Bodily rights and gifts: intersex, Abrahamic religions and human rights

Abstract

Recommendations about best practice for upholding the agency and physical integrity of intersex people using human rights discourses acknowledge that the lack of specific protections for people with intersex characteristics to date is a problem. However, failure to follow such recommendations leaves people with intersex characteristics still vulnerable to violations of their agency and physical integrity. Religious communities, especially those that teach that binary sex is intended by God, may be particularly challenged by intersex, despite historic recognition of multiple sex categories in Judaism and Islam in particular. However, these religions also contain resources for constructing rich and robust accounts of personhood, and understanding diverse forms of embodiment as a gift. In particular, Abrahamic constructions of life as gift from God offer a different way to promote the physical and spiritual integrity and wellbeing of people with intersex characteristics.

Keywords:

• Intersex characteristics
• Abrahamic religions
• human rights

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Religion and Human Rights: Compatibility, Conflict and Resolution conference, Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham (2014), and the Intersex Social Sciences: Activism, Human Rights and Citizenship conference, Bologna (2018). I am grateful to Daniela Crocetti and Surya Monro, and the anonymous reviewers for Culture, Health and Sexuality, for their feedback and suggestions for development on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This cluster of bodily states, where bodies do not fall within commonly accepted understandings of maleness or femaleness, are sometimes known as Variations of Sex Characteristics (VSC). Here, however, I use the term ‘intersex characteristics’ to reflect common usage within many activist and advocacy communities and the fact that ‘intersex’ has usually been the term written into soft law.

2 These include the Jewish category of the aylonit (a female who has not begun to menstruate or grow pubic hair by the age of 20 – in a possible parallel with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) and the Islamic category of the khuntaa mushkil (who has both male and female external sex characteristics).