On “Having” Sex: Sexual Binarism, the Racialized De/construction of Sexual “Ambiguity,” and Biomedicalization

Abstract

The contemporary focus on the social construction of the gender binary in conjunction with the mainstream feminist assumption of a biological/social:sex/gender distinction often confirms and perpetuates the false representation of sex as a binary, merely biological classification. In reality, the sex binary is an inconsistently delineated, taxonomical project manufactured by European colonial modernity. Not only is sex biocultural, but it is a mechanism that regulates normativity, citizenship, and humanity. Constructions of sexual differentiation have been indispensable to producing racial difference as well as distinguishing healthy bodies from those deemed “ambiguous” and therefore monstrous and threatening. Using an interdisciplinary approach and drawing upon an extensive theoretical framework, this thesis analyzes the role of (pseudo)scientific, medical, and feminist discourse in producing, upholding, and withholding sexual binarism ideologically and materially. Firstly, I will consider constructions of biological and social racial sexual difference and their centrality to eugenic ideas about health and evolution. Secondly, I will challenge the biological legitimacy of sexual binarism, highlighting the biocultural character of sex and the differential, deeply political ways sex has been assigned, defined, and understood. Finally, I look to three forms of biomedicalization – intersex “normalization” surgery, trans “gender-affirming care,” and “female genital cosmetic surgery” – as methods of inscribing sexual binarism on the body that differentially reflect notions of normativity and health, a social impetus toward conformity, and racial and class-specific access to both healthcare and recovery of normative citizenship. As such, I challenge the presumed coherence and stability of sex classification, science, and social organization. I argue in favor of a more precise ideological and material understanding of sex, including how contemporary ideas about health and desires for normativity are situated in eugenic racist and ableist histories.