BIOMEDICAL DISCOURSE AND INTERSEUALITY

Writings on the pathologization of non-conforming bodies

Abstract

Since the consolidation of sexual dimorphism as an ontological truth about gender binarism in biomedical discourse, bodies that, at the time of their birth, do not fit into such discursive standards of normality - which enunciates female or male bodies with a series of specificities - are treated as diseased and included in the diagnostic category of disorders of sex development, a term popularly known as intersexuality. Although several interventions are recommended for the treatment of such “disorders”, of a hormonal, surgical or prosthetic nature, the genitals or other sexualized organs are not diseased in themselves, posing no risk to the life of the intersex patient, other than being stigmatized. as abnormal and having his/her existence rendered impossible. Thus, interventions to readjust these bodies to a binary gender intelligibility are not carried out of the need to treat a pathology, but in order to prevent the existence of bodies that do not fit into what is enunciated as normal. Therefore, starting from a bibliographic review of the hegemonic biomedical discourse, productions about the history of sexuality and counter-discursive productions within the field of biomedicine, articulating such notions to queer theory, the present work analyzes the enunciations that treat intersexuality as a pathological condition, revealing them as necrobiopolitically constructed and bringing notes for an unconditional medical hospitality.