Daniela Crocetti

• PhD
• Research Fellow at Bar Ilan University

This Special Issue showcases the expanding body of international scholarly work within intersex studies [...]

Decision-making dynamics in Italian paediatric care for Intersex and Variations of Sex Characteristics (VSC) involve a complex interplay between medical practices, parental perspectives, and socio-cultural factors. This article explores how medical professionals and parents make decisions amid cultural debates on gender, the body, and autonomy. It...

Intersex people and those with variations of sex characteristics face significant health and social issues. This paper analyses the complexities of adult healthcare for this diverse population, including the root causes of deficiencies in care provision. Many minors with variations of sex characteristics are subjected to irreversible, non-consensua...

Many have heard of Bleeding Disorders (BDs) despite the fact that they are rare diseases, because of the infected blood scandals of the 1990s. As for many diseases that have caught media attention, public understanding is limited. Lay medical practitioners may still believe that BDs are exclusively sex-linked. Women with BDs therefore have a diffic...

Background The health harms caused by sex-normalising and unnecessary irreversible medical interventions on intersex infants and children can include chronic pain, a need for repeat surgeries, damage to sexuality, serious mental health problems, and sterility. However, access to appropriate healthcare is needed - occasionally for lifesaving treatme...

Agency-based approaches to the health of intersex people and those with DSD focus on bodily autonomy and the cessation of normalising medical interventions until an under-age person can exercise fully informed choice regarding treatment. Discussions regarding intersex agency and health care can be inspired by the social model of health that emerged...

In this article we address activist, patient advocate and medic perspectives on framing intersex, variations of sex characteristics and disorders/differences in sex development medical treatment as human rights abuses. Problematic aspects of intersex medical treatment have increasingly been highlighted in national debates and international human ri...

In this article we address the shift to naming intersex childhood medical treatment as serious human rights abuses (such as harmful cultural practices and/or and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment). The article presents intersex rights claims, illustrates a brief history of intersex human rights strategies as witnessed by the co-authors, outline...

Citizenship studies is highly relevant to understanding intersex, variations of sex characteristics (VSC), and Disorders of Sex Development (DSD), yet little scholarship exists to date about intersex citizenship. This article outlines and develops the foundations for a distinctive intersex citizenship studies, addressing health citizenship, childre...

There are few non-medical reflections on haemophilia and chronic bleeding disorders (CBDs), and what there is often turn out to be wrong, outdated, or fanciful. CBDs are often hidden experiences, aside from the lack of treatment in literature, academic or not. This article re-frames CBDs through a philosophical, yet subjective, treatment that seeks...

The twentieth century has assisted the conceptual and practical separation of the terms sex and gender so as to have better tools to address what are considered biological factors versus social factors. The biological construction of sex has delved deeper into the body, beyond the mere genitals, to expose not only reproductive organs and gonads but...

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...

This article proposes to consider the deterministic potential of genetic testing by confronting the genetic "mystique" portrayed in popular culture (and in certain scientific literature), in which DNA is seen as the soul of the cell and genes as master molecules (Lindee and Nelkin 2004), with molecular genetic test-ing laboratory practices. We will...

In the world of biomedicine, doctors and patients walk through linguistic and cultural mazes in search of explanations, solutions, and care. Patients increasingly use patient-run support groups in order to take an active role in their own care and to elaborate to themselves what is happening to them. These groups increasingly use the Internet as th...