An individual’s sexual condition and characteristics are the primary elements for defining that person’s identity and for him or him to be recognised in society. As a result of modern medicine, however, the individual’s sexual characteristics are no longer an unchangeable fact, but can be modified, so that people are free to deconstruct and reconstruct their physical belonging to one biological gender rather than the other. In this respect, today’s medicine and surgery can thus be defined as tools that aid the full achievement of individuals’ identity. Yet one cannot ignore the fact that there is also an ancillary risk of ‘normalisation’, brought about by medical and surgical practice, of all those people whose biological gender is not well defined and definable and of all those people who do not want to identify with just one sex and just one gender.
Keywords: Medicalisation - Intersexuality - Transsexuality - Human rights - Identity - Gender