| Once referred to as hermaphrodites, intersex persons are born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not seem to fit the typical definitions of a normal male or female. As a result, doctors, whom we have empowered since that time as the authority over our bodies, have normalized intersex persons, surgically if necessary, so that they are, by society's standards, made into normal-looking men or women. Previously, intersex persons, stigmatized and isolated by society, have lacked the authority and means within prevailing discourses to resist their treatment. But the Internet has enabled intersex persons to resist the established authority of medical and gender discourse. As a result, intersex persons, although they may be isolated by the nature of their treatment and the geographic distance that often stands between them and others like them, have established vibrant virtual communities where effective counter-discourse is produced.; By exploring the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, this dissertation first establishes a theoretical framework for understanding important concepts, such as discourse, power, knowledge, resistance, sex, and identity. Second, it defines intersexuality, identifies those conditions that lead to it, traces how and why society has marked the intersex person as an abnormality, and details the efforts made by intersex persons to create and perform an identity resistant to that one imposed upon them. Third, it explores the rise in authority of the doctor, detailing the established medical paradigm for treating intersex persons, first forwarded by Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money, that still guides today much of the medical treatment of intersex persons. Fourth, it defines virtual communities and explains what they must do to produce counter-discourse. Finally, it draws on the latest research and interviews with intersex advocates and scholars to conduct a discursive analysis of intersex web sites, examining the key ways of bonding, witnessing, confessing, disseminating, confronting, and usurping that generate a disruptive counter-discourse that questions and even usurps what established discourse says about intersexuality. |
