Cary Gabriel Costello is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of LGBT+ Studies at UWM, and teaches and researches in the areas of sociology of the body, sex and gender, and intersectional identity. As a public sociologist and intersex advocate, Costello works to educate the public about the physical sex spectrum and diversity in gender identities.

Abstract:
Global Diversity in Sex Categories and Gender Identities: Resistance to Binarist Colonialism

The idea that physical sex is binary nature is treated as a basic, natural, universal fact in the contemporary West. Yet empirically speaking, sex characteristics (chromosomes, gonads, genitals, and hormone balances) each appear in a spectrum of variations. That is, intersexuality is a universal reality in all human societies. This presentation provides an overview of the diversity of ways world societies have divided the sex spectrum in nonbinary ways, and have allowed movement between gender categories. It then addresses the spread of the European ideology of binary sex through colonialism, the spread of Western medical interventions into intersex and trans bodies in recent decades, and the growth of advocacy to resist the medicolegal compulsion to require intersex and trans bodies to conform to binary sex expectations around the globe.