Prescribing the Binary for Intersex (and Transgender) Children

Robert Perske argued in 1972 that "there can be such a thing as human dignity in risk, and there can be a dehumanizing indignity in safety." Though Perske was referring to paternalistic care for the intellectually disabled, we can extend his counsel to the persistent attempts to impose a different kind of "safety," including efforts to enforce the gender and sex binary, as intersex surgeries were (and still are) meant to do. This article argues that when physicians surgically and hormonally alter the genitals and gonads of intersex infants, shaping their bodies to safely align with typical male and female bodies and gender roles, they unwittingly subject them to a dehumanizing indignity. Imposing the binary legislatively with anti-transgender bills is similarly harmful and can inadvertently undermine intersex care. Conservative lawmakers' tacit dismissal of young people's transgender identities parallels physicians' paternalistic, even if well-intentioned, efforts to make intersex bodies fit neatly into prescribed categories. Whether legislative or medical, these interventions promote the traditional gender and sex binary and undermine the dignity of such persons' eventual self-authorship.