Treatment decisions of intersex people in adolescence and adulthood
Dissertation project Elio Clemenz, M.A.
The research project examines sex characteristic-related treatment decisions of intersex people in adolescence and adulthood from a biographical perspective. In the context of gender-sensitive biographical research, the way in which biographical transitions of intersex people are structured by experiences of medicalization and social stigma is to be investigated. It can be hypothesized that intersex life experiences are structured by alternating modes of doing transition: Biographical transitions of intersex people are often characterized to a high degree by institutionalized heteronomy shortly after birth, so that they and their environment have to react primarily to external attributions and interventions. In this context, intersex people experience both medical and psychosocial Zurichtungen. Similar experiences are often made during puberty, but also in the context of age- and illness-related physical changes. The forced transition modes can be followed by more self-determined modes in the course of life history, in which becoming inter* is biographically central as a self-empowering and potentially transformative mode of processing violent experiences. The biographical interrelatedness of forced and self-determined transition phases in the lives of intersex people should be examined more closely with the help of an empirical reconstructive approach.
Contact Information
Elio Clemenz
Associated Member of the Cooperative Research Training Group "The Formation of Transitions over the Life Course" of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Eberhard Karls University Tübingen funded by the German Research Association (DFG)