Hermaphrodite Logic: A History of Intersex Liberation

by Juliana Gleeson

Overview

How the intersex liberation movement exposed medical harms and became an inspiration to rethink sex and gender

HERMAPHRODITE LOGIC is a bold examination of intersex liberation. Juliana Gleeson reveals how a move-ment challenged systemic medical abuses to reshape our understanding of sex. Blending philosophical insights and personal testimonies, Gleeson argues that intersex people have been harmed not just for therapeutic reasons but to ease professional andparental anxieties.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839760952
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	06/17/2025
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jules Joanne Gleeson is a writer, comedian and historian. She has published essays in outlets including Viewpoint Magazine, Invert Journal and VICE, and performed internationally at a wide range of communist and queer cultural events. She is the co-editor of Transgender Marxism.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Sex is Expressive
1. The Boston Revelation
2. The Clinic Strikes Back
3. Bringing in the Intersex
4. Herms as Humans
5. A Struggle Without a Centre
6. Sex in the Wreckage
7. Conclusion: Hermaphrodite Statues, Intersex Poems

Editorial Reviews

"As someone with a ringside seat to the emergence of intersex activism in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s—the in-your-face Hermaphrodites With Attitude newsletter was edited by members of my collective household—I'm thrilled to see this short, sharp history of a now-international movement. Gleeson's critical perspective make a welcome contribution at a time when much of intersex discourse no longer politically challenges medical power."
—Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution

"Hermaphrodite Logic celebrates the history of intersex liberation as a political movement that creates a new ethics of living with the variety of sex. Emerging in the 1990s, Juliana Gleeson traces how this movement countered the scars of medical intervention imposed on the intersex with wit and logic. The result is a moving and sardonic account that speaks of the intersex with a chorus of voices, rupturing the limits of our normative conceptions of gender and sexuality."
—Benjamin Noys, Professor of Critical Theory, University of Chichester

"Juliana Gleeson has long operated at the forefront of contemporary sex-liberationist thought and the cutting edge of a Marxism against cisness. In this moving tribute to intersex liberation, she demonstrates exactly why and how the oppression of so-called hermaphrodites illuminates the whole edifice of sexed unfreedom for everyone, while their collective struggle and reason - albeit often shamefully neglected on the left - shows us the only real way out. Especially in this time when powerful cissexist actors are seeking (as it were) to make sexuation great again, Hermaphrodite Logic is exactly what antifascists need: an eminently usable ensemble of political theory and strategy grounded in historical counter-reality."
—Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family

"Gleeson’s book beautifully reminds us that the histories of what we know about sex have always been and will remain led by collectives of fellow travellers seeking to forge more capacious, more liveable, more erotic worlds’"
—João Florêncio, co-author of CROSSINGS

"A groundbreaking theory of inter-sexuality from below. Existing intersex histories have only interpreted a world of clinical concepts. HERMAPHRODITE LOGIC makes clear, however, that intersex poses an “ethical question” to that world that charges us to change it"
—Jordy Rosenberg, author of CONFESSIONS OF THE FOX

"Gleeson debuts with an impressive overview of the intersex rights movement...Along the way, firsthand accounts bring to life the trauma caused by secret childhood medical interventions...This is a galvanizing study of an underdiscussed movement."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher