(5 reviews) Author: Elizabeth Reis ISBN : 9780801891557 New from $33.25 Format: PDFWhat does it mean to be human? To be human is, in part, to be physically sexed and culturally gendered. Yet not all bodies are clearly male or female. Bodies in Doubt traces the changing definitions, perceptions, and medical management of intersex (atypical sex development) in America from the colonial period to the present day.
From the beginning, intersex bodies have been marked as "other," as monstrous, sinister, threatening, inferior, and unfortunate. Some nineteenth-century doctors viewed their intersex patients with disrespect and suspicion. Later, doctors showed more empathy for their patients' plights and tried to make correct decisions regarding their care. Yet definitions of "correct" in matters of intersex were entangled with shifting ideas and tensions about what was natural and normal, indeed about what constituted personhood or humanity.
Reis has examined hundreds of cases of "hermaphroditism" and intersex found in medical and popular literature and argues that medical practice cannot be understood outside of the broader cultural context in which it is embedded. As the history of responses to intersex bodies has shown, doctors are influenced by social concerns about marriage and heterosexuality. Bodies in Doubt considers how Americans have interpreted and handled ambiguous bodies, how the criteria and the authority for judging bodies changed, how both the binary gender ideal and the anxiety over uncertainty persisted, and how the process for defining the very norms of sex and gender evolved.
Bodies in Doubt breaks new ground in examining the historical roots of modern attitudes about intersex in the United States and will interest scholars and researchers in disability studies, social history, gender studies, and the history of medicine.
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (May 8, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0801891558
- ISBN-13: 978-0801891557
- Product Dimensions: 1 x 6 x 8.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex PDF
Reis's account of intersexuality in America is well-documented, humanely written and deeply relevant to current questions of gender, sexuality and personal identity.By parpar
This book provides a fantastic history of the Intersex movement. For those who think that Intersex conditions are a modern invention, you will have to prepare to have your world rocked. Reis provides a great analysis of medical documents dating back to early American history. By examining these documents she positions Intersex patients not as abnormal, but as a normal human difference. She examines the cyclical nature of doctor's views on Intersex conditions, then provides her own thoughts on how the 21st-century deals with these conditions. All in all, a five-star book.By Adenil
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