If you’re too young to remember the original movie The Stepford Wives (I didn’t like the remake), here’s a brief synopsis: Women in Stepford love housework. They dress as if they’re going to the Academy Awards just to go to the grocery store. They don’t age, their boobs are firm, and they love to have sex at the drop of a hat (or the drop of a man’s drawers), even with their aging, sagging husbands. And even with all the sex and glamour, they can still keep their homes spotless.
The women in Stepford are ultra-feminine, according to the standards of the day (the film was made in 1972, amidst the women’s rights movement of the time). They reject everything that the women’s rights movement stands for. In fact, they think it is ridiculous – after all, a woman’s job is to cook and clean and keep her man happy. If she can’t do that, she’s no kind of woman.
The women are able to do these things and think this way (in truth, they don’t really think at all) because the men in Stepford have learned how to create robots that look just like their wives and infuse these robots with some of their wives’ sensibilities, but not all of them – not the ambitious, even somewhat rebellious ones that make women want to pursue hobbies and careers and maybe leave the breakfast dishes unwashed for a while.
For the times, it was a movie that made a strong statement – and maybe that statement needs to be made again. A paper from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, appearing in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and reported in The Advocate, claims that U.S. physicians are “using a synthetic steroid to prevent female babies from being born with ‘behavioral masculinization,’ or rather a propensity toward lesbianism, bisexuality, intersexuality, and tomboyism.” (quoted from The Advocate report)
In other words, doctors are creating Stepford wives in the womb. Apparently, pregnant women who are at risk of having a child born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), an endocrinological condition that can result in female fetuses being born with intersex or more male-typical genitals and brains, are being given dexamethasone, a synthetic steroid, to try to “normalize” the development of those fetuses. Note that the report says “women who are at risk” of having a child born with CAH – the medication is being received by fetuses who do not even have CAH, and, in some cases, by male fetuses.
And even if the female fetus does have the condition, it appears that not much is known about the long-term risks of giving this drug to pregnant women, both for the women and for the children who have been exposed to this drug in utero. The doctors who are administering this drug, and the women who are accepting it, are obviously more concerned about the “femininity” of these female children than they are about potential health hazards. The drug has not even been approved by the FDA for this purpose.
I don’t blame the pregnant women. Because of our culture’s reverence for doctors (and in many cases, it is well deserved), along with a pregnant woman’s vulnerability (she wants to do what is right for her child), many of these women will listen to and do what their doctor says. Invoking fear in a pregnant woman by discussing the “concerns” of having a “masculine,” lesbian, or intersex daughter could result in that woman agreeing to take an experimental drug regimen, believing that the doctor knows best.
I don’t even completely blame the doctors, although I think that their culpability far outweighs that of their pregnant patients. I prefer to blame the culture that insists that:
> “Masculine” gender characteristics are superior to “feminine” gender characteristics, but only to a point – and that point comes when females start developing them. (We need an “inferior” class – “feminine” women – in order to maintain a “superior” class – “masculine” men.)
> All girls and women must be “feminine,” both in appearance and in expression, and all boys and men must be “masculine.”
> Marrying a man, having heterosexual sex, and bearing children are goals that all women have – or should have. (Females with CAH have been shown to be less interested in traditional female roles, marriage, and child rearing than control groups, as per the report.)
> No girl or woman could possibly want to be a lesbian, bisexual, or even a “tomboy,” and if she found out that this could have been prevented in the womb, she would be upset that it hadn’t been.
> An intersex condition is a bad thing. Having non-standard genitalia is a bad thing. Imperfection is a bad thing. “Normal” is not only desirable, but it’s worth substantial risk to achieve – and “normal” is whatever the culture says it is.
This is why I have always been opposed to “finding a cause” – not for everything, of course, but for a lot of things. Find a “gay gene” and you can certainly win the argument that sexual orientation is not a choice – but you can also succeed in eliminating gay, lesbian, and bisexual people altogether. Find a “trans gene” and you win your argument that transition is not a choice – but how long will it be before any kind of gender diversity disappears from the gene pool?
Certainly, doctors need to be looking at any real health problems associated with CAH and figuring out how to manage or mediate those. But in utero experimentation to prevent “masculine” or “imperfect” females – or women who don’t want to do housework and bear children – smacks of Stepford. I had hoped we were beyond that.
Readers?
This makes me sad. I really can’t say much more than that. I agree with you about the whole finding a cause thing, and I hope never to see that day. I like to point to the movie Gattaca as a great example of what could and probably would happen if we continue down that path. If they could’ve “cured” all of those things when I was just a fetus… Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be the homoromantic asexual trans woman tomboy that I am today. I just wish that our society and science could see that diversity is a good thing.
Two thoughts: First, Dr. Money would have loved this kind of hormonal engineering, and second, the idea that anyone (doctors and pregnant women included) would think this is acceptable is crazy. Thanks, Matt, for exposing yet another way in which “culture” is defined by narrow “norms”.
This isn’t just infuriating, it is frightening. There are still enough transphobes and homophobes and misogynist pigs in the world for whom this drug is a dream come true. This also perpetuates the idea that there is “something wrong” with us. UGH! I thought we were beyond this.
Didn’t this come up last year sometime? It sounds really familiar.
This shows that looking for the “gay gene” or the “trans brain” isn’t such a good idea after all. Imagine they find it (which I doubt, but anyway)- they’ll immediately start working on a screening technique and a cure, at least in the US- which will effect the rest of us all over the world.
I.AM.SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECHLESS. WTF. sry for the venting but THIS IS THE UTMOST MEDICAL CISGENDER COERCION WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
wtf… is this the real life or just fanta sea? i wish this was not true, it´s a sad world we are building to the future…
This is actually happening since some years- intersex activist are fighting against it internationally
This is really about them trying to prevent intersex babies from being born, without regard to which differences of sexual development just happen and are no big deal if society would just accept gender variance, and which differences can actually be harmful (e.g., hypospadias or urinary defects, endocrine levels that exacerbate growth of tumors, etc.).
Right now, “good intentioned” physicians and people tend to assume that most differences are harmful, rather than that they are super-duper rare. Most differences in development have no health risks other than getting bad health care in the future by biased or uninformed people.
It is critically important to expose these dangerous and risky practices of giving untested steroids to pregnant women based on some unknown risk of these types of development differences, especially when the proportion of differences that is actively harmful to health are so small.
I just want to put out one of those reminders that we are all in this together, but freaking out about this as cis-gender stamping out of lesbians or trans people is only focusing on a very small part of this harmful medical practice. There are many LGBT people, including trans & gender non-conforming, who try to make every issue about different developments of sex “about them” and try to co-opt the experiences and difficulties faced by intersex people. I don’t see evidence of that in Matt’s post, but some of these comments here are heading in that direction. And I want to throw in my two cents that it’s both possible to object to this practice and be infuriated by it while still respecting that it’s mostly targeting and about people who are not trans.
This is first and foremost yet another attempt by medical science to fix what isn’t broke with respect to pregnancy and childbirth. I deliberately refused any tests that I viewed as scare tactics, and certainly would have refused any treatment based on a combination of scare tactics and that many “ifs”, and that’s not even taking into account the fact that I like being myself and want my children to be who they’re supposed to be, and happy with and accepted as they are–whether that reflects society’s idea of “normal” or “perfect” or not!
Hey Matt, you left out the ending on Stepford Wives. The part where the men take the real wives and put them in the basement of that Men’s Club where they lay unconcious (or dead? Never knew which) like stacks of wood while the cloned robots took their places.
To some of the commenters: This can be a trans issue even though this is happening or can happen to straight women who have fetuses that might have that condition – CAH – which is an intersex condition. This can just be the beginning and they WILL get to the Queers and Trans folks eventually. Remember that guy who said something about people not standing up for blacks because they weren’t black, Gypsies because they weren’t a Gypsy, gays because they weren’t gay, Jews because they weren’t Jewish…get the idea? This guy said all this in response to how the world didn’t do anything to stop Hitler until many people were killed by him during WWII. ALL people who love diversity MUST stand up because by and by, it will somehow find YOU and it will then be too late.
Oh, BTW, I forgot to mention the doings of the radical religious right who could fund the research to find out the “gay gene” or the “trans gene” and destroy all of us! With all their hate we are seeing during this election year, don’t think for a moment that these folks are sane and they will stop at NOTHING to create the world they want and then attribute it to their God. Thesse folks are looney and one cannot reason with them. Just listen to the Sara Palins, the Michelle Bachmanns, the Rick Perrys or the world…
Hitler killed the disabled – especially mentally disabled in his ovens. In more recent times, disabled people were discuraged to marry and have kids for fear that they might have a disabled kid. This was during the 1950s. What about the even more recent urgings of some medical folks to encourage women to have abortions because the fetus may be severely disabled? The medical field needs to stick with finding cures for actual diseasses that cause death or a person to not have any sort of life because of that disease.
Having grown up hearing tales of thalidomide, I am astounded that this “treatment” ever got past an ethics committee.
I was thinking the same thing. Those who forget history are bound to repeat it, right? It’s really scary how easily people can be manipulated – by unethical medical professionals, as well as society.
[...] http://tranifesto.com/2012/08/09/stepford-comes-to-the-21st-century-preventing-masculinity-in-female… [...]
I’m quite divided with this issue. Medical intervention for gender problems is the subject matter here. Of course, I completely agree with comments above stating that difference is natural and should never be considered as pathological. But what about people with a gender and sex dichotomy (GD or whatever the term of the season) who would not have the possibility to get this treatment (transitioning) we presently have available because “trans-ness is natural”? Is leaving them in pathos, in an unhealthy body (unhealthy because is causes distress), an option because a large group think that gender/sex dichotomy is natural? Then, if medical treatment for gender/sex issues is wrong, this means transitioning is pathological, which contradicts everything we fight for. I would not have spent a lifetime making a career of revolving around my belly button, dealing with those issues every day if they did invent “a pill” that would have prevented me this lifelong hardship and the very invasive and too long treatment and surgeries to get where I should have been from the beginning, a male-man.
After reading this post and the comments, I did a google scholar search for SRS in intersex people. Too late in the day to push further, didn’t find much, but I wondered how many intersexed individual have GD (or intersex dysphoria), and how many request SRS. If there was a treatment available that would prevent gender dysphoria, it would be a very nice thing to do for individuals who later wouldn’t have to medically transition. Arguing against this would imply that cysgendered people can suffer from GD in that they are trans and want a body/sex that is not in line with their gender.
All in all, if it could have been found that there was a problem with me in utero regarding the gender wiring of my brain and the sex I was developing into, and if they had something they could have done to rectify it, I wouldn’t be in this shit I’m and have been in.
“All in all, if it could have been found that there was a problem with me in utero regarding the gender wiring of my brain and the sex I was developing into, and if they had something they could have done to rectify it, I wouldn’t be in this shit I’m and have been in.”
But you’d probably never exist this way. There’s a big philosophical problem with identity (not a gender identity but the whole “what makes individual an individual”) but it’s not totally impossible there’d be just some woman who wouldn’t be you in any aspect. It just sounds like some sort of… time-travel death wish to me.
Of course you wouldn’t also exist if your parents never met or didn’t have sex the day you were conceived or your mother had an abortion or something but it’s not the point here.
And this whole thing is not only about us. It’s also about masculine women, lesbians, genderqueer female bodied people etc.
Death wish? You didn’t understand what I wrote, it’s completely the opposite, it’s a life-with, a Life, capital L wish actually. Not having had this problem that kept me strapped down all my life, I would have been able to focus on life and it’s potential rather than my health problems. Early (medical) detection could save a lot of people a lot of trouble. Thank god for puberty blockers at least!
Not only about us? Again, what I meant is that it’s not only about …them. My gender identity is not to be dismissed because I’m not gender queer. Being against research in this field prevents us from seeing the physiological difference between, for example, masculine women and trans men. Too many non-gender normative people think we’d find that both are the same. They are not and that IS what science will find.
…”but it’s not totally impossible there’d be just some woman who wouldn’t be you in any aspect”. Well, I guess that wouldn’t be possible because I’m a man.
“…”but it’s not totally impossible there’d be just some woman who wouldn’t be you in any aspect”. Well, I guess that wouldn’t be possible because I’m a man.”
If you’d been spared your fate by prenatal steroids like these, though, the fetus that would have been you would have instead resulted in a woman, though – because that’s what this drug does – makes “female” fetuses with CAH be normatively female, (or at least that’s what they are hoping for.) There is no experimental treatment to make a developing trans man be born a cis man instead. If that’s what you’re hoping for, that’s not what’s in the works – and it never will be. Cis people aren’t interested in the sex or gender of our minds. They’ll find ways to make our minds “match” the “biological sex” of the fetus, if they do anything. Which means trans men will be turned into cis women, and it will be just like anon said – where a trans man might have been will be some woman, a completely different person.
I think it’s completely fair to blame, pretty heavily, the doctors who are pushing this crap. They aren’t separate from “the society” that prescribes all those things for women, they are part of it, (we all are.) And when they are the ones holding the script pads, then yeah. This is their fault if it happens.
[...] week, Matt Kailey discussed a new experimental procedure to prevent female babies form being born with [...]
http://fetaldex.org/home.html
http://jamespatemd.com/blog/?p=1610
this is fucking scary! There is nothing wrong with being a lesbian or gender nonconforming…it does not need to be cured! I actually DO have mild CAH and besides some health issues, which wouldn’t be helped with the drug, I am perfectly fine and LOVE being a gender-nonconforming woman, and wouldn’t want it any other way.
This drug has been found to cause cognitive difficulties, and social anxiety in the Swedish studies, and on a TIMES article I have found said simular things…apparently some mothers are angry because they weren’t given informed consent and their daughters are actually having congitive difficulties and don’t even have CAH. this drug solves NOTHING and should be illigal.
Also I am really tired of humans trying to fix things that don’t need to be fixed.
Has this been linked? http://www.bilerico.com/2012/08/dexamethazone_sex_normalization_of_intersex_babies.php
“For the times, it was a movie that made a strong statement – and maybe that statement needs to be made again.”
I agree. Sadly, I don’t think the Stepford mentality was entirely buried by the women’s movement – it’s just become more subtle. Sit down and watch a few minutes of television advertising and you’ll be bombarded with the same message: women do the housework, shopping, childcare and cooking. And, of course, there’s a never-ending list of things they need to do to look younger and more attractive for their man.
I actually saw a commercial recently where a dad was folding the laundry with his child and almost fell off my chair – wow, progress! It may not be politically correct to express that domestic chores and childcare are women’s work nowadays, but the message is still there if you look, so I suppose I can’t be surprised that someone is trying to ensure women are put in their place right from the womb.
Sad.