Article ID: CBB001210167

From “Following the Push of Nature” to “Restoring One's Proper Sex”---Cortisone and Sex at Johns Hopkins's Pediatric Endocrinology Clinic (2012)

unapi

In 1955, a paradigm shift in the conception of sex is said to have taken place, when psychologist John Money at Johns Hopkins's Pediatric Endocrinology Clinic argued that `hermaphroditic' children could be assigned a sex contradictory to their biological sex. Rather than being born male or female, he claimed, these children learned to be boys or girls. Money was subsequently credited the invention of the term gender role. However, Money only confirmed a practice that was established at the clinic several years before his intervention. The clinic's director Lawson Wilkins (1894--1963) had already recommended that certain children, virilized by congenital adrenal hyperplasia, should be raised in the male sex, even though they were by all medical standards of the time female. What mattered for him was assigning the sex that seemed `better' for these children. What constituted the `better sex' was contingent on the child's psyche and habitus, social expectations, and on the range of medical and surgical interventions available at the time.

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Authors & Contributors
Duschinsky, Robbie
Eder, Sandra
Rietmann, Felix
Karkazis, Katrina
Epstein, Randi Hutter
Rustoyburu, Cecilia
Concepts
Psychology
Endocrinology
Children
Child development
Gender identity
Sex hormones
Time Periods
20th century, late
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
21st century
Modern
Places
United States
Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Barcelona (Spain)
Iran
Great Britain
Institutions
Johns Hopkins University
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