Beyond the deficit: From damage to desire in intersex studies

Intersex studies, although often framed as an ‘emerging’ field, has been rooted in activism and scholarly inquiry since at least the early 1990s. Much of this work has centred on documenting harm towards individuals with variations of sex characteristics, in what could be considered a damage-based approach. Recently, scholars and activists have begun to advocate for a shift towards intersex joy as an alternative framework. This article explores the suggested ‘turn’, arguing for a critical and cautious engagement with joy. While important, there is a risk that this might downplay or erase intersex accounts that complicate easy distinctions between harm and joy. We analyse historical and contemporary discourses on intersex happiness, often framed as reliant upon medical intervention. Happiness, we suggest, is always culturally and politically contingent, and is mobilised differently by parents, intersex adults, policymakers and clinicians, sometimes to justify interventions, other times to resist them. Recognising this complexity is not simply descriptive, it opens space for rethinking what counts as harm, care and flourishing, and for developing research, policies and activism attuned to both structural injustice and resistant forms of joy. We propose a flexible, desire-based approach to intersex studies that does more than document trauma or celebrate joy: it examines how both are shaped by power, how they risk being dichotomised and how scholars and stakeholders generate meaning, belonging and critique. This approach acknowledges intersex experiences as complex and contradictory, while remaining attentive to broader systems of power that structure their lives.