I always have trouble with

words to use for my junk:

Relinquishing body/gender dualism in
classrooms

Brian W. King
May 19th, 2016
IGALA 9, City University of Hong Kong

Educational Collaborators
Mani Mitchell (Wellington)

Small Luk (Hong Kong)

Koomah
(Houston)

Informational Bio-citizenship
development of the ability to make
informed, autonomous decisions about
bodies intersex or otherwise
(G. Davis, 2015)
informed autonomy in relation to
understanding human bodies
(Rose & Novas, 2005)

Why relinquish body

dualism?

We are teaching future

parents and neighbours
of intersex people
The era of deceiving the
public about their
existence has ended
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Working with Mani Mitchell (2007-2011)

Classroom work with teenagers in New
Zealand (King 2015, 2016)
Language can be a struggle
But they get it in the end

Strict body dimorphism is a good example

of scientific discourse that is badly in
need of deconstruction
(Blackless et al 2000, Fausto-Sterling 2012)

Working with Small Luk (2015)

Koomah 2016
Brian King
I recently published an analysis I did of Mani talking with NZ secondary school kids about intersex genitalia. There was
a lot of talk about 'penises', 'clitorises' and 'something elses'
Maybe in another session I could show you the transcript and you could comment on it.
Koomah
I always have trouble with words to use for my junk.
Brian King
So you feel there are a lot of gaps there Koomah
Koomah
Penises and vaginas are all a bit different but when you say penis or vagina people have a pretty good idea of what
you are talking about. My bits just don't quite fit either of those words, or their more crass counterparts. Lol
Brian King
So do you have 'work around' solutions? Ways of forging ahead?
Koomah
Not really. I just use words like bits, junk, phallus, cock/pussy, penis/vagina, and describe more in detail if
necessary. I do get creative sometimes... but usually it's in a joking way with friends.

Koomah
I have a hard time with "typical male genitals' and 'typical female genitals' in educational settings.
Brian King
Koomah this type of language covers up a lot of variation, no?
Koomah
Yes. I'm giving a lecture at Rice University on wednesday and looking through my notes was trying to
figure out ways to explain concepts to people in an intersex 101 without defaulting to binary
anatomy claims.
It's also complicated when we combine concepts of sex and gender. For example, intersex is related
to physical sex and transgender is related to gender orientation. With intersex we know that sex
is not anatomically binary. With trans we know that gender is not binary. With trans we also know
that penis and vagina do not always mean man and woman. Just as intersex genitals don't mean
man and woman... but know to explain intersex bodies without trying to equate penis to man and
vagina to woman is incredibly difficult since so much of the material for education uses terms like
"typical male body' 'external female genitals' "people with *IS condition* look female
Brian King
This brings us back again to medicalized language
Koomah
Exactly. On top of that, when you have to put things in easier to understand terms for an
intersex 101, because this is the first time people are hearing about intersex information...
it's very limiting.

Power
Jennifer
the words we have are exactly medical terms because thats the available
language. the medical community created the language we use when talking
about intersex bodies, not actual intersex people. doctors have effectively been
writing a disingenuous mythos of intersexuality since they got a hold of us

writing a disingenuous mythos of intersexuality

.ism

condition

syndrome
disorder
BUT THIS HAS NOT COME FROM EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE
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Who are we protecting?

Intersex babies have gone under the knife for many
decades. Why? Its a cultural practice, not
medical.
To protect them? Maybe
To protect their parents? Perhaps
To protect cherished biological theories? Most
definitely...power of medical discourse
To protect the public from knowledge?
It seems sobuy why?
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Bio-Citizenship
Relinquishing dualism (Davis et al, 2014)
across the curriculum
Future research into language and
sexuality in education must engage with
this tendency towards dualism

Readings
- Bergvall, Victoria L. 1999. Toward a comprehensive theory of language and gender. Language in Society 28(2). 273293.
- Bing, Janet M. & Victoria L. Bergvall. 1996. The question of questions: Beyond binary thinking. In Victoria L. Bergvall, Janet M.
Bing & Alice F. Freed (eds.), Rethinking language and gender research: Theory and practice, 130. London:
Longman.
- Blackless, Melanie, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne & Ellen Lee. 2000. How
sexually dimorphic are we? American journal of human biology 12(2). 15166.
- Cameron, Deborah. 2009. Sex/Gender, language and the new biologism. Applied Linguistics 31(2). 173192.
- Davis, Georgiann. 2015. Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. New York: New York University Press.
- Davis, Jenny L., Lal Zimman & Joshua Raclaw. 2014. Opposites Attract: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and
Sexuality. In Lal Zimman, Jenny L. Davis & Joshua Raclaw (eds.), Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language,
Gender, and Sexuality, 112. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Diamond, Milton. 2004. Sex, Gender, and Identity Over the Years: A Changing Perspective. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric
Clinics of North America 13(3). 591607.
- Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2012. The Dynamic Development of Gender Variability. Journal of Homosexuality 59(3).
398421.
- King, Brian W. 2016. Becoming the intelligible other: Speaking intersex bodies against the grain. Critical
Studies 13(4).

Discourse

- McCullough, Laurence B. 2002. A framework for the ethically justified clinical management of intersex conditions.
In Stephen A. Zderic, Douglas A. Canning, Michael C. Carr & Howard McC Snyder (eds.), Pediatric
gender
assignment: A critical reappraisal. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
- Rose, Nikolas & Carlos Novas. 2005. Biological Citizenship. In Aihwa Ong & Stephen J. Collier (eds.), Global Assemblages:
Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, 439463. Malden, MA:
Blackwell

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