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Title: Book review: Intersex by Morgan Holmes
Post by: Shana A on October 27, 2009, 08:01:48 AM
Post by: Shana A on October 27, 2009, 08:01:48 AM
Book review: Intersex by Morgan Holmes
BOOKS / Intersexuality complicates our understandings of sex & gender
Robert Teixeira / National / Monday, October 26, 2009
http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Book_review_Intersex_by_Morgan_Holmes-7669.aspx (http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Book_review_Intersex_by_Morgan_Holmes-7669.aspx)
Dominant culture continues to insist on two clearly demarcated sexes, as demonstrated by the oft-repeated exclamation of gendered and sexed identity at birth — either "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" But the indeterminacy of sexual anatomy is more common than many realize, with about one in every 100 births exhibiting "ambiguous genitals."
Yet these differences are made to disappear when the medical establishment and anxious parents opt for biomedical intervention as a response to what Wilfred Laurier sociologist Morgan Holmes terms a "psychosocial emergency" in her Intersex: A Perilous Difference.