Dr

My lecture focuses on the dynamic relationships between time and intersex bodies that exist on the one hand in medical policy on intersex bodies and on the other in intersex people’s subjective experiences. Time, from a sociological perspective, is a biosocial agent that establishes diagnostic practices, regulations, and treatment policy regarding intersex bodies. The systematic construction of time frames by biomedical professionals aim to quickly diagnose and treat intersex patients are deeply rooted in the ‘dimorphic soma-gender order,’ the imaginable, unified, polar normative relationship of female bodies to femininity and male bodies to masculinity. From a socio-phenomenological perspective, I describe the concept of somatic time, which describes the possible relationship between time and the soma, how bodies has their own particular clock and tempo to grow, change and develop, how bodies are time capsule that store old experiences that expressed in particular moments. I will illustrate the somatic time of intersex people, their subjective embodiment experiences of soma-gender relationship and how their somatic time challenges the biomedical time frames. This qualitative study is based on narrative interviews with biomedical professionals, parents of intersex children, and intersex adults from Israel and Germany.