Intersexuality is an umbrella term for the widely diverse set of embodiments and experiences formerly known as hermaphroditism. In this book, billed as "autoethnographic," the author draws on data from personal experience, popular culture, and narratives of intersexed persons to critique the medicalization of intersexuality. As with so many aspects of sexuality and gender since the late 19th century, sexologists and other medical professionals turned their medical gaze onto intersexuality, thereby producing it as a disease and abnormality. Holmes (sociology; Wilfrid Laurier Univ.) describes myriad negative consequences of this medicalization: social control through medical discourse, coercive treatments (even termination of pregnancies "at risk" for intersexuality), and cultural stigmatization. In addition, she leans on the analytics of postmodern feminist science studies and queer theory to argue that the medicalization of intersexuality reinforces tidy but fictive binaries of gender and sexuality. Following feminist philosopher Judith Butler, Holmes argues that all bodies are trouble, not just those of intersexuals. She calls for new narratives that will challenge and displace pathologizing medical discourse, and for a change in "how we parent." Unfortunately, such an individualized solution is unlikely to succeed in the absence of broader social change. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Graduate students/faculty.—J. ski. Irvine, University ofMassachusetts
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