Standing your ground: Intersex terminology in the performance of substantive citizenship in Hong Kong

Abstract

<p>Intersex activists have found voice in Asia in recent years, standing up to affirm the existence here of people whose innate sex characteristics fall outside of social expectation – that is, intersex people, those born not clearly male or female. Joining an international fight for their human rights, they have been working to promote the right to bodily integrity and autonomy of intersex children in particular (Carpenter 2016; 2022). For intersex citizenship to thrive, there must be legal reform and resource distribution so that citizenship even at the state level can be advanced (Monro, Crocetti & Yeadon-Lee 2019), but dominant citizenship <em>practices</em>, citizenship performances learned through experience, require a different kind of resistance if there is to be a shift that makes room for intersex bodies and identities(King 2021). It is through acts of dissidence that substantive citizenship beyond state control will emerge. This talk focuses on an interview with intersex activist Small Luk in Hong Kong, using discourse analysis to examine her words about the importance of terminology in the struggle for public awareness. She tells of numerous acts of citizenship in which stigma and invisibility are resisted, and these dissident acts of citizenship have led to changes in public discourse. We see that intersex people in Asia, like Small Luk, have begun to create disorder, breaking the silence and becoming political subjects with the right to claim rights by standing their ground and asserting their own bodies and identities.</p>