Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Thesis
Zoe Brain
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/10/thesis.htmlNot mine, alas. I'm still working on that.
No, this one is Are You A Boy or A Girl? Contesting the Uncontested: Intersex and Genders, a PhD thesis by Stephen Kerry held by the University of Newcastle, NSW.
One question that is perhaps most familiar in contemporary western societies is "is it a boy or a girl?" This question goes uncontested unless a child is born with ambiguous genitalia. The medical responses to these births have recently undergone considerable attention and criticism from within the medical profession, from parents, but most loudly from the individuals themselves. In contemporary discourses these individuals are referred to by and large as intersex. The burgeoning intersex movement has coalesced around a shared lived experience of trauma brought about in no small way by the invasive procedures of medical management in its attempts to diagnose, treat and cure.