Queering the Genitals: an Operation Useful for All

Abstract

Queer theory is often interested in the body primarily regarding its role in affective relations, reordering the genitals as participants in sex and gender, not as primary indicators of actions or categories. In this article, instead, we apply queer theory to genital materiality and practice by looking at what genitals are expected to do, and the practices that modify them (enhancing or shifting gendered category). Anxiety regarding genital form lurks outside the queer, stimulating definitions of norms and practices to enforce them. The queering of the genitals -an examination of their performative construction in the nexus of identity, desire, and privilege- touches all bodies, highlighting the instability of genital gender and normality.

Keywords: genitals, genital modification, cultural genitals, intersex, DSD, transgender, cisgender.