Are You a Boy or a Girl? Intersex and Genders

One question that is perhaps most familiar in contemporary western societies is: Is it a boy or a girl? This question goes uncontested unless a child is born with ambiguous genitalia. The medical responses to these births have recently undergone considerable attention and criticism. The intersex movement has coalesced around a shared lived experience of trauma brought about in no small way by the invasive procedures of medical management. These procedures leave intersex individuals...
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One question that is perhaps most familiar in contemporary western societies is: Is it a boy or a girl? This question goes uncontested unless a child is born with ambiguous genitalia. The medical responses to these births have recently undergone considerable attention and criticism. The intersex movement has coalesced around a shared lived experience of trauma brought about in no small way by the invasive procedures of medical management. These procedures leave intersex individuals with feelings of isolation and abuse. A culture of silence has been created with psychological, social and physical ramifications omitted from medical, patient and broader social discourses. Intersex individuals cite their own experiences as evidence of these ramifications. This book takes note of the significant issues pertinent to the intersex movement and employs a comparative analysis of the lived experiences of Intersex Australians and Americans. This book also investigates the historical and cross-cultural evidence of intersex, the way in which medical discourses dominate twentieth and twenty-first century conceptualisations and how the intersex movement itself was formed in the last decade.