Читать книгу Handbook of Clinical Gender Medicine - Группа авторов - Страница 74

Understanding of and decision making for a child in the neonatal period with severely abnormal genitalia is an extraordinary challenge. It is quite paradoxical to opt for a gender without consulting the patient himself or herself. This process has been highly criticized by some patients and patient advocacy associations and remains quite controversial. To understand the complexity of these situations, one could distinguish three different identities. Individual sex identity, which is what the individual thinks he or she is, is quite a subtle spectrum and will be shaped by growth and external and internal influences. Behavioral identity, which is the individual’s erotic inclination, will also form with time. Both of these identities are invisible in the neonatal period. The last identity, i.e. social identity, (or gender) is how society looks at the individual and recognizes the individual as male or female. Social/gender identity is far more rigid, and less subtle, than the others. It is the way the social mirror reflects the individual’s image, i.e. the way to make the individual visible. It is the only tangible identity at birth.