Abstract
Given the use of religious, theological, and biblical materials upon categories of gender, sexuality, and embodiment that constrain and cut (physically and psychically) those with ostensibly ambiguous bodies, what should scholars of religion and the Bible do for the best? I contend that those interested and invested in religious materials should attend to feminist and queer perspectives on authoritative discourses, in order to trace what can be done in solidarity with and as people with intersex conditions. The purpose of this move is not to “speak for them” or to subsume (further) biblical authority for ourselves, but rather to recognize that certain feminist and queer resources have already been helpful for intersex advocacy.1 To extend such efforts with biblical images, ideas, and arguments requires staging new conversations between feminist and queer biblical studies and intersex advocacy. Such resources can help address and complicate questions about whether (and how) the Bible speaks to the conditions that generate the stigmatizing and dehumanizing treatment of intersex people. After all, the Bible includes reflections about and depictions of eunuchs and circumcised members, thus acknowledging genitalia that have been surgically altered, likely because they operate as one overdetermined site for the accumulation and circulation of a range of significations around difference and identification, desire and power.
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Marchal, J.A. (2015). Who Are You Calling a Eunuch?! Staging Conversations and Connections between Feminist and Queer Biblical Studies and Intersex Advocacy. In: Cornwall, S. (eds) Intersex, Theology, and the Bible. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349019_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349019_2
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