"Circumcision. Childhood vaccinations. Preschool beauty pageants. Steroids and sports. Designer vaginas. Hair straightening. Drag queens and kings. Burkas. Eyelid surgery. Sexual dysfunction. End-of-life care. … Despite the widely varying views expressed about ‘the body,' people tend to agree on this point: when it comes to the body, there's tremendous pressure to play by the rules."

Thus begins the introduction of Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules, a collection of ethnographic research and personal stories about individuals who transgress body norms. Chris Bobel, associate professor of Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston and co-editor of the work with other Samantha Kwan started her talk about the recently published book last Thursday at the Women's Studies Research Center Epstein Lecture Hall. Bobel explained, "I taught a course called ‘Gender and the Body' seven years ago, and I found that when we talk about resistance to norms, students really come to life." Bobel defined embodied resistance as "oppositional action or nonviolence that defies contextual body norms." The 16 research-based chapters of her book address an array of questions about resistance. Some of these questions include: Why do some resist while most of us comply, even if we do so grudgingly? Who are the resisters? Are there certain conditions under which resistance is more possible? What role does privilege play? How does resistance occur?

The book comprises four sections. Part I is titled "Rewriting Gender Scripts" and talks about socially constructed femininity and masculinity, exploring ways that some people defy these gendered norms. Part II, "Challenging Marginalization," explores more public acts of resistance. For example, the book talks about the Red Hat Society, a group of middle-aged and older women who are "not dead yet." They resist the role of aging women by having fun and being social. Part III, "Defying Authoritative Knowledge and Conventional Wisdom," discusses alternative ways of looking at the world. Finally, Bobel explained that the last section of the book, "Negotiating Boundaries and Meanings," focuses on "the relational dimension of ‘doing' resistance." Each section, rich in images and individual accounts, paints a multifaceted picture of the body and inspires a more in-depth understanding of its social significance.

Following Bobel's talk, Esther Morris Leidolf—a woman who contributed a section to Embodied Resistance on her experience as an intersex adolescent—spoke at length about her adulthood and the sad truths about intersex life in America's binary-obsessed society. As a teenager, Leidolf was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, meaning that she was born without a uterus and could not menstruate. However, to all her male doctors, her condition was first and foremost a "social emergency" that had to be corrected, lest she be unable to practice a "normal sex life with her husband." As a teenage, Liedolf therefore underwent a series of painful, traumatizing surgeries to conform to the standards imposed on her. In her talk, Leidolf asked us to consider the conservative assumptions inherent in the mindset of her doctors.

Leidolf enlightened her audience to the countless social assumptions involved in medical approaches to the 36 different medically-defined intersex conditions. Doctors can legally operate on an intersex infant or minor without parents' consent on the grounds that the individual in question needs to be normalized so that he or she may identify as male or female. But the basis for determining whether a child may or may not live a normal sex life in the future is, in part, chalked up to a measurement of a baby's genitals. "If a baby girl has a clitoris larger than this," said Leidolf, holding up the back end of a retractable ballpoint pen, "she will lose it," meaning doctors would remove it. What's more is that the default gender assignment for intersex individuals is female because, as Leidolf learned from a doctor of hers, "It's easier to dig a hole than build a pole."

The surgeries designed to create a more "normal" vagina "severed [Leidolf's] relationship with [her] gender identity." The traumatizing procedures she endured to build her a vagina that could accommodate a penis were cosmetic and medically unnecessary, as are 95 percent of intersex surgeries performed, according to Leidolf. "People ask me, ‘Didn't you want a vagina?' I'll never know," she explained. She has, however, managed to overcome her own personal suffering so that she can give talks such as this one in order to break our society's fixation on gender normality. At the request of an audience member, Leidolf challenged the assumption that normal sexual function should be limited to heterosexual intercourse.

Though this issue is gaining increasing attention, the wide range of intersex conditions makes it difficult for these individuals to form a community. Those willing to open up about their experiences are therefore hugely important to the growth of the cause. "It's tough to go public with your privates," she admitted at the conclusion of her talk. "Who determines if [what we're born with are] the right gonads? God should, but doctors do." It is people like Leidolf, who challenge and inform society on the world's sexual diversity, who represent the progress being made toward our acceptance of this diversity and our allowance of intersex individuals to make their own decisions regarding their genders and identities.