Neither male nor female, investigation of the intersex

This book is structured in two parts. The first part deals with different stories of people intersexuées and relatives of people intersexuées. The second section describes the main forms of physical differences and identity in which it categorizes people intersexuées and social issues they raise.

The first part is a transcript of the testimony particularly respectful of those interviewed.  It describes well their life experience sometimes extremely hard.  It describes how intersex individuals are variously compared to their differences.  It also shows how parents are very afraid of any form of difference and how they are willing to raise their children, sometimes forcibly, in a standard mold.

The second part takes the benefit of hindsight in relation to individual life courses. It shows how even the vocabulary to talk about people trapped as intersex is  manipulative, that it is the scope of a political struggle to eradicate (or to defend), a form of the human condition.  It attempts to describe the main forms of physical difference by adopting a vocabulary as respectful as possible.  She speaks of medical treatment, their ideological roots, consequences, art and how to convince parents that these treatments are not essential; to allow time for reflection.  She speaks of the various forms of identity of intersex persons and homophobia as a motivation for the standard treatment that these people suffer.  She spoke of the difficulty of inventing a life and begin to speak on his own behalf rather than letting others do it.  She speaks of sexism, there is profound parallel between it and racism and its contribution to the tendency of people to normalize strength and in defiance of their own identity.  She speaks archaic fears that wakes up the difference in some of their weight in the current struggles and the importance to stop normalizing force human beings into a binary description of the sexes.

This book is remarkable in many points. It is accessible to anyone.  It allows us to see between the inner world of those interviewed.  The way the author explains the issues posed by society's intersexuual people by their mere existence is simply remarkable.

For my part, I just regret that he did not mention the Organization Intersex International, OII, the largest support group that is entirely in the hands of intersex people themselves.

I also regret that it has fairly cited explanations of particular authors little known for their respect for intersex people (and gender variant) as E.  But it is true that the French language is so poor references in a different order than I guess he can be difficult to find references that are familiar to readers.

Julien Picquart
Ni homme ni femme
enquête sur l'intersexuation
La Musardine , Paris
collection L'attrape-corps
Parution :  avril 2009

Note: This title is currently available in French only.