Often when we speak of Disorders of Sex Development (DSD), most people do not understand what that means. There is often a negative reaction to ideas or terms that are not commonly known because people fear what they don’t know. Not only do they fear it, but when the term “disorder” or “sexual” is included it is often more difficult to open peoples minds to learning, understanding, and accepting new information. The ironic thing is that disorders of sexual development are more common than people think. One in every two thousand babies born is born with some form of DSD. There are approximately 216,000 babies born every day in the world, meaning every hour more than 4 babies born will be diagnosed with DSD.
Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) are congenital conditions in which development of chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomic sex is atypical. The definitions of such older terms such as “hermaphrodite” and “intersex” are considered problematic because they labeled persons (rather than conditions).
When a baby is diagnosed with DSD, a mistake parents often make is to opt to immediately determine the sex of their new born child through surgical reconstruction.
A desicion made through the fear and hope that such a surgery could help “normalize” the child’s life. Yet, results seldom meet expectations, and often a procedure of that nature takes several if not many more surgeries into adulthood.