Especially in the 50s, it was quite common for doctors (with or without parental input) to make a choice as to how to “fix“ children with ambiguous genitalia. Usually the default bias was to try to make them male. This often had disastrous results. Many of the children where the wrong decision was made became suicidal and some of them are no longer with us. There was a belief that children can be successfully socialized to become the gender that was chosen for them due to their modified sexual equipment. My understanding is that today most doctors take a wait-and-see attitude, allowing the personality and gender identity to emerge before making a decision and involve the affected intersex individual in the decision.

What was surprising to me was the comment that only three countries in the world recognized intersex individuals and none of the three was the United States. It does not surprise me that California is a little more forward thinking, but it suggests that in many other states some of the historically disastrous approach of assigning sex at birth by surgery may still be prevalent. This is particularly horrific. I would hope that even the gender critical crowd can understand that a hands-off approach should be taken for inter sex children until they are old enough to make intelligent decisions on their own. Acting too hastily can literally be life-threatening. Your article and the TED talk were eye-openers.