Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
2 The Medical Construction of Gender
3 Defining and Producing Genitals
4 Evaluating Genital Surgery
5 Questioning Medical Management
6 Rethinking Genital and Gender
Notes
Glossary
Biography
Index
SUZANNE J. KESSLER is professor of psychology at Purchase College, SUNY. She is co-author of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach
Lessons from the Intersexed concerns how modern medicalized Western
culture deals with sexual variation. Throughout, Kessler holds that
variation is normal . . . and thus sees many treatment modalities
for intersexuality as medically questionable, culturally dogmatic,
and ethically very dubious. Although Lessons from the Intersexed
does record a devilÆs garden of botched surgical and
endocrinological interventions, it is neither a hot-headed rant nor
a popular book retailing medical horror stories. Instead, Kessler
writes with clear ethical purposes for a professional audience to
ask what intersexuality is, and what we should do about it, if
anything.
*Journal of Sex Research*
Lessons from the Intersexed is an incisive look at the
fifty-year-old Western medical practice of surgically
reconstructing the bodies of infants born with genitals that do not
look wholly female or male. . . . KesslerÆs academic publication is
the first to expose the medically acceptable range for the genitals
of a newborn (0.2 cm to 0.85 cm for an infantÆs æclitoris,Æ 2.5 cm
to 4.5 cm for an infantÆs æpenisÆ). We see that, in fact, it is the
decision of the attending surgeon that determines whether or not a
parent goes home with a little girl or a little boy.
*Whole Earth*
This is a brave book. Kessler says things that need to be said, and
she says them clearly, concisely, and with respect for the people
whose lives are most affected by the questions she confronts. A
must read for anyone concerned with intersex issues.
*author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality and
FTM: Female-to-*
While the physician's response to an infant with ambiguous
genitalia has been to produce categories like the æsuccessful
vaginaÆ and the ægood enough penis,Æ Kessler takes her cues from
intersexuals themselves. This book is a brilliant and long overdue
call for the reevaluation of gender variability.
*author of Female Masculinity*
Fascinating in what it tells us not only about situations in which
sex assignment is uncertain but about the astonishingly weak
empirical foundations on which the medical orthodoxies of binary
sex and gender are built. A must for anyone interested in the ways
widely accepted social beliefs and scientific explanations generate
and reinforce each other.
*author of The Politics of WomenÆs Biology and Exploding the Gene
Myth*
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