Temporal Bodies: Emergencies, Emergence, and Intersex Embodiment

This chapter demonstrates the ways in which temporalities are institutionally constructed. To do so, the chapter engages with intersex embodiment to show how the institutions of healthcare, psychosocial care, and law offer different temporal constructions of the same body alternating between emergency and emergence. Whereas intersex embodiment has often been understood in terms of ‘emergency’ necessitating ‘one-off’ interventions in order to ‘fix’ the child, this chapter attempts to reorient care towards ‘emergence’ focusing on the needs of the intersex person across the whole of the life course. In doing so, this chapter encourages clinical and juridical decision makers to engage with deferability as a crucial element of best interests assessments. Deferability, as this chapter demonstrates, offers clear guidelines to practitioners and policy makers in the determination of emergencies.