A New York Times article from September 24, 2006, about Cheryl Chase. Cheryl was born with a large clitorus that was removed as a child. She became a strong advocate for intersexed people and formed Intersex Society of North America.
Chase believes that every child should be assigned a gender at birth but that the assignment should not be surgically reinforced and that parents and doctors should remain open to the idea that they may have assigned the wrong sex. She contends that the most important thing is for a child to feel loved by her parents, despite her difference. An operation, she says, should not be done to assuage parental embarrassment or anxiety; it should be chosen, if it is chosen at all, by an intersex individual who is old enough to make her own decision and give proper consent.
Unfortunately, Chase's position that cosmetic genital operations on intersex children should be stopped and that children should be made to feel loved and accepted in their unusual bodies is still considered radical. Her long-term goal remains the eradication of infant genital surgery for the sole purpose of altering appearance, and this continues to sound outlandish to many medical professionals and to most of the general public as well.