Abstract

This article explores the relationship between gender, technology, language, and how infants and children born with disorders of sexual development are shaped into intelligible members of the community. The contemporary medical model maintains that children ought to be both socially and surgically assigned and reared as one particular gender. Gender scholar Suzanne Kessler rejects this position and argues for the acceptance of greater genital variability through the use of language. Using a Heideggerian lens, the main question I seek to answer in this article is: does Kessler’s approach succeed in its aim to better treat individuals born with disorders of sexual development? I argue that Kessler is successful in offering practical solutions for persons with intersexed conditions to exist and flourish as intelligible members of the community, but that her project ultimately relies on power to “challenge forth” greater acceptance of genital variance. Building on the work of Kessler and Heidegger, I argue that a better approach to making intelligible the existence of an infant born with a disorder of sexual development is not to rely on the manipulation of language, but to instead reinvigorate a sense of the sacred in response to having an intersex condition.