Inter*sex appeal

Abstract

Intersex figurations – in the register of the erotic – allude to the reinvention of an embodied intersex subjectivity beyond the biomedical devices that have historically produced us – from pathologisation, secrecy and stigma – as sick, failed, deformed, abject, anomalous subjects. The biomedical management of intersexuality is framed by the paradigm of sexual difference, the model of the two sexes, the binary sex–gender system and compulsory dyadism; in short, by an endosexist humanism (the belief that what is human is contained in the exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories of man/woman) functioning as a technology of gender. I would like to propose the notion of somatic talents – inspired by Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad's concept of ‘gender talents’ – as a possible way to subvert the stigma inscribed on our bodies; an invitation to end, once and for all, with the pathologisation of intersex lives. The notion of ‘talents’ invites us to think about our bodies in a different way. Let us activate other embodiments, let us explore other somatic talents. Transgressions, subversions and overflows of the anatomised body – that bloody modern invention that still continues to colonise our flesh. To do this, I propose to think/imagine/fantasise our bodies no longer from stigma and abjection but from what we could call inter*sex appeal, that is, the physical and sexual attractiveness of intersex people. The bet lies in tracing, collectively, lines of flight, imagining our bodies and subjectivities from other coordinates of meaning, intersex carnalities not codified by the apparatus of sexuality and open to other horizons of meaning and desire. From abjection to fascination, let's map other bodies of desire and joy, beyond the dispositive of sexuality and its obsession with establishing a ‘true sex’. Instead, let's invent extraordinary intersex pleasures, those that we have not yet been able to imagine.