Roen, Katrina, Post Doc

By Katherine Harrison on 21 May | 0 comments

GEXcel project: But we have to do something: The clinical ‘correction’ of atypically sexed and gender variant children

The proposed work focuses on clinical practices undertaken with children with a disorder of sexual development (DSD), or with gender identity disorder (GID). Each of these ‘disorders’ has been constructed on the basis of the understanding that (sexual) atypicality and (gender) variance in children should compel parents and clinicians to find a remedy.

Such approaches rest on the normative understanding that sex is organized into a binary framework. For intersex children, striving to fit in with such a framework can mean ‘corrective’ surgery to ‘repair’ the atypical features. For gender atypical children, treatment can involve psychological (and sometimes endocrinological) interventions to reinstate normative sex-gender pairing. A queer reading of such clinical practices suggests that the binary framework is a fantasy that can never be fully attained and that, as long as clinicians seek to (re)produce the reality of binary sexes, they inevitably keep producing queer embodied subjects.

The proposed project is located within critical sexological and critical psychological work. It seeks to engage with clinical ethics debates where the imperative to intervene on atypically sexed bodies and atypically gendered children is weighed against the apparent risks of not intervening. Both possibilities (intervening, or not) have the potential to draw criticisms and allegations of violence or malpractice. During the period of the visiting fellowship, I will be working on a book project focusing on clinical practices undertaken with atypically sexed or gendered children.

Biographical notes:

Katrina Roen’s work takes a queer feminist approach to investigating gender variance and sexual atypicality, with a particular focus on the interface between clinical and activist understandings. Roen has published in this area in SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, International Journal of Critical Psychology, Journal of Gender Studies, and GLQ: Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies. She has also published chapters in edited collections, such as: Ethics of the Body: Postconventional Challenges (Eds: Margrit Shildrick and Roxanne Mykitiuk) and Sex and the Body (Eds: Annie Potts, Nicola Gavey, and Ann Weatherall).