What happens when a baby is born with "ambiguous" genitalia or a
combination of "male" and "female" body parts? Clinicians and
parents in these situations are confronted with complicated
questions such as whether a girl can have XY chromosomes, or
whether some penises are "too small" for a male sex assignment.
Since the 1950s, standard treatment has involved determining a sex
for these infants and performing surgery to normalize the infant's
genitalia. Over the past decade intersex advocates have mounted
unprecedented challenges to treatment, offering alternative
perspectives about the meaning and appropriate medical response to
intersexuality and driving the field of those who treat intersex
conditions into a deep crisis. Katrina Karkazis offers a nuanced,
compassionate picture of these charged issues in "Fixing Sex," the
first book to examine contemporary controversies over the medical
management of intersexuality in the United States from the multiple
perspectives of those most intimately involved.
Drawing extensively on interviews with adults with intersex
conditions, parents, and physicians, Karkazis moves beyond the
heated rhetoric to reveal the complex reality of how intersexuality
is understood, treated, and experienced today. As she unravels the
historical, technological, social, and political forces that have
culminated in debates surrounding intersexuality, Karkazis exposes
the contentious disagreements among theorists, physicians, intersex
adults, activists, and parents--and all that those debates imply
about gender and the changing landscape of intersex management. She
argues that by viewing intersexuality exclusively through a narrow
medical lens we avoid much more difficult questions. Do gender
atypical bodies require treatment? Should physicians intervene to
control the "sex" of the body? As this illuminating book reveals,
debates over treatment for intersexuality force reassessment of the
seemingly natural connections between gender, biology, and the
body.
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