Abstract
This dissertation examines contemporary struggles over the meaning and management of intersexuality in the United States. Upon birth, the sex of every infant is determined by genital inspection. For infants born intersex—with a combination of what are typically considered “male” and “female” chromosomal, gonadal, and genital characteristics—clinicians make a series of medical treatment decisions utilizing what has been a stable medical paradigm developed in the 1950s. Beginning in 1993, intersex adults (and later, parents and clinicians) have mounted unprecedented challenges to this paradigm, offering alternative perspective about what intersexuality is and how it should be treated.
Using methods of participant observation, in-depth interviews (with clinicians, parents of intersex children and adults, and intersex adults), and textual analysis, I describe and analyze conceptualizations of and treatments for intersexuality from 1955 to the present, with particular focus on the recent period of increasing controversy over the diagnosis and medical treatment of intersexuality (1993–present).
