This Body Trans/Forming Me: Indecencies in Transgender/Intersex Bodies, Body Fascism and the Doctrine of the Incarnation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Intersex and Transgender People
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014
Intersex and transgender are discrete issues and should not be conflated. However, both phenomena, and the experiences of both groups of people, demonstrate the limitations of existing theologies of sexuality which assume stable and binary models of human maleness and femaleness. Sexual theologies for intersex and transgender people must take into account a range of issues, including the reality of variant sex and gender; the question of same-sex relationships; the theological significance of non-penetrative sexual activity; the challenges of unusual genital anatomy; ethical issues surrounding sought and unsought genital surgery; discourses of pathological versus variant embodiment; and questions of vulnerability and safety in sexual encounter. Drawing on liberationist theological goods, this chapter points to the necessity for non-pathologizing theological accounts of variant sex and gender.
Beyond Dimorphism: Intersex Persons and the Continuum of Sex Characteristics
International Journal of Gender and Women's Studies, 2018
This paper presents an argument against sex dimorphism. It is puzzling that the existence of intersex persons is well established by medical and social data, but the idea of sex dimorphism is still maintained as a universal assumption about the human body. I argue that the idea of sex dimorphism is empirically inadequate(it ignores the existence of intersex bodies) and harmful (it is the source of-normalizing‖ surgeries on intersex newborns, the pathologization of intersex people as-disordered‖ and discrimination against them on the basis of sex characteristics). I argue that the strategy to justify sex dimorphism by reproductive functions is not universal, and I point to the ontology of process where intersex bodies are no longer problematic (there is a place for them on the continuum of sex characteristics). Sex chromosomes, gonads, internal sex organs, genitals, and secondary sex characteristics can be inconsistent with each other or have neither male nor female form. Intersex people are beyond sex dimorphism and remind usthat the human body with its sex characteristics is a process.
, the of cial journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics published a consensus statement on the medical management of intersex traits. Like the profession's rst statement, the revision advised against unnecessary surgical modi cations. Yet, such surgeries continue in contemporary US society, despite the professional stance and public critiques from intersex activists. Relying on sixty-ve interviews with medical professionals, individuals with intersex traits, and parents of intersex children, this article examines why the practice continues. It then analyzes how medical professionals justify their medical interventions and shows that these justi cations convey a "covert necessity" to the parents of intersex children. Intersex bodies, situated on the threshold of the gender structure, are treated as "states of exception" where unnecessary medical interventions serve to uphold the sex binary. The article argues that medical interventions aimed at eliminating intersex traits will continue until society disentangles sex from gender, embraces gender uidity, and no longer constructs intersex bodies as deviant or abnormal in order to disallow or erase them.
Genital Alteration and Intersex: a Critical Analysis
Current Sexual Health Reports, 2018
Purpose of Review The purpose of this review is to survey current discussions of genital alteration on intersex infants, and children. Intersex is a term used to describe an individual with a less common combination of genetic, hormonal, gonadal, and genital features that are used in assigning sex at birth. This language is frequently replaced by disorders of sexual development (DSD). Recent Findings This article critically examines medical publications, legal and governmental documents, and statements by intersex activists regarding medically unnecessary genital surgery, seeking to place a wide variety of literature in conversation and attending to social and ethical issues related to DSD treatment. Summary It is vital that there be a robust patient-centered research agenda on non-surgical and surgical outcomes for DSD treatment. We offer open-ended questions inspired by this literature review, with the hope and intention that future treatment of DSDs will continue to be informed by critical engagement.
Contesting intersex: the dubious diagnosis
Choice Reviews Online, 2015
Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis, written by Georgian Davis, as part of the New York University Press series on Biopolitcs: Medicine, Technoscience and Health in the twenty-first Century and published in late 2015, has provided a welcome book on the topic of a different category of sexual identification in humans. In the political world in the U.S., as seen by the recent Presidential debates, much has been made about sex or at least what the candidates and their followers think about human sexuality and human sexual identification. Georgiann Davis has produced a very carefully researched book, written at the right time. Being herself intersex, she interviewed many in that category, and became an advocate and leadership figure for those in that category. The book has six chapters, primarily divided among discussions about advocacy and medical jurisdiction. Chapter 4 is the one I found the most interesting, the chapter on naming. Naming might seem to be a simple process, unlike a chapter on Medical Jurisdiction and the Intersex Body (Chapter 3), but it is not. What are people with sexual identification characteristics that differ from the so-called norm to be called? We have had centuries of boy/girl, male/female. Is it intersex or is it something else? And why is this a 'dubious diagnosis'? Why is it a diagnosis at all? Because of the prevalence of medical power, usually male power. Therefore, this is a book of advocacy for the voice of females and the voice of females that do not fall into the sexual identification categories heretofore established by religion and thus law. The focus is females since much of the advocacy around intersex has been done by and for mostly females. Recently in countries in Western Europe, Australia, Canada and the U.S.A., much social change has taken place recently with the acknowledgment of humans being born to be gay or lesbian, the move to allow people to have gay or lesbian marriages, for children to be recognized as gay or lesbian, and so on. However, these welcome changes still maintain the binary categories. What Contesting Intersex does is to move much more closely towards humans being much more like the rest of the mammalian world. Among placental mammals, males produce X and Y gametes, and females produce only X gametes. In this system, referred to as the XX-XY system, maleness is determined by sperm cells that carry the Y chromosome. In humans and many other animal species, sex is determined by specific chromosomes. Curiously, it is indigenous people who recognize and accept sexual identification difference. Among Northern American indigenous peoples, two-spirited people are recognized for their abilities and strengths. Why not expand that perspective? Chapter 6 is a chapter that is almost purely advocacy, with recommendations for immediate further action, such as Stop the Surgeries, Work with, not for doctors, Expand and diversify peer support, Replace Fear with Power, Embrace Feminist Ideas, Recognize Social Constructions, and Listen to Children. However, it is Chapter 4 on which I wish to place some attention. Chapter 4 deals with the power of the medical establishment. Probably due to having to handle so many varieties of issues simultaneously, the writing may seem to be a bit repetitive of previous chapters. It is almost as if Davis needs much more than just two hands to juggle all of this. The writing is tight and a bit confusing, as the writer not only discusses the many issues but also refers to others, such as sociologists of diagnosis and others. And then, Davis deals with the taut issue of John Money, his rise and his fall from grace. Her discussion of his research concerning how the 'medical profession
"'Intersex' is the condition whereby an individual is born with biological features that are simultaneously perceived as male and female. Ranging from the ambiguous genitalia of the true 'hermaphrodite' to the 'mildly or internally intersexed', the condition may be as common as cleft palate. Like cleft palate, it is hidden and surgically altered, but for very different reasons. This important book draws heavily on the personal testimony of intersexed individuals, their loved ones, and medical carers. The impact of early sex-assignment surgery on an individual's later life is examined within the context of ethical and clinical questions. Harper challenges the conventional and radical 'treatment' of intersexuality through non-consensual infant sex-assignment surgery. In doing so she exposes powerful myths, taboos, and constructions of gender - the perfect phallus, a bi-polar model of gender and the infallibility of medical decisions. Handling sensitive material with care, this book deepens our understanding of a condition that has itself only been medically understood in recent years."