McMusing: Our Unique Fingerprint

It is an overwhelming and impossible human need to place everything in a box.

Over 45 years ago, I had a child in my kindergarten classroom whose gender was unidentifiable at birth. The parents and doctors decided it would be best for the child to be female, though this required surgical interventions. I am amazed at how absolutely "uncurious" I was about this. She was simply a child who needed me to understand that she had some physical needs that required us to communicate discreetly when she needed to take one of her frequent restroom breaks.

My most prominent memory of her was her smile. I knew she was often suffering from UTI infections but her smile was contagious. Despite her physical complications, she was very active. This sometimes concerned me but her spirit was uncontainable. I was honored to be her teacher.

Though the situation of the Olympic boxer, Imane Khelif—who was without question a female at birth—was completely different than the child in my classroom, the information that began to be shared helped me to understand the kindergarten child’s situation better. The information has given me a better idea of the likely chromosome combination that resulted in my student’s gender being unidentifiable at birth.

I often wonder where she is now. How is she doing? Does she agree with the choice her parents and doctors made? I will never know, but her story taught me that things are not always black and white. Did the necessity of choosing a gender cause more harm than good? Was it the surgery that caused her physical complications, not the fact that she was born as an intersex child?

"Once called “hermaphrodites” (a term now considered pejorative and outdated), intersex people are not rare, but they are widely misunderstood. Based on a medical theory popularized in the 1960s, doctors perform surgery on intersex children – often in infancy – with the stated aim of making it easier for them to grow up “normal.” The results are often catastrophic, the supposed benefits are largely unproven, and there are rarely urgent health considerations requiring immediate, irreversible intervention." (Link to full article —it is worth taking time to read!)

The overwhelming need for everyone to be normal is responsible for so much harm in our world. What happened this past week was completely out of control. Do we want to live in a world where that kind of scrutiny—and the uncontrolled spread of false information—is deemed acceptable?

When is a human difference seen as a positive or as a negative? It is this kind of evaluation that results in bullying. As an educator, the information about how genetics impacts our students can be useful. We most often work with symptoms without knowing root causes.

While researching the complexities of genetics, I was intrigued by the educational implications. (source)

Students with X & Y chromosome variations (also known as sex chromosome aneuploidies, or SCAs) often require extra support from schools throughout the course of their education. While SCAs affect approximately 1 in 500 live births, they have long been significantly underdiagnosed due to limited physical symptoms. In fact, less than 10% of individuals with an SCA are currently diagnosed during childhood. (source this would be valuable for educators to read!)

There are so many ways that humans vary from one another (see more on this)—and yet we keep trying to fit everyone in the same two boxes. We are constantly searching for neat, tidy boxes in a world that is anything but tidy. In the process, we harm those around us who are most vulnerable in their differences.

If every human fingerprint is distinct, then every human being is distinctly different from any other human being. When this truth is accepted as normal, then we can work together to ensure quality of life for everyone. Until then, we fear the differences when, without genetic testing, we have no idea what it would reveal.