The Recognition of Intersex People: Critical and Ethical Perspectives

In this paper, we examine intersexuation from a cross-sectional perspective, mobilising biological definitions, legal instruments, and philosophical resources. First, we recall what intersexuation is, highlighting the diversity of biological realities that the notion covers. Then, we analyse it in the wake of Judith Butler’s work, showing how gender, conceived as a binary and naturalising power apparatus, normatively produces and institutes male and female sexes. Such a production is based on constitutive exclusions, as revealed by sex reassignment medical procedures, as well as by the difficulty overcoming the sex dichotomy enshrined in Belgian law (M/F), despite the amendments made to Article 57 of the Civil Code in 2007 (now Art. 48). Finally, we attempt to provide an ethical response to the violence of this normative apparatus by apprehending the “non-standard” status of intersex subjects in light of theories of recognition, which have been particularly revived since the appearance of Axel Honneth's work. We argue that, by combining Butler's guidelines with what Honneth identifies as experiences of contempt (bodily violence, legal deprivation, and social offence)–which are all obstacles to personal integrity and a positive relationship to the self in the three spheres of love, law, and solidarity–we will be able to put forward a criterion of appreciation that justifies the critique of power and supports the recognition of intersex subjects