Medical Technologies and Decision-Making Processes around Gender Assignment of Intersex People in India

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Abstract

Medical technologies have a substantial impact on people’s lives whether in relation to idea(l)s around beauty or health. Decisions around usage of medical technologies also have an enormous impact on the lives of intersex people who are often subjected to interventions including ‘corrective’ surgeries in their infancy to adhere to society’s idea of the ‘normative’ gender. Performed for a variety of reasons, these interventions are often carried out throughout their lives.
Even as medical values remain similar across countries in theory, practices often differ depending on socio-cultural and economic contexts. These differences are especially stark between the first world and global South country contexts. Analysing qualitative data from ethnographic interviews with medical professionals from a range of specialisations and public and private health institutions located in seven different cities across India, I discuss how ideas around sex and gender of intersex people in India are guided by socio-cultural notions and expectations around gender, and explore the medical discourses that inform decision-making processes on gender assignment of intersex children.
While medical professionals play a pivotal role in gender assignment of intersex people, and are presumably guided by notions of medical objectivity and neutrality, I argue that decisions on gender assignment in India are largely influenced by various socio-cultural norms and values that shape not just families’ perspectives but also decisions made by medical professionals. Further, I suggest that conversations around justifiability of such interventions are multi-layered and must be understood in a nuanced manner within India’s complex and complicated socio-cultural context.

Author

• Arpita Das, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney