Intersex Men, Masculinities and ‘Disabled’ Penises

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the intersex movement has challenged the medicalisation of intersex. On the one hand the medical profession epitomises Foucauldian power/knowledge and diagnoses intersex bodies that do not fit into a socially sanctioned sex/gender dichotomy as ‘unhealthy’. And on the other hand, medical intervention produces disabled bodies. Intersex narratives give voice to the hitherto silenced consequences of ‘genital normalising surgery’; namely, genital scarring, insensitivity, and/or life-long pain, and sexual and urinary dysfunction. This chapter argues that intersex individuals who identify as men actively negotiate pluralised masculinities, and this is especially pertinent for those who were originally assigned ‘female’ and raised as ‘girls’ and now living in their affirmed gender as men. These men navigate masculinity/ies while possessing ‘feminine’ bodies and/or ‘inadequate’ penises. Subsequently, some intersex men are ‘disabled’ and undertaking journeys of healing; reclaiming lost gender identities, masculine bodies, and (re)negotiating their lives as men.