GIVING SEX: Deconstructing Intersex and Trans Medicalization Practices

Although medical providers rely on similar tools to "treat" intersex and trans individuals, their enactment of medicalization practices varies. To deconstruct these complexities, we employ a comparative analysis of providers who specialize in intersex and trans medicine. While both sets of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGender & society Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 490 - 514
Main Authors DAVIS, GEORGIANN, DEWEY, JODIE M., MURPHY, ERIN L.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.06.2016
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Comparative analysis
Gender
Gender construction
Gender identity
Gender variant
Ideology
Intersex persons
Medicalization
Medicine
Normativity
Parents
Parents & parenting
Pathology
Patients
Psychiatry
Sexes
Sexual behavior
Sexual intercourse
Sexuality
Transgenderism
medicalization
embodiment
intersex
trans
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Summary:Although medical providers rely on similar tools to "treat" intersex and trans individuals, their enactment of medicalization practices varies. To deconstruct these complexities, we employ a comparative analysis of providers who specialize in intersex and trans medicine. While both sets of providers tend to hold essentialist ideologies about sex, gender, and sexuality, we argue they medicalize intersex and trans embodiments in different ways. Providers for intersex people are inclined to approach intersex as an emergency that necessitates medical attention, whereas providers for trans people attempt to slow down their patients' urgent requests for transitioning services. Building on conceptualizations of "giving gender," we contend both sets of providers "give gender" by "giving sex." In both cases too, providers shift their own responsibility for their medicalization practices onto others: parents in the case of intersex, or adult recipients of care in the case of trans. According to the accounts of most providers, successful medical interventions are achieved when a person adheres to heteronormative gender practices.
ISSN:0891-2432
1552-3977
DOI:10.1177/0891243215602102