Defiant Bodies: Discourses on Intersex, 1573-2003

Major shifts in the diagnosis and medicalization of intersex and related conditions occurred in the first half of the twentieth century, as the term “intersex” became broadly used to describe ambiguous sexual development, and some of the first surgical interventions into intersex anatomy were performed. This book by a Greek physician attempts to assign both biological and mental causes for intersexual conditions, demonstrating how medical understandings of intersex were still quite limited, despite increasing research on the subject.