Main description:

This renowned history of intersex in America has been comprehensively updated to reflect recent shifts in attitudes, bioethics, and medical and legal practices.

In Bodies in Doubt, Elizabeth Reis traces the changing definitions, perceptions, and medical management of intersex (atypical sex development) in America from the colonial period to the present. Arguing that medical practice must be understood within its broader cultural context, Reis demonstrates how deeply physicians have been influenced by social anxieties about marriage, heterosexuality, and same-sex desire throughout American history

In this second edition, Reis adds two new chapters, a new preface, and a revised introduction to assess recent dramatic shifts in attitudes, bioethics, and medical and legal practices. Human rights organizations have declared early genital surgeries a form of torture and abuse, but doctors continue to offer surgical "repair," and parents continue to seek it for their children. While many are hearing the human rights call, controversies persist, and Reis explains why best practices in this field remain fiercely contested.

Contents:

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Note About Terminology and Illustrations
Chapter 1. Hermaphrodites, Monstrous Births, and Same-Sex Intimacy in Early America
Chapter 2. From Monsters to Deceivers in the Early Nineteenth Century
Chapter 3. The Conflation of Hermaphrodites and Sexual Perverts at the Turn of the Century
Chapter 4. Cutting the Gordian Knot: Gonads, Marriage, and Surgery in the 1920s and 1930s
Chapter 5. Psychology, John Money, and the Gender of Rearing in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s
Chapter 6. Bioethics, Informed Consent, and Children's Rights
Chapter 7. Who Stands Under the Umbrella? The Politics of Naming and Categorizing Intersex
Notes
Index