Society's Child

Indians pay surgeons to turn girls into boys

Dean Nelson
Telegraph.co.uk
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:25 UTC

Indian doctors have been accused of conducting sex change operations on young girls whose parents want sons to improve the family's income prospects.

Madhya Pradesh state government is investigating claims that up to 300 girls were surgically turned into boys in one city after their parents paid about £2,000 each for the operations.

Women's and children's rights campaigners denounced the practice as a "social madness" that made a "mockery of women in India".

India's gender balance has already been tilted in favour of boys by female foeticide - sex selection abortions - by families who fear the high marriage costs and dowries they may have to pay. There are now seven million more boys than girls aged under six in the country.

Campaigners said the use of surgery meant that girls were no longer safe even after birth.

The row emerged after newspapers disclosed children from throughout India were being operated on by doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

Doctors confronted in the investigation claimed that girls with genital abnormalities were being sent to the city's clinics to be "surgically corrected" and that only children born with both male and female sexual characteristics were eligible for the procedure. But campaigners said the parents and doctors were misindentifying the children's conditions to turn girls into boys.

The surgery, known as genitoplasty, fashions a penis from female organs, with the child being injected with male hormones to create a boy.

Dr V P Goswami, the president of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics in Indore, described the disclosures as shocking and warned parents that the procedure would leave their child impotent and infertile in adulthood.

"Genitoplasty is possible on a normal baby of both the sexes but later on these organs will not grow with the hormonal influence and this will lead to their infertility as well as their impotency. It is shocking news and we will be looking into it and taking corrective measures," he said. "Parents have to consider the social as well as the psychological impact of such procedures on the child."

India's National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights ordered the Madhya Pradesh government to investigate the claims and produce its findings within 15 days.

Ranjana Kumari, of the Centre for Social Research and one of India's leading campaigners against female foeticide, said the surgical transformation of girls into boys without their informed consent was a sign of India's growing "social madness".

She said she despaired that education had failed to stop the growing rejection of baby girls in India.

"The figures are getting worse. In 2001 there were 886 girls born to every 1,000 boys in Delhi. Today there are only 866. The more educated and rich you are, the more there is killing of girls," she said.

"People don't want to share their property or invest in girls' education or pay dowries. It's the greedy middle classes running after money. It is just so shocking and an outright violation of children's rights."

The government needed to address the problem by stressing the spiritual value a girl or woman brought a household in Hindu culture. "In India we say God resides in that house where there's a woman but that has evaporated because of all this greed. We need to emphasise the spiritual wealth a girl brings to a family, but we also need to support them with financial subsidies and jobs," she added.

Reader Comments

Winter · 2011-06-28T15:37:57Z

wow

. Get rid of all the girls.... then the men will have to go f@*% themselves HA!

Good Optics · 2011-06-28T16:25:33Z

As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto

What is happening in India and doubtless elsewhere is trajedy of epic proportions. One CANNOT simply surgically reassign ones' sex because one's gender identity is hardwired during gestation and very like is substantially determined by the Soul's intent during a given incarnation. The C's have had rather a lot to say about this over the years.
For more information on the non-linear process of gender identity formation the website "Gender Care" at this [Link]for an overview and then see this [Link]for an index of Dr. Torres, et al's presentations at various conferences.

At this Amazon [Link]you can see information on the excellent book by John Colapinto, "As Nature Made Him," the tragic story of a Canadian lad whose botched circumcision gave "doctors" reason to "turn him into a girl" and never tell him.
Below is an excellent review of the book:

This is a wonderfully written book and a fascinating look into the debate of nature versus nurture in the area of gender assignment. Intelligent and insightful, the author draws a compassionate portrait of a family who, faced with a decision in the wake of a tragedy, relies upon the advice of a well-respected doctor, which reliance turned out to be misplaced. The book details the aftermath of the family's fateful decision and the impact it was to have on them all.

In August 1965, Canadians Janet and Ron Reimer gave birth to identical twin boys, whom they named Brian and Bruce. When they were about eight months old, they arranged to have them circumcised due to a medical condition that caused them pain during urination. Circumcision was to remedy the problem. Little did they know that the circumcision for Bruce would be botched, resulting in the loss of his penis.

A plastic surgeon with whom the Reimers had consulted in connection with the catastrophe that had struck Bruce had spoken to a sex researcher who had recommended that they raise Bruce as a girl. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic had suggested that they ought to get a second opinion with regards to that suggestion. The parents then consulted with a doctor affiliated with John Hopkins Hospital, Dr. John Money, a renowned doctor in the area of gender transformation, who had been the driving force behind the then controversial surgical gender re-assignment procedure for which the hospital was becoming known.

In 1967, the distraught parents met with Dr. Money and shortly after, Bruce became Brenda and clinical castration followed. Thus, their child, who genetically and anatomically had been born a boy, was to all intents and purposes now deemed to be a girl. Brian was now on the other side of the gender divide of his identical twin brother, the twin formerly known as Bruce.

Moreover, Dr. Money now had a dream scientific experiment, because he had a set of twins for which the unafflicted twin could act as a control by which to measure the afflicted one. In 1972, Dr. Money disclosed his "twins case" to the medical world, giving a slanted version of the experiment that made it appear to be an unqualified success. Unfortunately, his analysis of the situation did not disclose the difficulties that Brenda was having and her seeming inability to adjust to being a girl.

Apparently, though Brenda had no idea as she was growing up that she had originally been born a boy, she never felt that she was a girl. Years of follow-up visits with Dr. Money for both twins proved to be unsettling for them, as Dr. Money employed somewhat bizarre methods and procedures. Moreover, as Brenda grew older, she would resist additional surgeries and initially resisted the hormone therapy that was introduced on the eve of puberty. Even when confronted with a totally rebellious Brenda, Dr. Money, however, remained in denial about the failure of his experiment. He would continue to tout his treatment of Brenda as an unqualified success.

It was not until March of 1980 that Brenda was finally informed by her father about what had happened to her years ago and what had been decided in light of the circumstances. It was a revelation that was to dramatically change Brenda's life. What followed was a repudiation of Dr. Money's assertions with respect to his treatment. The book details the changes that Brenda was to make in her life, changes that would find her living the life she was originally meant to lead. Brenda would now become David and live the life of a male. Unfortunately, happiness would continue to elude him.

This is a simply wonderful, intimate look at a family that survived a hideous tragedy. It also sympathetically and sensitively details the personal journey of one family through the labyrinthine differences in opinion surrounding the age old debate over nature versus nature. I would certainly assert that nature, and not nurture, controls. This is a very well thought out book on the issue, grounded in the tragic experience of one family. Bravo!

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Once finally Brian again, and married with children by his spouse's ex, he committed suicide a few years ago.

The thought Indian surgeons are creating mere "worker bees" from natal women is a disgrace I cannot reckon . .