ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how penises are understood and constructed in medicine, drawing on examples from two fields: intersex medicine and trans medicine. The first example is hypospadias, the medical term for a ‘urethral meatus’ (or ‘pee-hole’) that is not exactly at the tip of the penis. The approaches of intersex medicine, particularly early surgical intervention, represent a lack of imagination as to what a penis can be. The second example is the various options for acquiring a penis that are available to trans people. These include clitoral growth, metoidioplasty, and phalloplasty. Exploring all of the options that are available, particularly within a given type of surgery, presents a much more expansive imagination of what a penis can be. Comparing and contrasting the two cases leads to a better understanding of the full diversity of penises that exists and presents a way forward for imagining penises more expansively within and outside of medical frameworks.
