definition of embodiment as there is. Poets author poems that hold precision in their abstractions and can have a transportive quality that effects a change – however imperceptible – in how one receives the natural and material world thereafter. Images, too, can transport, sometimes forcing the viewer to catch one’s breath or laugh or gasp or weep. So might the feel of sand slipping through fingers, wet grass on toes, the first snow of the season. Fractals of easily repeated forms are plentiful, captured imperfectly in image, like a photograph. But how to capture
This book examines the divergent medical, political and legal constructions of intersex. The authors use empirical data to explore how intersex people are embodied through these frameworks which in turn influence their lived experiences.
Through their analysis, the authors reveal the factors that motivate and influence the way in which policy makers and legislators approach the area of intersex rights. They reflect on the limitations of law as the primary vehicle in challenging healthcare’s framing of intersex as a ‘disorder’ in need of fixing. Finally, they offer a more holistic account of intersex justice which is underpinned by psychosocial support and bodily integrity.
This book set out to examine what intersex embodiment means in the 21st century in predominantly Western societies. In doing so, it has demonstrated that there are multiple disjointed and fragmented accounts of intersex embodiment which are produced through a range of different regulatory frameworks. Each of these frameworks arguably set out to improve the lived experience of intersex embodied individuals. In reality, they often misconceptualize ‘intersex’ and consequently serve to disempower intersex embodied individuals. The professionalization of medicine
PART II Materialities: Spatiality and Sensory Embodiment
WISC has created a community and place in which stories and experiences can be shared; it has given women the means and tools to do this from an embodied perspective through autoethnography and other reflexive, qualitative approaches. This chapter * will set out what autoethnography and embodiment are, why they are important in the context of STEM, how they are usually missing in other research, and why this is a problem. It will consider the structural barriers that are specific to STEM, and are prevalent within the culture that keeps these stories hidden
Introduction The last chapter traced the historical pathologization of intersex and how medicine came to dominate contemporary understandings and approaches to intersex embodiment. The result of this medical framing has not only been routine irreversible interventions performed on intersex children, but also the cultural and institutional disappearance of intersex as a concept. Medical erasure has worked to reify medical power/knowledge by making it extremely difficult for the intersex community to come together and challenge medical practice or to identify
Introduction The last two chapters have traced the problems inherent to law and policy framing around intersex embodiment and the consequences of their enactment. Within law, intersex embodiment is most frequently constructed through lenses of LGBT and non-binary embodiment. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, states have turned to anti-discrimination legislation and third markers to redress perceived status disadvantages for intersex people. However, as this book demonstrates, understanding intersex embodiment solely through these lenses is fraught with
Introduction In Chapter 3 , we set out the problematic ways in which states frame intersex embodiment through a non-binary lens. This form of recognition mis recognizes many intersex people, constructing intersex in a way that is often unsuited to their lived experience. As we found from our interviews, many intersex people identify strongly within the gender binary and do not feel comfortable with the idea that intersex is synonymous with non-binary. As a result, third markers are an ineffective mechanism through which to disrupt medical embodiment and
Introduction Accounts of legal embodiment are impoverished if they do not explore the ways in which other institutions contribute to our understanding of bodies. In the case of intersex embodiment, medicine is crucial for understanding how intersex people have been framed – indeed, and as we shall outline, medical accounts offer the paradigmatic account of intersex embodiment. Medicine investigates and explores the materiality of the body and presents its results as objective and value free. However, medicine’s reporting back of this materiality is not
