Ellen Feder's Making Sense of Intersex and the Issue of Sexual Difference

Abstract

In introduction to her book Making Sense of Intersex, Ellen Feder writes:While I think many people believe that urgent status attributed to birth of a child with atypical sex gives truth to, or perhaps exemplifies, Irigaray's claim that is of our time, each of chapters that make up this project treats medical management of atypical sex not as a of difference, but as a of ethics. (Feder 2014: 1-2)1Reading this passage I was first of all a bit surprised that problem of difference and problem of appear as separate from one another, especially given reference to Luce Irigaray, keeping in mind her project of developing an ethics of I also found myself wondering, and again, especially in light of reference to Irigaray's claim, why phenomenon of atypical sex anatomy is not figured as a problem of difference. While Feder's main concern in Making Sense of Intersex is ethical (mis)treatment of persons with intersex conditions, she is, in my contention, too quick to dismiss medical management of atypical sex as being a of in favor of treating as a of ethics. In fact, in spite of her assertion in passage above, I would argue that her book demonstrates well that cases of intersex and medical management of atypical sex anatomy are not only a of ethics but also very much a matter of To paraphrase Tina Chanter (1995: 230), issue of appears as a silent center of Making Sense of Intersex that is not brought to explicit discussion but that nevertheless forms a center towards which many of issues that Feder articulates and examines gravitate. In following I will draw attention to this silent center of issue of in Feder's book. Her rich and thorough study in my mind offers an opportunity to rethink beyond binary configuration that has been settled as a natural fact and that serves to conceal ambiguity and suppress multiplicity and diversity of sexed embodiment.Although Feder does not want to figure intersex and medical management of intersex conditions as a of difference, she does address force with which a binary configuration of between female and male bodies is reiterated and naturalized. With reference to Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of habitus as both a structured and structuring structure that orders our taken-for-granted and unreflected understandings of everyday life, Feder speaks of as the primary 'structure' that itself'structures' social order in which we move and make sense of and, further, of ourselves, and place[s] us in world in ways that render positions we occupy . . . intelligible (2014: 46). Regardless of disagreements concerning what means to be a man or a woman, sexual as difference is for most part not in dispute but instead something we take for granted and that regulates our ways of being in world. Sexual difference, writes Feder, provides order for world and for our place in it (2014: 46). Sexual is here understood in terms of binary sex differences and, in spite of her initial reference to Irigaray, Feder does not include any explicit discussion of meaning of difference, how has been conceptualized and how can be differently.By not treating phenomenon of atypical sex anatomy as an issue of difference, I believe Feder wants to avoid common conceptualization of intersex bodies not on their own terms but in terms of anomalous variations of normal female or male bodies. Regardless of how radically intersex bodies depart from norm, they are nevertheless, as Lisa Guenther writes, thought to gain their sense from that norm; they are conceived as mixtures or combinations of male and female, tending towards one or other side of duality (2011: 19). …