Sexing the Body
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| Author | Anne Fausto-Sterling |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Published | 2000 (Basic Books) |
| Media type | Print (Paperback and Hardback) and E-book |
| Pages | 496 |
| ISBN | |
Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality is a 2000 book by Brown University Professor of Biology and Gender Studies Anne Fausto-Sterling, in which she explores the social construction of gender, and the social and medical treatment of intersex people. She stated that in it she sets out to "convince readers of the need for theories that allow for a good deal of human variation and that integrate the analytical powers of the biological and the social into the systematic analysis of human development."
Fausto-Sterling mentions the most common types of intersex, congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), gonadal dysgenesis, hypospadias, and unusual chromosome compositions such as XXY (Klinefelter Syndrome) or X0 (Turner Syndrome).
She gives John Money's view of intersexuality by stating,: “Intersexuality, in Money's view, resulted from fundamentally ab-normal processes. Their patients required medical treatment because they ought to have become either a male or a female. The goal of treatment was to assure proper psychosexual development by assigning the young mixed-sex child to the proper gender…” Money declared, "From the sum total of hermaphroditic evidence, the conclusion that emerges is that sexual behavior and orientation as male or female does not have an innate, instinctive basis.” Money is disproved in chapter 3 of Sexing the Body when it is stated that congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) girls tend to manufacture larger amounts of masculine hormones until birth and the production of these male hormones raises the question among scientist of whether or not the excess male hormones that a CAH girl produces has an effect on her brain development.
Fausto-Sterling argues surgery on intersex babies should wait until the child can make an informed decision, and label surgery without consent as genital mutilation. In "Sexing the Body", Sterling describes the grueling process of transforming an intersex person into the desired sex, and the appearance of a "densely scarred and immobile penis" or “extensive suturing [or] skin transplants in such a way that it seems difficult for anyone to endure. Although the decision should be made strictly by the parents without any coercion or influence presented by the doctor, it is ultimately the “physicians who decide how to manage intersexuality”. No matter how impartial they attempt to be, physicians simply “act out of, and perpetuate, deeply held beliefs about male and female sexuality, gender roles, and the (im)proper place of homosexuality in normal development” when performing the necessary surgery for the chosen gender.
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