a “biological fact”, showing a parallel between this fact in humans and in any other animal species, and repeating a very outdated argument that natural selection made females and males so different. Lewontin & co. are very quick to point out that this last part is sociobiological, with quite a bit more emphasis on the social half. The determinists use biology not as real evidence, but instead as crutches to prop up the claims that have been accepted as norms. The determinists handpick what answers fit their beliefs, like the fact that men “have larger brains, compared to women”, and ignored that this was not the case “when considered in proportion to body weight”. These are accepted as scientific fact, and so can be used to “prove” that men are more suited in roles of power and intelligence, while women should continue to stay as homemakers. The determinists would take their facts and compare the behavior of men vs. women to the different gendered behaviors in another species, as if humans and other animals are one hundred percent parallels that have no differences in DNA, behavior, or social structure.

Another problem that Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin find with the determinists methods of scientific observation as evidence/fact is that all of the observation of humans and/or animals was biased. Biological determinists were looking for the traits, behaviors, or biological indicators that could be used to enforce and prop up the gender difference ideologies perpetuated by the patriarchal society that has been in existence since the 17th century. Lewontin notices that often when scientists are doing observations of infants to find the gender differences in behavior and neurobiology, they fail to take into account the fact that as soon as they are born, babies are molded to the norms of their genders. In trying to observe differences, determinists fail to account for the creation of these differences because society calls for them. The ideologies surrounding gender demands that infants be raised firmly in accordance to one gender or the other, and that the boundaries between the two must be clear.

Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin differ from the biological determinists because they believe that society, not biology, is the cause of the large difference in acceptable female and male traits. The strongest evidence for this is the statement that “these apparently scientific claims…serve as ideologies that perpetuate them [current gender divisions in society]”. The three authors of this chapter looked at the many different arguments that determinists made over periods of time and could only find bias and perpetuation of heteronormative ideologies. They believe that human gender behavior is driven by society and culture, not by biology and natural selection. To Lewontin and co., the patriarchy molded science to its ideologies; science did not form the patriarchal society that delegates the norms, but was instead formed by society to perpetuate its claims. An argument that is evidently popular among determinists is that there are differences in the brain, which must support the generalizations made about the differences in intelligence and skill between the genders. Lewontin agrees that there are differences in the brain anatomies of males and females, but also acknowledges that science as a whole has no proper grasp on singular functions for each hemisphere and piece of the brain, and so small differences are interesting, but cannot be attributed to major behavioral differences.

11/30/13 Edited the entirety of the wikipedia "Intersex" page to remove the word "intersexual" when used as a noun, as this is actually considered offensive to intersex individuals.

12/2/13- Edited my paragraph on the "Intersex" page based on a peer review Parents will socially raise their child as either the male or female that they were surgically made to be, without telling them what sex their chromosomes dictate they are. This often causes confusion later on in life when children experience puberty or a relationship where they are confronted with the fact that their genitals do not function as they are told they should in sexual education and by friends. In the short documentary "XXXY", two intersex individuals talked openly about believing that intersex individuals should be raised as such and then allowed to choose whether or not they wanted surgery performed. A physician also featured agreed with these two and encouraged an end to surgery on infants. Children who were born intersex and then had surgery first as newborn infants and then continuously through their childhood and adolescence report experiencing severe emotional confusion and/or devastation, and the parents of these children are also impacted emotionally by the decisions they made to have their child undergo surgery from infant through adolescence