ABSTRACT
This chapter tracks the global rise of the concept of intersex human rights. The potential imperialism of constructing the intersex imaginary in U.S./Euro-centric ways can be countered by provincializing that imaginary, a project with de-colonial motivations It synthesizes transnational feminist perspectives on human rights. The chapter analyzes Intersex Society of North America lobbying efforts around intersex surgery and female genital mutilation (FGM). It shows that transnational feminist perspectives offer new ways of understanding the local and global effects and implications of intersex activism. The chapter argues that the transnational regulation of sexed bodies occurs not only through the globalization of Western biomedical conceptions of sex/gender normativity, but also through global circulations of human rights discourse and impositions of US neoliberal democratic frames of subjectivity. It explores the thesis in relation to US intersex activism and its transnational travels. The intersex surgery/FGM analogy is especially problematic insofar as it consolidates the Western/non-Western and global north/global south binaries.
