Book
Fixing Sex:
Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience
READ THE INTRODUCTION:
Introduction from Fixing Sex (Duke University Press 2008). Copyright 2008. All rights reserved. For any reuse of this material, contact Duke University Press.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
What happens when a baby is born with “ambiguous” genitalia or a combination of “male” and “female” body parts? Clinicians and parents in these situations are confronted with complicated questions such as whether a girl can have XY chromosomes, or whether some penises are “too small” for a male sex assignment. Since the 1950s, standard treatment has involved determining a sex for these infants and performing surgery to normalize the infant’s genitalia. Over the past decade intersex advocates have mounted unprecedented challenges to treatment, offering alternative perspectives about the meaning and appropriate medical response to intersexuality and driving the field of those who treat intersex conditions into a deep crisis. Katrina Karkazis offers a nuanced, compassionate picture of these charged issues in Fixing Sex, the first book to examine contemporary controversies over the medical management of intersexuality in the United States from the multiple perspectives of those most intimately involved.
Drawing extensively on interviews with adults with intersex conditions, parents, and physicians, Karkazis moves beyond the heated rhetoric to reveal the complex reality of how intersexuality is understood, treated, and experienced today. As she unravels the historical, technological, social, and political forces that have culminated in debates surrounding intersexuality, Karkazis exposes the contentious disagreements among theorists, physicians, intersex adults, activists, and parents—and all that those debates imply about gender and the changing landscape of intersex management. She argues that by viewing intersexuality exclusively through a narrow medical lens we avoid much more difficult questions. Do gender atypical bodies require treatment? Should physicians intervene to control the “sex” of the body? As this illuminating book reveals, debates over treatment for intersexuality force reassessment of the seemingly natural connections between gender, biology, and the body.
A FEW NICE WORDS ABOUT FIXING SEX…
“The cultural rules of gender are complex, and they are never more tested than in the case of intersex. Fixing Sex is a huge addition to the field, encompassing as it does the views of clinicians, patients, parents, and others. The topic in intrinsically interesting, but Katrina Karkazis’s wonderful writing makes this a compelling story and a great read.”
-Abraham Verghese, MD, author of In My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, The Tennis Partner and Senior Associate Chair for Theory and Practice of Medicine, Stanford University
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“With her fascinating field data, Katrina Karkazis exposes the contentious disagreements among theoreticians, physicians, intersex adults, and parents-and all that those debates imply about the changing landscape of gender and intersex management.”
-Suzanne J. Kessler, PhD, author of Lessons from the Intersexed
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“I couldn’t put Fixing Sex down once I started it! Masterfully balancing all aspects of one of the most polarizing, contentious topics in medicine, this thoughtful book is destined to become the most recent authoritative treatise on intersex. Non-medical persons will find it easily digestible, yet it is a ‘must-read’ for every pediatrician and pediatric subspecialist caring for children with disorders of sex development.”
-Kenneth C. Copeland, MD, Jonas Professor of Pediatrics, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and former President of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society
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“This meticulous, sensitive, and brilliantly executed book will transform our knowledge of intersexuality, gender, and the ethnographic study of medical practice.”
-Gayle Rubin, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan
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“This book is a velvet-gloved punch to the gut. Fixing Sex is astonishing, a tale told straight from the mouths of affected adults, parents, and physicians in tender and lyrical prose. It resonated deeply with my memories of motherhood in the disorders of sex development community. But the chapters devoted to clinicians made me weep. A physician myself, I remember my disbelief as the worlds of intersex and medicine collided in my own family. An extraordinary book for a wide audience, it is a huge step toward reconciliation and spiritual healing for its protagonists.”
-Arlene B. Baratz, MD, family and medical consultant, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Support Group and Accord Alliance
REVIEWS or MENTIONS
“Karkazis never loses sight of the authentic lived experiences of intersexed people and their families. . . . Fixing Sex . . . offers a compassionately written discussion of interest to anyone concerned with gender and sexuality, health activism, and human rights.”
Summer Wood, Bitch
“Fixing Sex is the best book I have ever read over the years which deals with the ethical issues which have plagued the intersex community, parents and doctors. One reason is that it is meticulously researched and in the introduction, the author helps the reader understand her methodology and also makes it transparent and easy to grasp for the reader who is not familiar with such research. . . . Katrina Karkazis has written a book that both I (an intersex activist) and a medical doctor can read and understand and not be upset about. Now that is a tour de force.”
Curtis E. Hinkle, Intersex News
“Fixing Sex is the result of meticulous research and in depth interviews with those most closely involved; it aims to help readers understand this unusual condition. I found the book fascinating for other reasons as well - namely how intersex conditions illuminate our taken for granted assumptions about what makes people male or female.”
Daisy Grewal, Psychology Today blog
“in incorporating the voices of not only medical professionals, but also the people whose lives have been affected in major ways by the results of medical decisions enacted on their or their children’s bodies (and identities), Karkazis presents a more complete view of the topic than has been offered in the past. . . . Karkazis doesn’t claim to offer any answers, but she brings the discussion up to date in a way no one else has yet, raising the difficult questions necessary to move the discourse on intersex issues forward.”
Kiri Oliver, Feminist Review blog
“Karkazis has written a definitive treatment on a topic for which there is no decisive answer. And she does not try to provide one. What she does is productively unsettle the assumptions that much of the medical approach works from by respectfully positing gender as a mystery not reducible to the simple construct we operate under currently.”
Jennifer Reed, Feministe
