Feminist Surveillance Studies and the Institutionalization of Interphobia

Abstract

Though sex, gender, and sexuality have been subject to ongoing forms of state scrutiny and, therefore, concern surveillance studies scholars—one can think of McCarthy and the policing of homosexuality and the current forms of homophobia and cisgenderism structuring bathroom, sport, and “Don’t Say Gay” laws in the US—there is a glaring lack of attention paid to the violent (colonial) state, legal, and medical projects that surveil intersex people’s body-minds with the (eugenic) goal of eradicating intersex variations to make sex, gender, and sexuality “legible,” dyadic. There is a lack of attention paid to intersex issues in mainstream media as well as from surveillance studies scholars. As a result, as scholars reflect backward over the decades of scholarship in surveillance studies in this anniversary issue of Surveillance & Society, we posit that it is time to use the refined tools surveillance studies offers in service of opposing the often-ignored ongoing surveillance—and killing project—of intersex people’s unique sex traits. In doing so, we focus our attention on surgical interventions, medical photography, and the reproductive technology preimplantation genetic diagnosis. These three case studies offer a sampling of the various ways intersex variations are surveilled and eradicated, and, therefore, signal the importance of integrating intersex issues into feminist surveillance studies. To conclude, we address how intersex activists find each other and propel their activism—activism that combats the surveiling and regulating nature of state and medical-sanctioned interphobia—into the mainstream via information and communication technologies. And yet, there remains so much work to be done. We end on the cautionary note that the ways that intersex activists’ work is routinely stymied and undermined by state and medical forces must be considered.