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Intersex, infertility and the future: early diagnoses and the imagined life course
Author(s) -
Jones Charlotte
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.12990
Subject(s) - infertility , fertility , ambivalence , life course approach , vision , developmental psychology , psychology , medicine , social psychology , sociology , pregnancy , population , genetics , environmental health , anthropology , biology
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 ( VSC s) 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.