The Discourse Analysis of the Scientific-Medical Knowledge that Legitimates Medical Mutilations to Intersex People in Costa Rica
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15517/gr47fd81Keywords:
Intersexuality, Discourse, Sex Variations, Rules of Formation, Non-discursive PracticesAbstract
Introduction: the Costa Rican medical system has perpetrated violence towards intersex people by means of pathologization and mutilation. Thus, there must be a convincing questioning towards this system that justifies these types of violence.
Objective: the purpose of this article is to analyze the medical discourse and non-discursive practices that legitimate and perpetuate the pathologization and mutilation of people who were born with sex variations.
Methodology: this study has a qualitative and exploratory approach in which the Foucauldian discourse analysis was used and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted.
Results: sex variations are pathologized from the construction of a “healthy body” and towards which are compared within the medical discourse and non-discursive practices. This “healthy body” type is endosexual and positioned as base material that promotes the continuity of the gender binary from its patriarchal construction.
Conclusions: the medical discourse and non-discursive practices keep legitimating mutilations towards people born with sex variations by using mostly and for this purpose non-medical reasoning and surreptitious coercive methods.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Carlos Guillermo Calderón-Tenorio, Nathan Romano-Solís (Autor/a)
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