Infants identified with intersex variations historically often underwent cosmetic surgery to align their genitalia with typical female appearance, a practice many later regretted.

“So in the old days once this got recognized it was standard procedure to tell the parents oh uh this is an emergency. We need to do cosmetic surgery. We need to do surgery to make this little girl look like all the other little girls. You know sometimes the surgery was you know there could sometimes be successful or not. And indeed, they knew how to make her look like other girls. Um, but many of those interex folks when they grew up were pretty angry that someone had done this surgery on them that wasn't needed medically, right? They were already taking care of the problem with the exogenous adrenal steroids. And so, who asked you to to deal with my, you know, to do surgery on my clitoris?”