The phenomenology of “”intersexed” bodies
Limor Damon
Limor’s research focuses on the tension between the embodiment of the “intersexed” body and the bio-social practices that shape and force it to be like what is conventionally considered a typical male/female body. The lecture analyses Shaker’s story, an Intersexed person who is living in Israel.
Through the body and experience of “Shahker,’ she describes the paradox that exists in the current medical treatment of intersexuality, especially in Israel. Shaker’s body, like other intersexed bodies, simultaneously threatens and protects. Like a secret, it threatens the social order and undermines the stability and the meaning of the sex-gender categories, but the body also protects its unique and particular existence.
The greater the effort made by the bio-social practices to make intersexed bodies to disappear, the greater their presence and existence. Bodies do not speak the language of secrets or play by their rules. “Intersexed” people invite us to reexamine ourselves, to doubt the relevancy of social categories that confine the body-self, but also invite us to rethink the workings of the body within and beyond the social discourse.
Limor can be contacted on
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