![]() | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(December 2022) |
Katrina Karkazis | |
---|---|
![]() Karkazis at Schulich School of Law in 2018 | |
Born | 1970 |
Nationality | American, Greek |
Alma mater | Columbia University |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2016) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Anthropology and bioethics |
Institutions | Amherst College, Stanford University, Honors Academy Brooklyn College, Emory University |
Thesis | Beyond treatment: mapping the connections among gender, genitals, and sexuality in recent controversies over intersexuality (2002) |
Doctoral advisor | Carole S. Vance |
Other academic advisors | Sherry B. Ortner, Shirley Lindenbaum, Lesley Sharp, E. Valentine Daniel |
Website | katrinakarkazis |
Katrina Alicia Karkazis (born 1970) [1] is an American anthropologist and bioethicist. She is a professor of Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies at Amherst College. She was previously the Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and a senior research fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University. [2] She has written widely on testosterone, intersex issues, sex verification in sports, treatment practices, policy and lived experiences, and the interface between medicine and society. [3] [4] In 2016, she was jointly awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship with Rebecca Jordan-Young. [5]
Katrina Karkazis received her PhD in medical and cultural anthropology, and a Masters in Public Health in maternal and child health, from Columbia University. [6] She has an undergraduate degree in Public Policy from Occidental College. Karkazis completed postdoctoral training in empirical bioethics at Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. [3] [7] After spending 15 years at Stanford, she was the Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She has been a visiting professor at Emory University and is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow with the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University. [8]
In 2008, Karkazis published her first book, Fixing Sex , on the medical treatment and lived experience of intersex people. Since the publication of Fixing Sex and co-authoring a 2012 journal article on sex testing in sport, Out of Bounds, Karkazis has widely written and been quoted as an expert on issues of informed consent, bodily diversity, testosterone, and access to sport. Media coverage of sport issues includes American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Guardian , Los Angeles Times , New Scientist , New York Times and Time , often in collaboration with Rebecca Jordan-Young. [9]
In 2015, Karkazis testified before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in the case of Dutee Chand v. Athletics Federation of India (AFI) & The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), and in July 2015 the CAS issued a decision to suspend its sex verification policy on excluding women athletes with hyperandrogenism (high levels of testosterone) due to insufficient evidence of a link between high androgen levels and improved athletic performance. [10] [11] The court allowed two further years for convincing evidence to be submitted by the IAAF, after which the regulation will be automatically revoked if evidence has not been provided. [12]
In 2016, Karkazis was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to work on a book on testosterone, Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, published by Harvard University Press in 2019 and written with Rebecca Jordan-Young. [5] In 2018, Karkazis wrote in The New York Review of Books that "T has become a powerful technology for the production of subjectivity, the most consequential of which is gender." [13]
Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience , published by Duke University Press in 2008 presents a history of the medical treatment and lived experience of intersex people and their families. The book has been well received by both clinicians and intersex groups. Gary Berkovitz, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine states that Karkazis's analysis is fair, compelling, and eloquent. [14] Elizabeth Reis, reviewing the book in American Journal of Bioethics, states that the book "masterfully examines the concerns and fears of all those with a stake in the intersex debate: physicians, parents, intersex adults, and activists." [15] Mijeon, in American Journal of Human Genetics writes that the "conclusion is quite fitting", "the history of thinking about the body ... can be highly politicized and controversial". [16] Kenneth Copeland MD, former president of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society describes the book as, "Masterfully balancing all aspects of one of the most polarizing, contentious topics in medicine... the most recent authoritative treatise on intersex." [3] Intersex community organization Organisation Intersex International Australia regards the book as "approachable," "compelling and recommended reading", [17] and the book was subsequently cited by the Senate of Australia in 2013. [17] [18]
Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, [19] published by Harvard University Press in 2019, focuses on what testosterone does in six domains: reproduction, aggression, risk-taking, power, sports, and parenting. It has been reviewed in Science [20] and Nature. [21]
In Out of Bounds? A Critique of the New Policies on Hyperandrogenism in Elite Female Athletes, a collaborative article with Georgiann Davis, Rebecca Jordan-Young, and Silvia Camporesi, published in 2012 in the American Journal of Bioethics , they argue that a new sex testing policy by the International Association of Athletics Federations will not protect against breaches of privacy, will require athletes to undergo unnecessary treatment in order to compete, and will intensify "gender policing". They recommend that athletes be able to compete in accordance with their legal gender. [22] [23] The analysis was described as an "influential critique" in the Los Angeles Times . [24]
In Emotionally and cognitively informed consent for clinical care for differences of sex development, co-authored with Anne Tamar-Mattis, Arlene Baratz, and Katherine Baratz Dalke and published in 2013, the authors write that "physicians continue to recommend certain irreversible treatments for children with differences of sex development (DSD) without adequate psychosocial support". [25]
In What’s in a Name? The Controversy over “Disorders of Sex Development”, co-authored with Ellen Feder and published in 2008, the authors state that "tracing "the history of the terminology applied to those with atypical sex anatomy reveals how these conditions have been narrowly cast as problems of gender to the neglect of broader health concerns and of the well-being of affected individuals." [26] Karkazis and Feder also collaborated in Naming the problem: disorders and their meanings, published in The Lancet in 2008. [27]
Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience was nominated for the Margaret Mead Award, 2010, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, 2009. [3] In 2016, Karkazis was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. [5]
Clitoridectomy or clitorectomy is the surgical removal, reduction, or partial removal of the clitoris. It is rarely used as a therapeutic medical procedure, such as when cancer has developed in or spread to the clitoris. Commonly, non-medical removal of the clitoris is performed during female genital mutilation.
Sex verification in sports occurs because eligibility of athletes to compete is restricted whenever sporting events are limited to a single sex, which is generally the case, as well as when events are limited to mixed-sex teams of defined composition. Practice has varied tremendously over time, across borders and by competitive level. Issues have arisen multiple times in the Olympic games and other high-profile sporting competitions, for example allegations that certain male athletes attempted to compete as women or that certain female athletes had intersex conditions perceived to give unfair advantage. The topic of sex verification is related to the more recent question of how to treat transgender people in sports. Sex verification is not typically conducted on athletes competing in the male category because there is generally no perceived competitive advantage for a female or intersex athlete to compete in male categories.
Foekje Dillema was a Dutch track and field athlete. She competed in sprinting where she was a rival of Fanny Blankers-Koen. When she refused a sex verification test at age 24, she was banned from competition by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1950. After her death, it was determined that she was an intersex person.
Intersex medical interventions (IMI), sometimes known as intersex genital mutilations (IGM), are surgical, hormonal and other medical interventions performed to modify atypical or ambiguous genitalia and other sex characteristics, primarily for the purposes of making a person's appearance more typical and to reduce the likelihood of future problems. The history of intersex surgery has been characterized by controversy due to reports that surgery can compromise sexual function and sensation, and create lifelong health issues. The medical interventions can be for a variety of reasons, due to the enormous variety of the disorders of sex development. Some disorders, such as salt-wasting disorder, can be life-threatening if left untreated.
Clitoromegaly is an abnormal enlargement of the clitoris that is mostly congenital; it is otherwise acquired through deliberately induced clitoral enlargement e.g. body modification by use of anabolic steroids, including testosterone. It can happen as part of a gender transition. It is not the same as normal enlargement of the clitoris seen during sexual arousal.
Hyperandrogenism is a medical condition characterized by high levels of androgens. It is more common in women than men. Symptoms of hyperandrogenism may include acne, seborrhea, hair loss on the scalp, increased body or facial hair, and infrequent or absent menstruation. Complications may include high blood cholesterol and diabetes. It occurs in approximately 5% of women of reproductive age.
Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".
Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, is an American feminist scientist and gender studies scholar. Her research focuses on social medical science, sex, gender, sexuality, and epidemiology. She is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College.
Hida Viloria is an American writer, author, producer, and human rights activist of Latin American origin. Viloria is intersex, nonbinary, and genderfluid, using they/them pronouns. They are known for their writing, their intersex and non-binary human rights activism, and as one of the first people to come out in national and international media as a nonbinary intersex person. Viloria is Founding Director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality.
Anne Tamar-Mattis is an American attorney, human rights advocate, and founder of interACT. She currently serves as interACT's Legal Director.
Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience, a book by Stanford anthropologist and bioethicist Katrina Karkazis, was published in 2008. Described as "thoughtful", "meticulous", and an "authoritative treatise on intersex", the book examines the perspectives of intersex people, their families, and clinicians to offer compassionate look at the treatment of people born with atypical sex characteristics.
Georgiann Davis is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico and author of the book Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. Davis formerly held similar positions at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, she writes widely on intersex issues and the sociology of diagnosis.
Morgan Carpenter is a bioethicist, intersex activist and researcher. In 2013, he created an intersex flag, and became president of Intersex Human Rights Australia. He is now executive director. Following enactment of legislative protections for people with innate variations of sex characteristics in the Australian Capital Territory, Carpenter is a member of the Variations in Sex Characteristics Restricted Medical Treatment Assessment Board.
Maria José Martínez-Patiño is a Spanish former hurdler, whose dismissal from the Spanish Olympic team in 1986 for failing the gender test is a notable moment in the history of sex verification in sports.
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies". They are substantially more likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) than endosex people. According to a study done in Australia of Australian citizens with intersex conditions, participants labeled 'heterosexual' as the most popular single label with the rest being scattered among various other labels. According to another study, an estimated 8.5% to 20% experiencing gender dysphoria. Although many intersex people are heterosexual and cisgender, this overlap and "shared experiences of harm arising from dominant societal sex and gender norms" has led to intersex people often being included under the LGBT umbrella, with the acronym sometimes expanded to LGBTI. Some intersex activists and organisations have criticised this inclusion as distracting from intersex-specific issues such as involuntary medical interventions.
Intersex people in the United States have some of the same rights as other people, but with significant gaps, particularly in protection from non-consensual cosmetic medical interventions and violence, and protection from discrimination. Actions by intersex civil society organizations aim to eliminate harmful practices, promote social acceptance, and equality. In recent years, intersex activists have also secured some forms of legal recognition. Since April 11, 2022 US Passports give the sex/gender options of male, female and X by self determination.
Intersex people in France face significant gaps in protection from non-consensual medical interventions and protection from discrimination. The birth of Abel Barbin, a nineteenth-century intersex woman, is marked in Intersex Day of Remembrance. Barbin may have been the first intersex person to write a memoir, later published by Michel Foucault.
Intersex people are born with natural variations in physical and sex characteristics including those of the chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies". Such variations may involve genital ambiguity, and combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis allows the elimination of embryos and fetuses with intersex traits and thus has an impact on discrimination against intersex people.
The testosterone regulations in women's athletics are a series of policies first published in 2011 by the IAAF and last updated following a court victory against Caster Semenya in May 2019. The first version of the rules applied to all women with high testosterone, but the current version of the rules only apply to athletes with certain XY disorders of sexual development, and set a 5 nmol/L testosterone limit, which applies only to distances between 400 m and 1 mile (inclusive), other events being unrestricted.
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