Short abstract:

Variations of sex characteristics have been enacted in two insufficient but dominant frameworks: biomedical and identity-based. This paper draws on STS, queer studies and British intersex history to think through and past the misrepresentations and epistemic injustices offered by these frameworks.

Long abstract:

Intersex activism and scholarship has, for at least three decades, been doing both queer work and STS work. Work on intersex has long been aware of the challenge to heterosexuality that intersex bodies pose, as well as the ways in which so-called “normalising” surgeries are structured by hetero- and cisnormativity. Intersex scholarship and activism contains a trenchant critique of biomedical power, directed towards improving healthcare, increasing psychosocial provisions, and ending nonconsensual surgeries. Intersex activists and advocates often have a critical (one might say queer) approach to the gender binary and biological essentialism. At the same time however, there is a similarly critical conversation about the kinds of identity politics involved in the drive to include an “I” in the LGBTQ+ acronym. In this paper I argue that moments of overlap between queer and STS studies can inform intersex activism and scholarship, but that the still-emerging field of intersex studies is already doing valid and important queer/STS work. I draw on the recent history of intersex in Britain to think through the affordances and limitations of framing intersex studies in this way. I will consider how variations of sex characteristics are enacted in clinical and LGBTQ+ spaces. These spaces represent the two dominant framings – biomedical and identity-based – which have been insufficient, and rife with misrepresentation and epistemic injustice. I argue that tools from STS and queer studies, particularly around temporalities, can help us think through and past this impasse.