Gender as Projection: The Politics of Decision Making in Multidisciplinary Teams in Intersex Care

The Chicago consensus statement of 2006 introduced new guidelines in the medical management of intersex people, e. g. people with variations of sex characteristics (VSC). The guidelines cautioned against unnecessary medical surgeries on intersex babies, called for more collaboration in multidisciplinary teams (MDT), advocated for respect of the growing capabilities of children in the decision-making process, proposed a new nomenclature, and emphasized the need to update current practices according to newest biomedical finding in genetics and endocrinology. However, the proposed changes did not address the role of implicit values and gender norms on judgement in MDTs and how these judgements draw upon endocrinological and genetic research. Based on a literature review of medical papers on MDTs in the field of intersex healthcare published since 2006, I analyze how healthcare and psychosocial professionals refer to gender when they aim to classify biologically diverse sex characteristics and what kind of data research they use. I specifically focus on the expression “sex/gender assignment”. The aim of this paper is to show how gender functions as projection of implicit values of normative gender identity and sexuality in the MDT and biomedical research on intersex. The paper exposes the failure of the consensus statement to address how implicit heteronormative and cisnormative values of MDT and biomedical research victimize intersex people.