University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Soc Stud Sci. 2022 Feb;52(1):79-105. doi: 10.1177/03063127211056891. Epub 2021 Nov 9.
Throughout much of recorded history, societies that assigned rights and duties based on sex were confounded by people with unclear sex. For the sake of maintaining social and legal order in those contexts, legal systems assigned these people to what they figured was the 'most dominant' sex. Then, in mid-19th century United States, a new classification mechanism emerged: sex-assignment surgery, which was imagined by some surgeons to 'fix' one's physical and legal sex status permanently. Other surgeons, however, fiercely opposed the new practice. This article traces the controversy around sex-assignment surgery through three high-profile cases published in US medical journals from 1849 to 1886. Its central argument is that the more general effort to transform surgery into a scientific field helped legitimate the practice of sex-assignment surgery. Although such surgery was subject to intense moral criticism because it was thought to breach the laws of men and nature, over time, these concerns were abandoned or transformed into technical or professional disagreements. In a secondary argument, which helps explain that transformation, this article shows that surgeons gradually became comfortable occupying the epistemic role of sex-classifiers and even sex-makers. That is, whereas sex classification was traditionally a legal task, the new ability to surgically construct one's genitals engendered the notion that sex could be determined and fixed in the clinic in a legally binding manner. Accordingly, I suggest that surgery became an epistemic act of fact-making. This evolution of the consensus around sex-assignment surgery also provides an early origin story for the idea of sex as plastic and malleable by surgeons, thus offering another aspect to the history of plastic sex.
纵观有记载的历史，那些根据性别赋予权利和义务的社会，往往会被性别不明确的人所困扰。为了在这些情况下维护社会和法律秩序，法律体系将这些人归为他们认为“最具主导地位”的性别。然后，在 19 世纪中期的美国，一种新的分类机制出现了：性别重置手术，一些外科医生认为这种手术可以永久性地“修复”一个人的生理和法律性别身份。然而，其他外科医生强烈反对这种新做法。本文通过追溯 1849 年至 1886 年期间在美国医学期刊上发表的三个备受瞩目的案例，探讨了围绕性别重置手术的争议。本文的核心论点是，将外科手术转变为一个科学领域的更广泛努力，有助于使性别重置手术合法化。尽管这种手术因被认为违反了人类和自然的法则而受到强烈的道德批评，但随着时间的推移，这些担忧被放弃或转变为技术或专业上的分歧。在第二个次要论点中，本文展示了外科医生逐渐习惯于扮演性别分类者甚至性别制造者的角色，从而有助于解释这种转变。也就是说，虽然性别分类传统上是一项法律任务，但通过手术构建自身生殖器的新能力，引发了这样一种观念，即性别可以在诊所中以具有法律约束力的方式被确定和固定。因此，我认为手术成为了一种事实制造的认知行为。这种性别重置手术共识的演变，也为外科医生可以塑造和改变性别的观念提供了一个早期起源故事，从而为塑造性别的历史提供了另一个方面。
