Queer Research Methods, Intersex

One of the assigned readings for this week was Judith Butler’s ‘The Backlash Against ‘Gender Ideology’ Must Stop’. In this article, Butler discusses the opposition by the Catholic church of the idea of gender as socially constructed: the church believes that God created man and woman and that’s the end of the story. However, as Butler and other feminists/queer theorists demonstrate, this is not correct. In the article, Butler writes that “medical, familial, and legal authorities play a crucial role in deciding what sex an infant will be.” Butler exemplifies this claim through a discussion on intersex children: children born with ambiguous genitalia often have a sex and/or gender assigned to them at birth.

Before reading this article, I have long acknowledged/recognized that gender is socially constructed but I had never before considered that biological sex might too be socially constructed.

During the class we watched a documentary on Intersex peoples — I don’t remember the name of the documentary, forgive me!

The intersex voices in this documentary reflected and brought to life Butler’s article through stories of how having a biological sex/gender forced upon intersex peoples affected their lives. It was a very enlightening and positive experience to hear that, of the people in the documentary, one intersex person’s parents chose not to give to go forward with sex assignment surgery during their infancy and instead decided that their child live their life as they so choose. In my opinion, this is what all parents should do–all people should do. We can not decide for others how they should live their lives. All people retain the right to self-determine their own sex and/or gender.