Intergeschlechtlichkeit / Südafrika, Republik / Afrika / Rassismus / Medizin / Kolonialismus / Geschlecht / Diskriminierung / Widerstand / Aktivismus
Since the early seventeenth century, travelers, scientists, and doctors have falsely claimed that „hermaphroditism“ and intersex are disproportionately common among Black South Africans. Envisioning African Intersex debunks these claims and interrogates how contemporary intersex medicine is embedded in colonial ideologies and scientific racism. Amanda Lock Swarr centers the insights of activists such as Sally Gross, the first openly intersex activist in Africa and a global pioneer of intersex legislation. She also examines the case of Caster Semenya, whose 800m world championship in 2009 was followed by a decade-long public scrutiny of her gender and forced experimental medical interrogations. The volume celebrates African intersex activists‘ strategies for inciting policy and protocol changes. Visual representations are one of the primary ways ideas about raced intersex are manipulated by doctors and reclaimed by activists, so each chapter evaluates photographs, drawings, films, videos, medical imaging, and memes. Envisioning African Intersex exposes the citational chains of erroneous raced claimed that underpin medical premises about so-called „hermaphroditism,“ and unseats them with activists‘ challenges to medical violence and articulations of new decolonial visions of gender.