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One of the things that I really wanted to talk about was a suggestion by the doctor in the Oprah article about the parents of intersex children "work[ing] with experienced doctors to come up with a gender assignment" during childhood and then the idea that "parents shoudl raise the child with that assigned gender." After having read Lynell's story, I was concerned about the parents of intersex children assigning gender to children so young and not really allowing the children to have any say in the matter. Perhaps, though, this is an issue in society at large that not only has to do with the assignments of intersex children, but all children in general. I think that sometimes the societal need to say "I am having a boy" or "I am having a girl" makes parents want for their child to be one or the other and doesn't take into consideration the feelings of their children or the feelings that their children may have later in life. Maybe children should be allowed to assign themselves a gender (or no gender) later in life. As the DSD Guidelines discuss, parents "want [their] child to grow up feeling normal." I wonder whether this desire to have your child feel normal has less to do with meeting the needs of the children than it does about fitting into a societal box. As Hilda said in her Oprah interview, "she feels and looks 'more male' or 'more female' in different situations. I think that this is probably a true situation for most people and I think that perhaps we should think about deconstructing the rigid standards of what it means to be male and female. I say all of these, though, aware that my gender was a very big (unspoken) part of how I grew up. At the same time, though, I don't think that I was ever judged by my parents or asked not to do something based on my gender. I think that Lynell's statement that as a male child "she was very effeminate and preferred playing with dolls and jump ropes to 'boy things.'" Honestly, who says that dolls and jump rope are "girl things." Why can't they just be play things? I guess what I am trying to get at is the allowance for flexability of gender as a parent and not attempting to make someone's personality fit their genitals. If we allowed for flexability, even to the extent that we wouldn't assign any gender to intersex (and perhaps all) babies, it might allow for happier kids. Of course, this certainly would a process and I'm not really sure how to go about it.