Intersex Genealogy · Postcolonial genealogy of intersexuality. Influence of US and Spanish scientific theories in the Colombian medical practices and discourses about intersexuality in the second half of twentieth century

Postcolonial genealogy of intersexuality. Influence of US and Spanish scientific theories in the Colombian medical practices and discourses about intersexuality in the second half of twentieth century

The concept of gender has been useful for feminism in order to propose cultural and social struggles outside biological disputes about the supposed anatomical differences between men and women. Nevertheless, the separation between sex and gender works also as a liberal argument for medical intervention in the case of newborns with genital diversity. This means that, while the concept of gender has allowed feminists to problematize assigned roles and the unequal distribution of social labors, it has also consolidated an epistemic frame that was used by scientists in the 1950s to reinforce the heteronormative order. Looking forward to contribute to the construction of a genealogy of history of intersexuality in Colombia, and analyzing the circulation of knowledge between USA, Spain and Colombia, three scientists were chosen as clue of this research: respectively, John Money (1921-2006), Gregorio Marañón y Posadillo (1887-1960) and Francisco Gnecco Mozzo (1904-1973), who evidenced the tensions between global and local conceptualization of intersexuality as a disease. Besides their scientific affinities and historical connections, this research evidence their need to perpetuate liberal and conservative orders compelled them to construct epistemological strategies to medically represent normalized and binary sexed bodies. The influence of Gregorio Marañón y Posadillo was crucial in the first half of 20th century to bring medicalization of infancy up. Francisco Gnecco Mozzo’s medical discourses evidenced his discussions with Marañón’s theories, after his studies at the Pathology Institute conducted by Gregorio Marañón in the Provincial Hospital of Madrid (1932), problematized both the Colombian medical representation of sexed bodies, and Marañón’s theories, in which some of the widespread positions based on. Additionally, from his studies new local ways of understanding sexuality and intersexuality were evidenced. In the middle of the same century, when the transition of the French medical epistemic model was been changed for the liberal North American one, the influenced of John Money’s research team of the John Hopkins Hospital has been established in Colombian medical praxis and discourses. Besides the analysis of John Money and his research team’s theories, Bernardo Ochoa Arismendy (1926 - 2016) was interviewed as a Money’s ideas promoter. The perspectives that this project results suggest to tackle the historical conceptualization of intersexuality as a disease are manly three: the relationships between liberal ideologies and the gender concept used in medicine, the institutionalization and professionalization of some medical specialties as pediatrics and obstetrics and, the conceptualization of the infancy as a new biological and social entity that have to be medicalized.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union