ABSTRACT
In Doubtful Sex (1995), medical historian Alice Dreger writes: “In any human culture, a body is never a body unto itself, and bodies that openly challenge significant boundaries are particularly prone to being caught in struggles over those boundaries.” Let’s begin with what we know to be true. There are two and only two sexes, right? And you know with certainty which one of the two you are, I’m sure. Have you ever stopped to consider how you know what sex you are? It sounds pretty simple; just a quick check of the genitalia is all it takes. It’s actually not so easy to draw a binary distinction between the sexes, despite common belief, given that so much variation in genital and other sexual anatomy occurs with great regularity. Most often, as noted above, we consider external genitalia to be the unequivocal sign of anatomical sex. In fact, a cursory examination of the genitalia is typically how sex assignment occurs at birth.
