Intersex, infertility and the future: early diagnoses and the imagined life course
Jones, CCB
Date: 12 September 2019
Article
Journal
Sociology of Health and Illness
Publisher
Wiley for Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness
Publisher DOI
Abstract
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 ...
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
Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0