intersex fetishizing

Hello readers, I'm sorry my postings have become somewhat sporadic, but I have been kinda busy. Today I am writing about sexual fetishes and haw they are hurting the intersex community.

Ever since the intersex community formed there has been a discussion about whether there is a fetishized aspect to surgeons doing genital surgeries. Many plastic surgeons have admitted that genital surgery is considered an "art" and since there are statistically few people who have such procedures done, there is not really a set surgical method, but several of them, and it is largely left up to the surgeons discretion. They definitely get excited over the opportunity. Whether or not this is a sexual excitement (fetish) is debatable (some would argue, and I would agree, that anything involving the genitals is inherently sexual). Even if this is not technically a fetish, it still is disturbing.

The more blatant use of fetishs to hurt intersexuals is in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM is the big list of psychological issues and their recommended therapeutic treatment that psychologists use. The most recent edition, the DSM IV, lumps intersexuals who reject their assigned gender into a broad catagory called GIDNOS (gender identity disorder not otherwise stated) which is a sub-branch of GID (gender identity disorder) which is mostly used for diagnosing transexuals (personally I hate the expression, there is nothing disordered about trangender). The sub-branch of GIDNOS not only includes intersexuals, but also cross-dressers, and autogynephilia, a fetish some men have with the removal of their penis. Personally I do not think intersex has any place in psychology, by definition it is a biological, not merely psychological condition, and certainly doesn't belong in GID (by definition an intersexual cannot be transgendered). That aside, I think lumping intersex and autogynephilies shows a great misunderstanding of intersex. We do not get turned on by the thought of being mutilated, the doctors mutilated us. I think that doctors and psychologists have done this because they have seen the writing on the wall (that the intersex community is gaining power and is mad as hell at them) and did this humiliating lumping to protect themselves. If an intersexual who has rejected their gender assignment comes to them, they can say, according to their diagnostic books, that it is not a matter of gender identity, but a fetish to either gain or lose a penis (how Freudian).