מאמרה של פרופ' מאירה וייס - Fence Sitters

Fence sitters: Parents' reactions to sexual ambiguities in their newborn children MEIRA WEISS

A ppearance and sex are two m ajor com ponents by which the individual is m easured. This article adds a further dim ension to this com m on knowledge by describing how parents react to sexual am biguities in their new born child. It is argued th at when the new born’s genitalia — our body's p art in which b oth appearance and sex are m ost inextricably entangled — are physiologically undefined (‘pseudo herm aphroditism ’1), the parents are likely to reject th at child; whereas in the case o f some internal sexual am biguity (e.g., the K linefelter horm onal syndrom e2), the new born is often accepted into the family.

My focus, then, will be one o f binary opposition, although no com m itm ent to structural analysis is claimed. The m atrix o f these binary oppositions is created by two vectors: one is appearance, the other sexuality.

By ‘ap p earance’ I m ean either external-visible or internal-invisible; by ‘sexuality’ I refer to a physiological deform ation which has to do with sexual identity. This article intends to describe, and to explain, how different com binations o f the pair ‘appearance’ and ‘sexuality’ in fact carry different m eanings and produce different reactions.

This article differs from the host o f medical literature which discusses ‘intersex m anagem ent’ only from the physicians' point o f view (see. e.g..

Bolkenius, D aum , and H einrich 1984; G lassberg 1980; C astro-M agana, A ngulo, and Collipp 1984; for a feminist critique of th at medical practice, see Kessler 1990). The broader issue o f the social labeling o f appearance was, however, extensively studied, and it is w orthwhile to gain a brief b ut concise im pression o f it. To state only a few intriguing cases, it was thus shown th at a beautiful child is expected to have both positive personality traits and high scholastic achievem ent (Clifford and W alster 1973); th at psychotherapists are likely to see attractive patients as im proving m ore rapidly than less attractive ones (Schw artz and A bram onitz 1978); that the physically-im paired are believed to be less talented, less ‘g o o d ‘, and leading less m eritorious lives than the physically attractive (Centers and Centers 1963: D ion 1972a. b). Rural G reeks, we Semiotica 107-1 2 (1995). 33-50

0037-1998 95 0107-0050 © W alter dc Gruyter

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are told, view n atural disadvantages such as physical deform ity or childlessness as indicative o f m oral inadequacy (e.g., Cam pbell 1964: 325; Herzfeld 1981: 566-570). To recapitulate, bodily and personal (i.e., m oral, intellectual, m e n ta l) defects are com m only used as ropes for each other. Both are seen to reflect each other, the latter usually considered as the cause, the form er as the effect (H erzfeld 1986). Beuf (1990: 13) sums it up by claiming th at while all people occupy m any statuses — wife, m other, w orker, tennis player — some statuses carry m ore social significance than others. Age. gender, social class, and also im paired appearance are hence all ‫־‬m aster statuses’ in which, as both Schur (1980) and G offm an (1963) w ould have it, "individuals are ‘‘seen” in term s o f a deviant status and identity, and thereafter responded to first and forem ost in term s o f his or her presum ed m em bership in the devalued category' (Schur 1980: 24).

However, there are also studies th a t have found th at the attractiveness o f a child does n ot affect the expectations o f him (D ion 1972b; Kehle, Bram ble and M ason 1974), or that it sometimes actually has a negative effect (D io n 1974; La Voie and A dam s 1974). H ildebrandt (1982: 191) as well as M iddlebrook (1980: 121) conclude from this th at physical attractiveness is o f limited im pact — th at looks have an im pact on the expectations had o f a child only, or especially, when one does not have oth er inform ation about the child’s personality, achievem ents, or behavior. W hen other inform ation is available about the child, the effect of external appearance disappears or dim inishes w ith time. Hence external appearance has its greatest im pact in the first encounters. In short, new borns are m ost likely to be ‘m easured’ solely on the basis o f their external features. If these som ehow deviate from the expected, new borns are those w ho will suffer the m ost acute devaluation, since no other inform ation exists so as to com pensate for their im paired appearance.

M y own research am ong appearance-im paired children (W eiss 1991; 1994a; 1994b; 1995) both fits this line o f argum ent and expands it, showing th at parents are apt to reject their abnorm al children in various ways, labeling them as ‘m onsters’, ‘devils’, and the like, territorially secluding them in the hom e, and finally — w hat I am here about to describe — refusing to take them along when the m other is discharged from the hospital after the birth. Sexual am biguity o f the child’s genitalia can be seen to belong to the appearance-im paired category; the deform ation is visible, though restricted to one specific organ. Indeed, the fact th at it is the genitalia which are deform ed is w hat m akes this external insignia so acutely significant. The first piece o f inform ation that the m other asks the midwife right after birth is w hether it is a boy or a girl, and from th a t m om ent both parents respond to the infant based on the

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in fan t’s gender (see also R ubin, Provenzano, and Luria 1974). A deform ation in the genitalia can thus be seen as the culm ination o f im paired appearance — the severest im pairm ent o f them all — and th at the reactions o f parents tow ards such a new born fits the general p attern of parental behavior tow ards new borns with external defects (see Table 1) is therefore not surprising.

Research methods The d ata for this article were collected as part o f a com prehensive anthropological field-work project. Research was conducted over a sixyear period by m eans o f observations, com bined with interviews with parents o f children hospitalized in nine w ards o f three Israeli hospitals.

The children (new borns, toddlers, and older children) suffered from internal and external deform ities and various sorts o f diseases. For the purposes o f this article, however, I shall focus upon the reactions tow ards new borns, and m ore specifically, new borns with sexual — external and internal — deform ities. The findings presented henceforth are based on observations o f 105 live births, five o f them o f new borns with am biguous sexual identity.

Research ab o u t im paired appearance or deform ity in general has m ostly taken the form of standard interviews and questionnaires in which respondents were asked to evaluate their behavior tow ard their children (F lo ria n and Shurka 1981; Florian and K atz 1983). Evidently, there exists a difference (often quite significant) between w hat parents say in these artificial contexts and how they actually behave. This latter aspect, however, rem ained unobserved. In contrast, the current study focuses on actual behavior o f parents, and it does so by direct observation accom panied by unstructured conversations.

‘Is everything in place?’— M others’first reactions to their newborns I begin with a description o f the behavior exhibited by m others immediately upon giving birth to a norm al child. This behavior, which is shown to repeat a consistent pattern, will be later also considered as governing the reactions to the sexually-im paired child. The following p attern o f reactions, then, is a ‘p ro to ty p e’ m anifested w hether the new born is ‘n o rm al’ or ‘im paired’; however, it is in the form er case th at the queries are positively answered and the potential dilem m a is resolved, while not so in the latter case.

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As we shall see, the m others' rem arks generally follow a sim ilar pattern.

The m om ent the child is born, the m other expresses interest in the new born’s sex on the basis o f external sex organs. A t this point some m others request to see their babies’ sex organs in order to confirm the m idwife's proclam ation regarding the child’s sex, which generally elicits either a response o f delight or o f disappointm ent. This rather com m onknowledge point can be illustrated by the following typical response from a new m other. Israeli-born o f Polish extraction, w ith college education, w ho, after hearing from the midwife that she gave birth to a boy, com m ented: ‘W onderful! ... Show him to me (looks at his penis) ...

W onderful. I w anted to have a boy so m uch'. It should be noted that this response characterized all women regardless o f differences in ethnic and educational backgrounds. This observation echoes Stone’s (1962) argum ent th at sex is indeed the prim ary com ponent o f external appearance in establishing relations.

The next elem ent o f the m others’ reactions is the same for both sexes.

A t this stage, w hen a connection between external form and norm alcy is established, m others begin to exam ine their babies visually. They check his her body limb by limb, m ake com m ents on the coloring, size, weight, num ber, cleanliness, perfection, and proportion. C onsider the following rem arks o f new m others from different ethnic and educational backgrounds: Ts he O .K .?’, 'W hat a cute girl! She’s really big ... and p ink’, Is he alright? ... N ot missing anything?’, ‘Everything in place?’, ‘W hy are her fingers so small and blue?’, ‘W hy is his head so big? Is that norm al?’, ‘W hy is she so bald?’

If the baby passes external exam ination, he is called 'sweetie' and other nam es o f adornm ent, and his acceptance into the family is indicated by references to some external sim ilarity between him /her and another m em ber o f the family. However, if the new born does not pass the test o f appearance, o r worse, invalidates its m easures as a result o f some im pairm ent, o ther patterns o f rejection come into play.

Table 1 (taken from Weiss 1991. appendix A) presents the overall data on new borns w ith abnorm alities discovered im m ediately after birth.

As we see from Table 1, m ost o f the children suffering external defects (68.4 percent) were abandoned, even though m ost o f them did not suffer from life-threatening illnesses and in certain cases the defect was only severe aesthetically (e.g., cleft lip or a mild form o f spina bifida). In contrast, m ost o f the children suffering from internal disease were not abandoned even in cases o f serious illness where the chance o f recovery is slim (e.g., heart or kidney disease). This overall behavioral (or rather cognitive) p attern of rejecting the externally im paired while accepting the internally defective (which is often m ore medically serious, yet does not

Fence sitters Table 1.

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Newborns by type o f defect and parental reactions ( N in parentheses)

Parental reaction

A bandonm ent ‘A doption’ Total

Type o f defect

Total

Internal (no external signs)

External

7.00% (7) 93.00% (93) (100)

68.4% (171) 31.6% (79) (250)

(178) (172) (350)

bear visible signs) — will be exam ined here only in respect to the rejection/ acceptance o f new borns w ith sexual ambiguities.

The following two cases should serve to exemplify this dual ‘strategy' o f exclusion and inclusion. In one case, the sexual im pairm ent is not im m ediately apparent, but rather an ‘inner' defect carrying as yet no visible sym ptom s; the other case presents a child born with visible sexual am biguity.

Cases Case 1: The two-headed child. Clara, a 39-year-old R ussian-born w om an, and her Iraqi husband, have four daughters. C lara is an office w orker, her husband a H istadrut official. Both parents have a vocational, tenth-grade education. D ue to her age, in the fourth m onth o f her pregnancy C lara was sent to Southern H ospital for am niocentesis.3 Like other wom en, C lara was very eager to know the sex o f the fetus but was told th at the answ er was unclear. Six weeks later the test results came in, diagnosing K linefelter’s syndrom e. C lara and her husband were immediately called for consultation w ith a geneticist. The following is taken from their conversation: Geneticist: You surely m ust have realized th at the test results are not so good ... We are dealing here with a genetic disease. On the outside, your son will look in every way a boy.

C lara (interrupting): ‘So everything is O .K . W hat can be the m atter?

We w anted a boy, and th at's w hat we have’.

Geneticist: ‘For the m ost part, the disease is m anifested by infertility.

Internally, he will n o t function altogether like a m an. In addition, ab o u t 29 percent o f the cases also involve m ental retardation.

Therefore we suggest that you term inate the pregnancy’.

C lara: ‘But I was ju st exam ined here by the ob-gyn two days ago’.

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M. Weiss D octor: ‘Yes, th a t’s in our records’.

Clara: ‘See w hat he wrote. He felt my stom ach carefully and said that he could feel the b ab y ’s head ... Two weeks ago I also had ultrasound and I saw the b ab y ’s body ... I saw his head ... L ook, I w ant to talk w ith my husband about this ... to confer with him in private’.

A n h o u r later C lara announces her intention o f continuing the pregnancy.

G eneticist: *It’s your decision. I personally w ould not risk bringing such a child into the world. T hink about it at home, and if you change y our m ind, let us know ’.

C lara continued the pregnancy and returned to the hospital for m ore tests. Two im p o rtan t aspects o f this case em erged during my num erous talks with C lara and her husband. The first was that her understanding of the d o c to r’s w ords was that she w ould have a ‘tw o-headed child’. D espite the d o c to r’s reports th at the defect was purely internal, w ithout the slightest indication o f any external defect in the head o f the fetus, C lara understood a ‘child w ith a defect’ to be a child with two heads. She saw no possibility o f there being an internal defect w ithout some concom itant external m onstrosity. On the other hand, looking norm al was p ro o f for her o f the absence o f any internal defect. A ccording to her perception, there m ust be an absolute correspondence between external appearance and internal health. She said th at her decision had been m ade in the wake o f wavering between two opinions. One was the ‘prediction o f the geneticist’, as she put it. Even though his report was based on sophisticated m edical tests, C lara related to his medical exam ination as if it were ‘a sort o f w itchcraft’, in her own words. 'Anyway, how can they know for certain?’ she persisted. In contrast, she gave greater credence to the m anual exam ination and the u ltrasound test in which she saw the fetus, who ‘looked perfectly O .K .’ to her. In her opinion a fetus who on the outside looks like a male could not have a disability, i.e., could not be a m onster.

His external male characteristics were the significant thing, and indeed b rought jo y after having had four daughters.

W hen the time came for her to give birth, C lara looked happy, extremely calm, and well in control during labor. D uring the difficult hours o f labor and delivery not once did she say anything th at betrayed her fears o f a possible defect in her child. Even when asked explicitly a b o u t the ‘history o f the pregnancy’, she did not m ention the results of the am niocentesis. She had only one request, which she repeated again the

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m om ent the child started com ing out, and th at was ‘to see the boy as soon as he is b o rn ’.

Im m ediately after the birth, the midwife (aware o f the results o f the am niocentesis) told C lara. ‘You had a boy, just as expected'. C lara did not take an interest in the b ab y ’s condition but just cast a quick glance at him and said joyfully, ‘Please tell my husband right aw ay’. The next few days C lara’s face beam ed with joy. She took care o f her baby (the hospital had room ing-in), and boasted o f her son's good looks and charm to one and all. The day she was discharged from the hospital, she entered the delivery room w ith her baby in arm s and went from one midwife to the next and from d octor to doctor, showing them her baby. W hen she reached the ob-gyn who had advised her to term inate the pregnancy, she said: ‫־‬See how w rong you were. If I had listened to you. I w ould have lost this child. You said I w ould have some sort o f strange child ... m aybe with two heads ... and despite it all, I had a perfectly gorgeous boy’.

C lara took her son hom e and cared for him warmly. Every year she sends a pho to g rap h o f him, well-dressed and being hugged in his m o th er’s arm s, to the gynecology w ard.

Case 2: A boy and girl in one. Z ippora. 41 years old. cam e to Southern H ospital for am niocentesis because o f her age. A fter the test she was told th a t she w ould have a girl. Z ippora and her husband have a tenth-grade education, are o f Syrian extraction, and are considered to have an average income. Z ippora is a housewife and her husband a truck driver.

Z ippora had a difficult delivery. Im m ediately afterw ards the doctors and nurses looked at the new born, then at each other, and finally they addressed Z ippora.

D octor: ‫־‬Z ippora, we are having a big problem identifying the child’s sex. Y our child seems com pletely healthy, but it is h ard to say, externally, w hether it is a boy or a girl.’ (see note 1) Z ippora (tu rn in g pale): ‘W hat do you mean? They told me it was a girl ... Let me see h er’.

D octor: ‘Surely. H er face is really lovely’.

The nurse shows the m other her child.

Z ippora (tu rn in g pale again; then, starting to trem ble and bursting into tears): W hat did 1 need this pregnancy for? I have three healthy children at hom e ... W hat will I do? W hat will I tell people on the street when they ask me w hat I had, a girl or a boy? W hat will I tell them? ... (crying) ... can you operate? M aybe you can do an operation or ...

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several operations, and then everything will be O .K ... and then people will know w hether it is a boy or a girl ... Oh, how disgusting’.

D octor: 'I'm sorry, but at the m om ent I can ’t give you an au thoritative answ er’.

Z ippora: T h is is the first time I’ve ever heard o f such a creature ...

Did you ever see such a thing, half boy and half girl? ... Its, like, abnorm al. ... W hat did I need this headache for?! ... This thing here, you call this a person? There is no such thing as a person who is half male h a lf fem ale’.

Z ip p o ra ’s husband and sister were w aiting for her outside the delivery room . The sister went up to Z ippora and congratulated her.

Z ippora: ‘W hy b other congratulating me? How can you say congratulations when you d o n ’t know w hat was b o rn ’?

Z ippora turned and w ent back to her room . There she cried for two w hole days and refused to see the baby, to nurse the baby, or take care o f the baby.4 H er child was found m edically healthy, except for the inability to determ ine the b ab y ’s sex according to external sexual organs.

T he child's aband o nm ent by the m other was clearly attributed to the lack o f clarity regarding its sexual identity. A ‫־‬person', according to Z ippora. is som eone w hose sex is well-defined by his or her external sex organs. In contrast to the case o f C lara, here the lack o f definiteness can n o t be disguised and is interpreted as m onstrousness. Straddling the bou n d ary between male and female is considered absolutely forbidden, especially when there is no possibility o f perform ing an operation that will m ove the child off the borderline between the sexes.

A som ew hat different variation on the theme o f rejection can be illustrated by the case o f R am a, a 38-year-old university lecturer, who was inform ed by the midwife im m ediately after birth th at som ething was w rong with the child’s genitalia. At her request, the child was shown to her. R am a bursts into tears. A fterw ards, she addressed to me a long and confused m onologue: I d o n ’t w ant to see it any m ore. This is w h at cam e o u t o f me? H elp me: is it a boy o r a girl? ... W h at will you tell everybody outside? (...) All my nightm ares have come true. Y esterday I read in the p ap er th a t a child, th o u g h t to be a boy. turned out to be a girl when he was 12. W h at is one to do? (w eeping). I have a kid aged 12 at hom e. T otally fem inine. D o esn ’t hit anyone, all he w ants is to dance. I encouraged him ... let him play w ith dolls as early as he w as one year old. T he m ost frightening thing is th a t he will grow to be a hom o. M y dau g h ter

Fence sitters is also not fem inine. She's so m asculine. I wish a lesbian? W hat did my h u sb an d and I do to been me. I w as never a w om an at hom e. H e them . They m ust have been confused. W h at a

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my son was like her. M aybe she’s deserve such kids’? It m ust have alw ays cooked and to o k care o f failure.

W ithout further entering into the idiosyncratic w orld o f that w om an, it should serve to illustrate how the new born’s sexual am biguity was connected, in her m ind, to (w hat she perceived as) the am biguous sexual identity o f her grow n-up children; and how her excessive sense o f guilt in regard to these kids preceded the rejection o f the new born, who was conceived by her as a ‘nightm are come true", a physical projection o f her deepest fears.

Case 3: The case o f the shaved hair. Rem oving the child’s hair before an operation often elicits a strong em otional reaction from the m other.

A gain, it should be noted th at this reaction is found to cut across socioeconom ic categories. The two following examples which were chosen to illustrate this point concern themselves w ith children age six and seven, and not new borns. However, as it is m y intention to analyze these cases as yet an o th er form o f external sexual am biguity, it seems w orthw hile to add them to the ethnography.

R evital’s hair was shaved before an operation. H er m other, o f G erm an extraction and with 15 years o f education, who until now kept her em otions well-hidden, bursts out on seeing her dau g h ter’s shaved head: ‘W hat have you done to her? (scream ing) You m ight as well kill her ...

L ook at the face she has now '.

M ira and her fam ily were injured in a deadly car accident. M ira’s sister was killed, her b ro th er fell into a com a, and M ira herself suffered severe injuries. H er head is shaved before an operation. M ira’s m other, o f Iraqui extraction and seven years o f education, reacts strongly to the sight o f her d au g h ter’s shaved head. Exclaim ing in front o f the nurse, she cries: ‘W hy did you shave her? ... you’ve finished my daughter ... she’s not M ira any m ore ... she looks like a boy ... it’s no girl, it’s a boy’.

Conclusion P arents’ rejection o f their new born child due to some sort o f im paired appearance (including genital am biguity), as m uch as it is openly condem ned by m o d em society, still persists. Before attem pting to assess the possible explanations for this phenom enon, it should first be noted that o u r observations do not stand on their own. Thus, Salyer et al. (1985) have suggested th a t m others m ay be repelled by the in fan t’s appearance

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and th at this m ay interfere w ith bonding; and in the same line, though not quite to the same extrem ism , M acgregor (1980) has observed that Latin cultures often regard the child's disfigurem ent as a cause of shame for the father, and so the child is secluded and hidden until well into his teens. In regard to cosm etic ‘repairs’, B euf’s (1990) study o f A m erican appearance-im paired children provides a recent exam ple o f the transform ation o f stigma occurring after a plastic surgery, in which the reversal o f stigm a once the surgery is perform ed and the appearance ‘corrected’ clearly attests to the direct relation between the two.

As Kessler (1990: 9) notes, all physicians acknowledge th at ‘correctly form ed genitalia' (and hence a clear gender assignm ent) determ ine the kind o f interactions parents will have with the child. One geneticist is cited by her as saying th at ‘when parents change a diaper and see genitalia th at d o n 't m ean m uch in term s o f gender assignm ent, I think it prolongs the negative response to the baby'; another physician concurred that 'parents need to go hom e and do their jo b as child rearers when it's very clear w hether it’s a boy or a girl'. This conviction, itself based on a strong social pre-conditioning, is further supported by a collection o f examples cited by these physicians with regard to paren ts’ reactions. For example, in one case parents filled out two birth registration form s, one for each gender, and refused to sign either until a final gender assignm ent had been m ade. In another case, a pediatric endocrinologist tells the au th o r ab o u t ‘parents o f a herm aphroditic infant w ho told everyone they had twins, one o f each gender. W hen the gender was determ ined, they said the oth er had died’.

W hy, then, is the new borns’ sexual appearance so im portant? Several possible explanations suggest themselves. First, one m ay argue th at we are dealing here w ith an ethnically-based, specific socio-cultural phenom enon, whose reasons are to be located in the context o f traditional Israeli society. In other w ords, the rejection o f herm aphrodites (pseudo or otherwise) stems from the traditional im portance o f sex as a m ajor discrim inative social factor, and indeed the im portance o f m anhood in trad itio n al societies.5 C lara’s reaction to the m edical inform ation given her in regard to K linefelter’s syndrom e further substantiates the argum ent th at we are dealing here with a ‘traditional m ind' (not to say ‘prim itive’, as som e perhaps w ould), th at perform s according to its own logic, irrespective o f m odem technology or m odem ‘open-m indedness’ (be that w hat it may). Indeed, C lara’s behavior refutes the claims o f m any scholars, such as E dgerton (1976) and Polunin (1977), th at one in m odern society relies on m any sophisticated tests when it comes to questions of illness or sexuality. The behavior o f C lara and her husband, like that of m any other parents I met. indicates th at the results o f these sophisticated

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tests often have no im pact on the parents. Significance is rather attrib u ted only to those tests th at technically help view the fetus (such as u ltraso u n d ). This selective p attern o f assim ilating m odern technology into traditional patterns o f worldview was also dem onstrated, in Israel,

by Shokeid (see Shokeid and Deshen 1974: 151-172) in his discussion of im potence.

The ‘socio-econom ical’ explanation is also suggested by an A m erican case study, in which two couples’ coping strategies with herm aphrodite children were com pared. The first couple, although initially distressed, handled the trau m atic event by regarding the abnorm ality as an act o f G od. The second couple, m ore educated and less religious, put their faith in m edical science and expressed a need to fully u nderstand the biochemistry o f the defect (B ing and R udikoff 1970). However, such (often ethnically-based) cultural explanations in their various variations w ould have to be ruled out in o u r case, as the observed phenom enon cuts across ethnic, econom ical, and educational — as well as national (see opening p arag rap h o f this section) — categories.

A m ore general account is therefore readily provided by socio-biology.

T hat the offspring should prove 4w orthw hile’ in order to receive parental care is perhaps not surprising to zoologists. M any anim al m others would reject their offspring if the latter fails to com m unicate some needed signal — a proper squick or the red inside o f an open m outh (see G ould 1982). A t the end o f the (socio-biological) day, proper genitalia are the sign o f p roper functioning, i.e., being capable o f passing your genes dow n to the next generation; therefore, a new born o f am biguous genitalia is perhaps better left off. W hy, then, was the K linefelter child (ju st as im potent, but with no visible signs o f deform ity) accepted? Sociobiologists can here quote Lorenz (1971: 155), who argued that it is the overall shape o f the new born th at triggers the ‘innate releasing schem ata’ which is responsible for the parental instinctive bonding. It is therefore the external appearance that m atters, and not the hidden defect.

W hile in agreem ent with th at last observation, I would like to advance here yet an o th er possible account, general in its scope and m ore anth ro p o logical in o rientation, namely that it is the child’s external abnorm ality th at invalidates o u r body-im age, am ong whose m ajor com ponents is sex.

Body-image is so uniquely significant in the very first stages o f bonding because no other inform ation concerning the new born really exists.

Indeed, it is this extrem e significance o f appearance in the case o f the new born, which can account for the finding th a t 68.4 percent o f the appearance-im paired new borns were abandoned, whereas 93 percent o f the new borns suffering from internal defects were ‘ad o p ted ’.

In all the exam ples o f the socio-cultural uses and misuses o f appearance

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m entioned in the introduction, the body is regarded as a repository of hum an qualities. In this sense, m adness, crim inality, intelligence, m ind, life, and the m yriad o f other qualities are assum ed to be located ‘in ’ bodies. In this ‘indigenous psychology’, which perhaps carries universal im plications for all hum an societies, external body insignia such as deform ity are considered as reflecting some essential *inner' quality.

This reflection becomes ever m ore acute in regard to the genitalia, for here is the reflection o f one o f the m ost pow erful norm ative structures which govern hum an society, nam ely, sexual identity. It is the prim ary differentiation given by G od him self — ‘male and female he m ade them '.

The com bined significance o f appearance and sex in the case o f the new born thus seems to govern bonding. W here the two are invalidated, rejection is seen to occur.

Let us finally turn to a closer look at this intriguing difference between external and internal. The observation that external insignia are taken as inner qualities (and th at internal problem s m ust be m anifested in an external deform ity) imply th at bodily insignia are here m etonym ically interpreted as signals. This clearly calls for a semiotic analysis, which shall be developed in an epitom ized form in the ensuing discussion. Let us recall C la ra ’s evocative argum ent: a child with a defect is a child with two heads. C lara saw no possibility o f there being an internal defect w ithout some concom itant external m onstrosity, and vice versa. On the other hand, looking norm al was p ro o f o f the absence o f any internal defect. A ccording to her perception, there m ust be an absolute correspondence between external appearance and internal health.

A m etonym ical relation between bodily insignia and the psyche, between physiology and psychology, is som ething that m odern medicine has gradually abandoned as it became a p art o f the natu ral sciences. In contem porary biom edical medicine, a sharp conceptual distinction is m ade between sym ptom and sign — the form er considered as subjective and am biguous, the latter as objective and hence the basis for diagnostics (see Foucault 1973; H onkasalo 1991; Staiano 1982). Today, this form of m etonym ical relation is regarded as characterizing sham anism ; this is perhaps one o f the reasons why it is so forcefully banished from the realm o f medicine. Let us consider the following analysis o f that inetonymical code in sham anism , which will also serve to connect the discussion w ith the case o f the shaved hair (for a discussion o f the m etonym ical code in an other m odern sham anistic paraphernalia, nam ely tourists’ p hotographs, see C ohen 1991).

Leach (1976: 31) describes the sorcerer’s symbolic activity as consisting o f a ‘sem iotic erro r‘. T reating the hair which grows on the head o f X as a m etonym ic sign for X, the sorcerer then ‘goes on to treat the im puted

Fence sitters

45

sign (i.e., the piece o f hair torn from X ’s head) as if it were a natural index, and even ... a signal capable o f triggering off autom atic consequences at a distance'. W hile probably not sharing these two last practical assertions, the parents o f Revital and M ira do present a strong conviction in the first one. The hair, especially w om ens’ hair, is indeed connected th ro u g h o u t history with sexual identity, as both Leach (1958) and F irth (1973) w ould have it. Just as the hair is perceived as a sign of the ‘inner’ fem ininity, and thus its rem oval yields a trem endous rage precisely because it is related to the loss o f sexual identity, so (perhaps even m ore so) are the genitalia conceived o f as ‘encapsulating* that precious sexual identity, whose identification is one o f the m ost significant and necessary steps in the social construction o f the person. In its absence, the new born is not a ‘com plete’ person; it thus m ay be stigm atized as ‫־‬non-person’, and hence rejected.

O f course, hair and genitalia stand for sexual identity because, unlike the verbal sign and its Saussurian arbitrariness, they are visual signs whose m aterial relationship to their referent play a constitutive role in their m eaning. This process o f signification is therefore better understood through Peirce's trichotom ous relationships between sign (representam en), in terpretant, and referent (CP 2.228; Greenlee 1973: 28-33: Zem an 1977). M oreover, according to Peirce’s m ethod, the ‘semiotic e rro r’ in which the parents are involved is one o f perceiving Thirdness as Firstness.

T h at is, hair and genitalia are given by them an iconic status, regarded as direct indices o f a certain quality — ‘m aleness’ or ‘fem aleness’, where in fact these should have been considered as Thirds, symbols producing recognition o f a general relationship (e.g., between the referent-object ‘h a ir‘ and the concept *femaleness’) on the basis o f an established social convention (E co 1979: 15-16).

A final note o f cross-cultural com parison is still in order before the anthropological analysis can be claimed com pleted. There are m any interesting studies o f m orphological males w ith nonm asculine (‘effemin a te ’) character, referred to as “androgyns’ or simply ‘hom osexuals’.

These unique (a)sexual types, such as the berdache am ong the N orth-A m erican Indians (W illiam s 1986), the ‘soft m en' (yirka-la ul) am ong the Siberian C hukchi (B ogoras 1907), or the Polynesian M ahus (Levy 1973), all form distinct social categories. The berdache, for exampie, were men by anatom y, but wom en by occupational pursuit and garb.

In the eyes o f the A m erican Indians, a berdache was therefore a mixed creature, a ‫־‬m an-w om an', ‘p art m an, p art w om an', or, phrased in the negative, ‘not-m an. not-w om an' (M cK enny in K atz 1976: 299-300; H older in K atz 1976: 312; Simms in K atz 1976: 318: M unroe et al. 1969: 90; K roeber 1925: 185). H erm aphroditism was the analog to berdache-

46

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M. Weiss

hood in the anim al kingdom when such an analog}‫ ׳‬was draw n (L urie 1953: 709; Hill 1935: 273-274). Interestingly, the berdache was not scorned and stigm atized but rath er highly appreciated; b oth N avajo, Cheyenne, and M ohave lore about his (or should I say her?) exceptional abilities as a m atchm aker, love m agician, or curer o f venereal disease (H ill 1935: 275; Hoebel 1960: 77), although also frequently dubbed ‘c o w a rd \ The m ost elaborated study o f present-day attitudes to herm aphrodites which was brought to my a tte n tio n 6 is th at o f the hijras in India.

H ijras are described as neither male n o r female, but an odd mix o f the two. They shave like men, b ut dress like women; these, as well as other distinct social behaviors, are am ong the overt insignia which serve to exclude them from the rest o f society, by which they are shunned and stigm atized. H ijras approach the rest o f society on only two occasions: birth and m arriage. Thus, ‘one often sees them m oving in groups, heading tow ards a house where a child has just been born. U nasked, they sing and dance, refusing to budge until given some sweets, m oney o r clothing.

One usually does n o t send aw ay the hijras disgruntled, for a superstitious fear th at their curses m ight result in the birth o f a hijra child in one’s own fam ily’ (Tew ari 1990: 193). However, the existence of the hijras as a group serves yet another social function: ‘the group continues... because they are joined by those with the same physical characteristics’ (O pler 1960: 506). The casting out o f herm aphrodite babies in Indian society hence spells the need o f the hijras as a caste which can absorb them (see also Sharm a 1989; N an d a 1990).

The fate o f Indian hijras is therefore in essence parallel to th a t of Israeli herm aphrodite new borns. ‘N o parents, however affectionate, can retain a hijra child with themselves once his handicap becomes know n to society as it is bound to become, sooner than later’ (Tew ari 1990: 104). Rem ove the w ord ‘hijra’ from th at sentence and it applies ju st as well to the scene we examined. W hile thanks to m odern surgery it has becom e possible for the eunuch in the w estern countries to pass for norm al male or female, hence erasing the possibility o f groups o f hijras roam ing in o u r neighborhoods, still our findings imply th at m odern science has not been able to change the individual reaction to new borns with sexual am biguities. H erm aphrodites, in India as well as in Israel, are labeled, stigm atized, and finally rejected because they are neither there n o r here — neither male nor female — but fence-sitters.

Notes 1.

Pseudo Herm aphroditism , or lack o f clarity in external sexual organs: at birth, it is difficult to identify the sex o f the newborn on the basis o f his sexual organ, since the

Fence sitters

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

47

latter does not have a normal shape. The defect can assume m any forms, ranging from resemblance to the female sexual organ to resemblance to the male sexual organ. One of the m ost common manifestations o f this defect is adreno-genital syndrome due to the male influence o f adrenocortical horm ones on the development o f the female sexual organs and indicated by increased glandular secretion. Thus, instead of producing the necessary steroid hormones, the cortex o f the adrenal gland responds by overproduction o f male hormones. In female babies suffering the condition this causes the sexual organs to develop abnormally and resemble the male sexual organ, and in male babies it causes unusually early and accelerated sexual development.

Klinefelter’s syndrome is an abnorm al condition in which the male has a total o f 47 or more chromosomes. Clinical indications: the condition is usually discovered when a boy reaches the age o f puberty. He generally has small, insufficiently developed testicles, enlarged breasts, and retarded development of his secondary sexual system. Sperm production is absent, and therefore such children cannot be fertile. M any children with the condition are mentally retarded.

Pregnant women over 37 are routinely referred for these tests due to the greater chances o f the fetus having D ow n’s syndrome.

I am here extremely cautious not to refer to the baby, in the m anner common to so many parents, as 'it'. Being unable, in this unique semantic context, to use any o f the personal pronouns ('he’ or ‘she’) I simply use ‘the baby’.

T hat this attitude is culturally constructed as well as socially prescribed is given evidence by the fact that hermaphroditism can take other, opposite forms o f cultural construction. The late sixteenth century in Europe, for instance, showed a widespread cultural concern with prodigies; the presence o f both male and female sexual organs in a single person was thus seen as a sign of the deep, underlying structure o f the very generativity that produced the anomaly, since at least from the time o f Galen it was thought that males and females alike were fashioned from both male and female seed (one o f them appearing as dom inant ); when the two were caught in a rare situation o f perfect balance, herm aphroditism would emerge (Greenblat 1986).

I am grateful to Professor Georg Pfeffer for his help in pointing out this m atter. Thanks are also due to Professor Sherry Ortner. Professor Judith Lorber, and the anonymous reviewers o f Semiotica.

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Meira Weiss is a Lecturer in the D epartm ent o f Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University o f Jerusalem. Her research interests include m etaphors o f illness, bereavement, embodiment, and images o f parenthood. Among her publications are ‘Bedside manners: Paradoxes o f physician behavior in grand rounds' (1993), 'From fat to thin: Informal rites affirming identity change' (1993), ‘N on person and non home: Territorial seclusion o f appearance-im paired children (1994), Conditional Love: Parental Relations towards Handicapped Children (1994), and ‘O f m an and beast: From "person" to “ non-person’'’ (1995).