Morgan Carpenter

I’m pleased to have two chapters in the new book, Interdisciplinary and Global Perspectives on Intersex, edited by Megan Walker and published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Morgan Holmes has kindly endorsed the publication as “an indispensable contribution to the field” of critical intersex studies, injecting “new life into resources for scholars and activists alike” and providing “a solid scholarly base fro which to think about emerging questions” in the field.

Christopher Jordens and I have written on ‘When Bioethics Fails: Intersex, Epistemic Injustice and Advocacy’:

The relationship between bioethics and advocacy is a contentious issue in bioethics and in medical contexts where advocacy and activism seek to advance the interests of particular groups or populations. This chapter raises this issue in connection with intersex, also termed disorders (or differences) of sex development. We present an interview between an intersex advocate and an academic who teaches bioethics. The interview explores what bioethics offers to intersex advocacy, by placing bioethics among a range of discourses on which contemporary intersex advocacy draws. The interview also explores what intersex advocacy offers to bioethics. The interview concludes that advocacy should be pursued when bioethics fails to achieve outcomes in medicine that are grounded in firm evidence and human rights norms.
Keywords: intersex; disorders of sex development; advocacy; bioethics; epistemic injustice

• A free access preprint: When Bioethics Fails (preprint)
• The final authenticated version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91475-2_7

I have also written an afterword on ‘Global Intersex, an Afterword: Global Medicine, Connected Communities, and Universal Human Rights’:

This afterword for the book section on global intersex provides an overview of nomenclature, global medicine, connected intersex and LGBT communities, and the application of universal human rights principles. It brings together and contextualises the chapters in this section, underscoring their interconnectedness and relationships to a globalised medical discourse, and increasingly global intersex movements and academic studies. It identifies a multiplicity of voices and perspectives – some included within this collection and others absent – seeking to recognise the impact of colonialism and colonial languages on the multiple different values and beliefs that give different meanings to the existence of people with intersex variations.
Keywords: intersex; disorders of sex development; global medicine; human rights; LGBT

It was a genuine honour to be invited to write an afterword to the book section on ‘global intersex’, and write about contributions by Lih-Mei Liao, Limor Meoded Danon, Michela Balocchi, Arpita Das, Ino Kehrer and Kamran Kureshi.

• A free access preprint: Global Intersex, an Afterword (preprint)
• The final authenticated version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91475-2_15

Thank you to Megan, Chris, Morgan H, and all the authors. The book can be found at good booksellers and at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-91475-2