What happens when a baby is born with “ambiguous” genitalia or a combination of “male” and “female” body parts? Clinicians and parents in these situations are confronted with complicated questions such as whether a girl can have XY chromosomes, or whether some penises are “too small” for a male sex assignment. Since the 1950s, standard treatment has involved determining a sex for these infants and performing surgery to normalize the infant’s genitalia. Over the past decade intersex advocates have mounted unprecedented challenges to treatment, offering alternative perspectives about the meaning and appropriate medical response to intersexuality and driving the field of those who treat intersex conditions into a deep crisis. Katrina Karkazis offers a nuanced, compassionate picture of these charged issues in Fixing Sex, the first book to examine contemporary controversies over the medical management of intersexuality in the United States from the multiple perspectives of those most intimately involved.

Drawing extensively on interviews with adults with intersex conditions, parents, and physicians, Karkazis moves beyond the heated rhetoric to reveal the complex reality of how intersexuality is understood, treated, and experienced today. As she unravels the historical, technological, social, and political forces that have culminated in debates surrounding intersexuality, Karkazis exposes the contentious disagreements among theorists, physicians, intersex adults, activists, and parents—and all that those debates imply about gender and the changing landscape of intersex management. She argues that by viewing intersexuality exclusively through a narrow medical lens we avoid much more difficult questions. Do gender atypical bodies require treatment? Should physicians intervene to control the “sex” of the body? As this illuminating book reveals, debates over treatment for intersexuality force reassessment of the seemingly natural connections between gender, biology, and the body.

In this special issue of GLQ, experts from a variety of disciplines discuss the future of treatment for people with intersex conditions—those born with ambiguous genitalia—and consider what intersexuality means for theories of gender. By examining the ethics of medical treatment and the repercussions of intersex surgery, “Intersex and After” demonstrates how biology, activism, law, morality, and ethics have a shared interest in the relationship between intersexuality and the meaning of sex, gender, and sexuality.

In one essay, two prominent intersex activists reflect on their often controversial work on behalf of the Intersex Society of North America to achieve change in medical policy over the last ten years. Other essays explore the impact of the categorization of intersexuality as a “disorder of sex development” and of the treatment guidelines published in 2006 by the Consortium on the Management of Disorders of Sex Development. An essay by the issue’s guest editor takes a comprehensive look at the relationship between intersexuality and the study of gender and sexuality. The issue also includes a portfolio of photographs as well as a roundtable discussion that brings together intersex experts from medicine, law, psychology, and the humanities.

Contributors. Sarah M. Creighton, Alice D. Dreger, Ellen K. Feder, Julie A. Greenberg, April Herndon, Iain Morland, Katrina Roen, Vernon A. Rosario, Nikki Sullivan, Del LaGrace Volcano