Where Are the Physicians in the Bathroom Bill Fight?

As the Texas Legislature considers a bill to require people to use the bathrooms that correspond to the genders assigned on their birth certificates, where are the physicians in this fight?How is sex assigned at birth? Usually, it is upon visual inspection.When there is ambiguity of sexual anatomy (1of 5000 births is a very conservative estimate), further testing is performed (imaging, hormonal, genetic diagnostic studies.) These individuals were once disparagingly referred to as hermaphrodites by the medical establishment but today self-identify as intersex.Gender is distinct from sex in that sex is readily observed but less mutable, and gender is a social and psychological expression. Third gender status in many countries around the world traces back to antiquity. Why then, have many people in modern American society become so cognitively inflexible about what it means to be male or female?  Continue reading...