The title may be off-putting for members of the queer community, but in my opinion this book is an excellent addition to the arsenal of evidence against biological essentialism in matters of sex. The author takes clear aim at a medical establishment that, as a whole, put maintaining the existing worldview at least on a level with providing care to their patients, if not ABOVE providing care, as the kind of "care" given was often inextricably tainted by that worldview (as Dreger put it, you cannot have science and medicine without scientists and doctors). The book ends with a look forward at the work the intersex community is doing to assert their bodily autonomy, which is work that we should all be supporting.

This book surprised and appalled me. Surprised because I didn't realize how subjective determining a person's sex is - the baby is born, the doctor takes a look, and then makes a declaration of boy or girl. Appalled because if a baby isn't easily identified as boy or girl in that look, the baby is probably in for a lifetime of surgeries and medical humiliations that are completely unnecessary health-wise but make the doctors feel better because they "fixed" a "problem".

Such a great book. I highly recommend it to everyone, but especially people who are going to have children so that they'll be better informed of the history and prepared for the doctors' b.s. pressures if they have an intersex child.

An academic overview of the "problem" of ambiguous genitalia, intersex children and adults, and those living as one sex (and even marrying) when (medically speaking) there were internal organs of the other sex.