..., who were thought to possess bodily appetites that were more animal than human in nature. During the period, some European texts ascribed hermaphroditic, monstrously misshapen genitals to those living outside the geographic bounds of Europe, linking imagined deviations in anatomy to “race,” a logic...

... have atypical genital development or intersex conditions. Julie Greenberg is a professor of law whose work on gender and sexual identity has been influential both within the United States and internationally. Del LaGrace Volcano is a visual artist whose work engages with gender variance. Katrina Roen...

...Iain Morland In this essay I explore how queer theory might account for postsurgical intersex bodies of diminished genital tactility. In other words, I evaluate whether a critique of surgery's effects is possible from a queer theoretical perspective on the body. I contend that for this purpose...

...David Andrew Griffiths Abstract Heteronormativity structures biomedical justifications for continuing surgical interventions on infants’ genitals that are cosmetic and medically unnecessary. It would seem, then, that queer theory is uniquely suited to challenge this continuing practice...

... infants. The fact that this system for preserving the boundaries of the cat- egories male and female has existed for so long without drawing criticism or scrutiny from any quarter indicates the extreme discomfort that sexual ambiguity excites in our culture. Pediatric genital surgeries literalize what...

... of patients who undergo FFS and the surgeons who perform their operations (3), Plemons argues that FFS evidences a shift in trans- therapeutic logics : where an earlier model of sex change located sex in genitals, viewing sex as changeable through genital sur- geries and the subsequent having of the right...

... symbolic that privileges reproductive genitality as the single embodiment of sexual “normalcy”-the cultural work performed by the so-called positive Oedipus complex-flees from the anus by means of that privileging: flees, that is, from any memory of anal libidinal sensation, as if from before...

... a means of correcting things, of restoring order. But the plastic body, as Kevin Michael De Luca has argued, is the site and substance of contestation, of argument itself, and nowhere is this clearer than in recent debates about genital modification — in particular, surgeries performed on infants...

... happens to clinical practice after multidisci- plinary challenges to childhood genital surgery? What happens to the determina- tion of sex and gender after intersex? What happens to the intersex body after sur- gery, and what might queer theory do about it? What happens...

... it happened to be located. On the foot, for example, it would produce a sixth toe; in the groin, a second set of genitals. In this latter case, if the paternal seed had either fully mastered or been mastered by the maternal matter-the basis of Aristotle's general account of sex determination-both...

... Press 2009 Quantum Sex: Intersex and the Molecular Deconstruction of Sex Vernon A. Rosario Intersex” emerged in the 1990s, a seemingly novel phenomenon with tremen- dous potential in terms of cultural politics and gender theory. These congenital conditions of atypical genital and gonadal...

... History of Intersex Historical records in the West suggest that until well into the twentieth century intersex people tended simply to blend in with the general population, living their lives as unremarkable boys, girls, men, and women. Given that notable genital ambiguity shows up once in about...

... what you are thinking. Let me tell you what is hidden here: you! The curiosity about her genital status—which is expected in the reader—speaks not so much about the near-naked person's identity but rather about the gaze of the other. This is an interpellation in the strong sense of the word...

... Diamond and attorney Hazel Beh, who argued for using the term variations of sex development.4 But while it is easy to make the case that differences in genital appearance should be understood as matters of variation, such terminology does not permit appreciation of the genuine health challenges...

... was a vagina. Findlay inadvertently turns a vagina into the actuality of gender categorization—as if biology was destiny after all, as if self-identifications and social presentations matter for nothing, as if we all “really are” what our cul- ture tells us our genitals mean...

... genitals is a “radical position” that requires “the willful disruption of the assumed concordance between body shape and gender category.” She contends that the pragmatic cam- paign of intersex activists to alter what they consider to be a harmful surgical prac- tice thus promises a profound...

... OF THE CLITORIS Valerie Traub “We have long realized that in women the development of sexuality is complicated by the task of renouncing that genital zone which...

... the development of the sexual organs and the kickingin of certain hormones at puberty. The common- place implies that only the latter really count as sexuality, that is to say, that sexu- ality is first and foremost genital. But this popular and medical view is contra- dicted by obvious considerations...

... could reveal the hermaphrodite’s “true” sex. Dreger’s review of medical reports documents the nego- tiations among groups of medical men trying to reach consensus about the essen- tial sex signs. In a wonderful section titled “Tricky Genital Geography” she...

... sex drive, sensual pleasure, and genital stimulation. Hence, in the move toward more specific meanings of the term sexuality in the sciences, heterosexual intercourse for the purpose of reproduction is split off from other expressions of sexual drive or desire. This trend...