On How Ploughing a Lonely Furrow Might Affect Youths' Sexual Health.

This article aims to make a case for the need to sensitize the medical community on the importance of providing sexual health information in the care of intersex adolescents and young adults for whom sexuality and intimacy are sensitive subjects-and to go beyond a narrow focus on surgical outcomes. For this purpose, this article gives voice to the lived experience of "Emma," a young adult who identifies as intersex. Setting up strong collaboration between medical teams and intersex support groups might be the best way forward to provide high-quality care to youth born with variations of sex characteristics.

Young Voices: Sexual Health and Transition Care Needs in Adolescents with Intersex/Differences of Sex Development-A Pilot Study.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To determine the sexual health and well-being needs of current generations of youth with intersex/Differences of Sex Development (DSD) during transition from pediatric to adult health care. DESIGN: Qualitative narrative analyses, quantitative descriptives, and questionnaires. SETTING: Peer support networks and outpatient clinics. PARTICIPANTS: Eighteen adolescents aged 16-21 years with intersex/DSD. INTERVENTIONS: Semi-structured interviews and/or survey. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Youths learning about bodily differences, their sexual experiences and motives (eg, agency, pleasure), body image, sexual communication inside and outside of health care, and perceived gaps between current and ideal transitional care. Quantitative and qualitative content of the surveys and interviews were analyzed to identify key topics. RESULTS: We found that (1) there is a need for open-minded perceptions of health care providers about what it means to have a sex variation: (2) there is a need for continued support and information about lived realities relating to the diagnosis and treatments as well as experiential aspects of sexuality: and (3) there are communication obstacles with providers in a multidisciplinary team setting as well as with parents. CONCLUSION: A user-centered care perspective for adolescents with sex variations includes their stories and feedback toward service improvement. This pilot study shows that adolescents want to be more involved in their sexual health care in ways that connect to their specific questions. Their desire for information increases as they grow older, and underlines the most essential lesson that health care providers can bring their patients about their bodies: how to care for, respect, and enjoy them.

'Aching to be a boy': A preliminary analysis of gender assignment of intersex persons in India in a culture of son preference.

Intersexuality, particularly in the global South, remains an under-researched field of study. In my in-progress doctoral research project, I explore the cultural, social, and medical discourses that influence how key stakeholders such as healthcare providers make decisions about the sex and gender assignment of the intersex child in India. In this paper I interrogate some of these ideas around gender assignment of intersex people in India, paying particular attention to the context of son preference. I am interested in exploring how decisions of gender assignment by medical professionals are guided by ideas of son preference. Focusing on four qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews across two cities with medical doctors from different specializations, this paper is a preliminary attempt to examine some of the factors that guide medical professionals in making decisions about gender assignment of intersex children and explore the dynamics of the decision-making process. Specifically, I explore the factors that inform doctors' decision-making and locate these decision-making processes within the broader socio-cultural context of India.

Intersex, infertility and the future: early diagnoses and the imagined life course.

Infertility is often recognised as a status that is medically identified in adulthood after unsuccessful attempts to conceive. This paper develops existing literature by illustrating how current conceptualisations of infertility do not incorporate a full range of experiences. Drawing on detailed, reflective diaries and in-depth interviews with five participants, I explore how infertility is experienced and understood by women with variations of sex characteristics (VSCs) or intersex traits. I argue that greater consideration needs to be applied to intersex people and the circumstances of an infertility status that may be received in infancy, childhood or adolescence, before or outside of attempts to conceive, and without undergoing fertility treatment. Through discussions of time and futurity, this paper seeks to explore how visions of the future coalesce with an infertile status that is received in combination with an atypical sex status early in life. The paper indicates that early infertility can hinder some intersex children and young people's ambitions. However, infertility is not understood to be pathological or consistently prohibitive throughout the lives of everyone affected. Intersex women's conceptions of a potentially childless future are varied, complex, ambivalent and, in some cases, transitional throughout the life course.

O segredo na clínica da ambiguidade genital: Um estudo de caso / The secret in the clinic of genital ambiguity: A case study / El secreto en la clínica de ambigüedad genital: Un estudio de caso

O artigo apresenta o estatuto do segredo familiar como forma de enfrentamento ao diagnóstico de ambiguidade genital de uma criança. O estudo de caso, realizado a partir da escuta clínica de base psicanalítica, evidenciou a experiência destes pais frente à condição da ambiguidade genital, de forma particular e única. Destaca-se o modo como cada um tenta assimilar o real desta condição genética a partir de um segredo familiar estabelecido entre os pais e o irmão mais velho do paciente.

This article presents the statute of the family secret as a way of confronting the diagnosis of genital ambiguity in a child. The case study, conducted through a psychoanalytic clinical listening, disclosed a unique and particular parental experience in facing their child's genital ambiguity. We highlight individuals' particular attempts to assimilate the reality of this genetic condition through a family secret established between the patient's parents and older brother.

El artículo presenta el estatuto del secreto de familia como forma de enfrentar el diagnóstico de ambigüedad genital del niño. Un estudio de caso desde la escucha clínica psicoanalítica pone de relieve la experiencia de los padres frente a la condición de ambigüedad genital de manera particular y única. Se destaca la forma como cada cual intenta asimilar el real de esta condición genética a partir de un secreto de familia que se establece entre los padres y el hermano mayor del paciente.