Class and gender

I have to agree with leamirella and lgleysteen that we need to incorporate a broader cultural perspective into our discussions in general, and particularly in relation to gender surgeries, identity, and class.  Phenoms, your comparison of intersex surgeries to abortion procedures makes me wonder what U.S. foreign policy is regarding funding of intersex surgeries.  I wonder if U.S. foreign policy includes specifics about intersex surgeries like it did with abortion under the Bush administration's global gag rule.  (U.S. funded NGOs were prohibited from using their own funds for abortion services, lobbying for abortion rights in their respective countries, public education campaigns about abortion, and providing abortion advice/information.)  

Expanding on leamirella's point, I feel that the conversation about intersex bodies and identity linked to physical structures assumes a very individualistic concept of identity.  Such conversations about a child's future psychosocial development hinge on the idea of individual identity and individual choice.  In societies where identity is more communal, do such conversations even make sense?  How might gender development be conceived in such cultures?  I imagine that the DNA and experiences of the singular person might not come as much into play.  Perhaps the complex web of social ties that bind people to their family, government, churches, and other institution might be said to play a role in determining someone's gender.  If the self concept is conceived of in terms of social relationships, and the gender component of this identity is also more relational than biological, it seems that intersex surgeries would be at best irrelevant, and at worse mutilation.  It seems impossible to apply the discourse on intersex infants anywhere outside of our specific cultural context.

Thinking of intersex surgeries in the context of a different construction of gender and social identity more broadly, I am reminded a lot of the somewhat infamous debates within feminist circles over "female circumcision" or "female genital mutilation."  I'm not trying to get into the eurocentrism vs. sexual violence debate here, but I can see how an outsider, with a different view of what "identity"  and "gender" mean might interpret intersex surgeries as genital mutilation.  So what happens when American practice influences medical practice in other countries (which it does, since as Roughgarten emphasized, the United States dominates the world in scientific research)?  What happens when people from other cultures come to the U.S., and medical care here does not match their construction of self?  Are the opinions of these people marginalized, through language and information barriers?  I am reminded of the TV show House M.D., where the lead character frequently tricks his patients into accepting unwanted medical treatments because he knows what is best for them.  I don't think that every doctor is like House, but I definitely think that the cultural/informational/privilege/language gap that may exist between patient and doctor leaves the door open for disregard of patient wishes, however well intentioned.