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would intentionally mislead parents by essentially choosing which sex the child would be based on cultural ideas of male and female. An infant was male if ze would be able to pee standing up. We think of sex and gender in terms of sex being scientific and gender being cultural and social. Here we see how these categories overlap, where the mundaneness of standing to pee somehow decides an infants sex, and therefore what type of surgery the doctor plans to perform. Sexism also enters into decision making, one doctor boasts the infamous quote of, "It's easier to dig a hole that build a pole." The idea that a penis must look a very particular way while what a "normal" infant vagina looks like is fairly undocumented. The truth is that a)penis size at birth has no correlation with adult penis size b)many infants are assigned female because of the exactness of the look a penis and the idea of the relative simplicity in constructing a vagina c) no one has really done extensive research on what the average infant penis or vagina looks like, so many doctors are relying on their own cultural ideas to make these decisions. It is also important to note that parents were presented with an idea of urgency. They were not provided with resources so that they might learn about alternative options for their infant. They were not given the numbers of support groups, nor told the statistics on how many infants are born with intersex conditions, they were often not made fully aware, and the doctors pressed to perform the surgeries quickly.

Beyond this, many adults who in infancy had had genital operations were not made aware of their condition. The information was actively hidden from them at times, even when they were at an age to see their medical records. Too, doctors would not always diagnose the condition which could have caused them to develop differently to begin with. Many genetic disorders carry with them effects beyond the appearance of genitals. Doctors focused on removing what they saw to be the real problem - genitals which don't match our norms - instead of curing their patients needs and helping them with conditions that can cause possible disability.

The surgeries themselves were done "for the benefit of the child". It was thought that parents wouldn't be able to love their child if every time they changed their diaper they were faced with their child's neither typically male or female genitals. Parents and doctors alike claimed that a child would be extremely harmed

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