Children born with ambiguous genitalia in this country are almost universally assigned a sex at birth, and are often subjected to multiple surgeries, hormone treatments and counseling to establish and reinforce their assigned sex throughout their lifetimes.

This clip takes its title, "First Do No Harm", from the oath doctors take when they begin their careers. In a roundtable discussion, biologists, psychotherapists, an intersex adult and the mother of an intersex child all question whether assigning a sex at birth is beneficial to the child, or harmful.

Please watch the following video clip and answer the corresponding follow-up questions.

First Do No Harm

1			What is the formal rationale behind surgical sex assignment of intersex children? What psychological assumptions underlie the surgical approach to this issue?
2			If the child Kelly had not been operated on at birth, what other strategies might have been available for her and her parents? At what point might we consider Kelly's gender identity decided?
3			What kinds of social techniques might the parents of an intersex child use to help their child interact with other children? How might an intersex person succeed in a strongly gendered environment?