ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that adopting a vulnerability approach would enable the creation of spaces within the legal order wherein the innate human dignity and rights of people with intersex variations can be vindicated. A variety of surgical interventions are routinely performed on children with intersex variations to create gendered genitals. Criticisms centre on the sense of shame and stigma evident in personal narratives from those with intersex variations. Adopting such an approach in the context of intersex variations necessitates a shift away from considering intersex as exceptional or grotesque. As interventions on bodies with intersex variations meet the criteria for the qualifications to the best interests test in the context of undergoing an experimental and/or research procedure, proxy consent cannot be given to these procedures. Adopting the vulnerability lens enables law to refocus from the obvious doctrinal dogma around negligence and to consider instead the question of interventions on intersex bodies from the perspective of experimentation.
