Intersex: Medical Measures on the Test Bed

Abstract

Intersex persons are regarded by medical practitioners as a disruption of the sex order because they have genitals that do not conform to the norm. The awareness for the impact of ‘gender’ also and in particular in the field of medicine does not seem to be very pronounced among its professionals, with the result that this term is largely absent in medical literature. However, in order to emphasize the impact and interrelatedness of both terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ they frequently appear together in the following text.2 In the past, but also in the present, intersex persons were regarded as being in need of treatment and as a consequence were subjected to primarily genital assignment surgery in order to achieve a simulated superficial norming of their sex. In doing so, the norms of the German term ‘Geschlecht’,3 also present in medicine, as well as the mechanisms of their implementation are ignored because the surgeons referred to here are only concerned with the body. What is crucial here is that these intersex persons are infants and children who owing to their age could not and cannot give their consent. However, surgery involves a high risk and damage to health. This contribution focuses on the special situation of girls with 46,XX-DSD, because it has shown that for a not unsubstantial ‘quantity’ surgical interventions in childhood can have the result that the sex/gender identity perceived by that person at a later age as belonging to her or him can no longer be taken into account.