This collection of 21 articles is designed to serve as a state-of-the art reference book for intersexuals, their parents, health care professionals, ethics committee members, and anyone interested in problems associated with intersexuality. It fills an important need because of its uniqueness as an interdisciplinary effort, bringing together not just urologists and endocrinologists, but gynecologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers, theologians, gender theorists, medical historians, and philosophers. Most contributors are well-known experts on intersexuality in their respective fields. The book is also unique in that it is also an international effort, including authors from England, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, India, Canada and the United States. The book begins with introductory chapters on the etiology of intersex conditions, conceptual clarification, legal issues, and reflections about the inherent characteristics of medical care that have led up to the issues we face today and explain the resistance to change in traditional practices. Researchers provide recent data on gender identity, surgical outcomes, and appropriate clinical care. Issues never having been addressed are introduced. The significance of intersexuality for Christianity and for philosophical concerns with authenticity add further depth to the collection. The final chapters deal with future possibilities in the treatment of intersex and for intersex advocacy.

A philosopher offers a framework for the treatment of intersex children, and a moral argument for responsibility to them and their families. Putting the ethical tools of philosophy to work, Ellen K. Feder seeks to clarify how we should understand “the problem” of intersex. Adults often report that medical interventions they underwent as children to “correct” atypical sex anatomies caused them physical and psychological harm. Proposing a philosophical framework for the treatment of children with intersex conditions—one that acknowledges the intertwined identities of parents, children, and their doctors—Feder presents a persuasive moral argument for collective responsibility to these children and their families. “In a voice both urgent and nuanced, Feder squarely faces the complexities that accompany the care of people with atypical sex anatomies in medical science. . . . Rich with cross-discipline potential, Feder’s engaging argument should provide a new approach for doctors and parents caring for children with atypical sex anatomy.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Feder’s book is a welcome injection of new ideas into feminist scholarship on intersex, post-Consensus Statement era.” —Women’s Review of Books “Is a work of philosophy capable of bringing insightful new perspectives or illuminating and forceful arguments to an urgent social matter so as truly to effect a felt change in the lives of people concerned by it? Feder’s book is capable of this effect. As such, it takes the risk of calling forth a new public, or a new readership, and so is a work whose appeal could well be ahead of its time. But its time should be here.” —International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics “Making Sense of Intersex significantly enhances our understanding of intersex and the ethical issues involved in medical practice more generally.” —Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

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.

This collection of 21 articles is designed to serve as a state-of-the art reference book for intersexuals, their parents, health care professionals, ethics committee members, and anyone interested in problems associated with intersexuality. It fills an important need because of its uniqueness as an interdisciplinary effort, bringing together not just urologists and endocrinologists, but gynecologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers, theologians, gender theorists, medical historians, and philosophers. Most contributors are well-known experts on intersexuality in their respective fields. The book is also unique in that it is also an international effort, including authors from England, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, India, Canada and the United States. The book begins with introductory chapters on the etiology of intersex conditions, conceptual clarification, legal issues, and reflections about the inherent characteristics of medical care that have led up to the issues we face today and explain the resistance to change in traditional practices. Researchers provide recent data on gender identity, surgical outcomes, and appropriate clinical care. Issues never having been addressed are introduced. The significance of intersexuality for Christianity and for philosophical concerns with authenticity add further depth to the collection. The final chapters deal with future possibilities in the treatment of intersex and for intersex advocacy.

This book addresses intersex rights violations and analyses intersex people’s legal demands as expressed by intersex activists themselves and delivered through statements and reports issued by intersex rights organisations, the United Nations and the Council of Europe. Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical notions of male or female bodies, as a result of which they are stigmatised, marginalised and denied the recognition of their fundamental rights. Often, they are subjected to involuntary and harmful sex “normalising” surgeries at birth, which violate their bodily integrity, self-determination and informed consent, so as to comply with societal and legal norms. Moreover, binary legal frameworks prevent them from enjoying the rights to access identification documents, start a family, or be free from discrimination in all areas including employment and sports. To elaborate on intersex violations that emanate from binary laws, this book examines the situation of intersex rights in regional jurisdictions worldwide and within the European Union in particular. In the process, it identifies current legal barriers and suggests how intersex people could be accommodated under legal frameworks and achieve sex/gender equality beyond binary definitions.

Numerous issues confront women's healthcare today, among them the medicalization of women's bodies, cosmetic genital surgery, violence against women, HIV, perinatal mental health disorders. This volume uniquely explores such difficult topics and others at the intersection of clinical practice, policy, and bioethics in women's health care through a feminist ethics lens. With in-depth discussions of issues in women's reproductive health, it also broadens scholarship by responding to a wider array of ethical challenges that many women experience in accessing health care. Contributions touch on many themes previously tackled by feminist ethics, but in new, contemporary ways. Some chapters expand into new fields in the bioethics literature, such as the ethical issues related to the care of Indigenous women, uninsured refugees and immigrants, women engaged in sex work, and those with HIV at different life stages and perinatal mental health disorders. Authors seek to connect theory and practice with users of the health system by including women's voices in their research. Bringing to bear their experience in active clinical practice in medicine, nursing, and ethics, the authors contemplate new conceptual approaches to important issues in women's healthcare, and make ethical practice recommendations for those grappling with these issues. Topical and up-to-date, this book provides a valuable resource for physicians, nurses, clinical ethicists, and researchers working in some of the most critical areas of women's health and applied ethics today.

"This report examines the physical and psychological damage caused by medically unnecessary surgery on intersex people, who are born with chromosomes, gonads, sex organs, or genitalia that differ from those seen as socially typical for boys and girls. The report examines the controversy over the operations inside the medical community, and the pressure on parents to opt for surgery"--Publisher's description.

This renowned history of intersex in America has been comprehensively updated to reflect recent shifts in attitudes, bioethics, and medical and legal practices. In Bodies in Doubt, Elizabeth Reis traces the changing definitions, perceptions, and medical management of intersex (atypical sex development) in America from the colonial period to the present. Arguing that medical practice must be understood within its broader cultural context, Reis demonstrates how deeply physicians have been influenced by social anxieties about marriage, heterosexuality, and same-sex desire throughout American history In this second edition, Reis adds two new chapters, a new preface, and a revised introduction to assess recent dramatic shifts in attitudes, bioethics, and medical and legal practices. Human rights organizations have declared early genital surgeries a form of torture and abuse, but doctors continue to offer surgical "repair," and parents continue to seek it for their children. While many are hearing the human rights call, controversies persist, and Reis explains why best practices in this field remain fiercely contested.

Intersex Matters analyzes the medicalization of people diagnosed as "intersex," which is an umbrella term for individuals born with sexual anatomies various societies deem to be nonstandard. Through an examination of medico-scientific, scholarly, political, and popular archives from the mid-twentieth century to the present, Rubin argues that the medical regulation of atypical sex is fundamentally a feminist and a queer issue, and an intersectional and transnational one as well. Critical attention to intersex lives, bodies, narratives, and activisms profoundly reconfigures contemporary paradigms of sex/gender, race, health, normality, biopolitics, and human rights. Rubin charts the emergence of intersex rights activism in the global north and global south, thus demonstrating the value of understanding intersex experience when rethinking the vicissitudes of body politics in a globally interconnected world.