The Value of Thinking Intersex Otherwise

Across Intersex Matters David A. Rubin calls on a wide range of parties—including medical practitioners and feminist scholars, as well as human rights activists and everyday people—to upend their habitual modes of perception and “think intersex otherwise” to enact a range of valuable ethical and political goals. Acknowledging the term is contested, Rubin defines intersex in their introduction as “people born with anatomies that defy received understandings of the nature of sexual difference” (1). Thus, in contrast to the common medical tendency to view intersex as a biological abnormality fixable via surgical normalization, and departing from a widespread scholarly view of intersex as a peripheral issue only of concern to a small group of minorities, Rubin gives sustained attention to the ways “intersex lives, bodies, narratives, theories, and activisms materialize and become meaningful” (4). This alternative approach enables Rubin to productively revise...