Postcoloniality and the Biopolitical State: Gender Assignment Decisions on Intersex Bodies in India

Abstract

Intersex bodies confound stereotypical notions of sex and gender and are often subjected to medical management processes. Focusing on intersex bodies in India, I study how medical and health professionals make meaning of intersex bodies and the factors that guide their decisions on gender assignment of intersex people. I examine these gender assignment practices through the use of semi-structured, qualitative, in-depth interviews with twenty-two medical and health professionals from both public and private health set-ups, six families of intersex people and three intersex adults, across eight cities in India. While focusing on medical management of intersex bodies, I am also invested in the socio-cultural, political, and economic contexts within which gender assignment decisions take shape in India. Intersex bodies, globally, are commonly subjected to early medicalisation and assigned a binary gender. In Western contexts, specifically the USA, gender assignment heavily leans towards female gender assignment partly because of the relative ‘ease’ in the ‘construction’ of female bodies in comparison to male bodies. In contrast, within India, there is a strong preference for male gender assignment. I argue that the preference for male assignment is influenced by conditions of son preference inherent to the Indian sub-continent. I interrogate gender assignment decisions for intersex people within India’s postcolonial context of ‘population control’ as well as sex selection against female foetuses. Through this study, I make a significant contribution to a nascent intersex scholarship in understanding intersex medicalisation and decision-making around gender assignment processes within India.