Disorders and identities: clinical sex and gender in Britain in 1969

This article examines 1969 as an important moment in the development of British clinical and social understandings of sex and gender. Specifically, I focus on two key events: the publication of The Intersexual Disorders by Dewhurst and Gordon and the First International Symposium on Gender Identity in London. The Intersexual Disorders (1969) framed variations of sex characteristics as biological issues, but ones with necessarily negative social and psychological consequences, influenced by US clinical practices associated with John Money. The symposium was an attempt to frame gender identity as separate from biological sex, while at the same time consolidating clinical authority over issues of gender. While the book was supposed to focus on intersex and the biological, gender and trans issues haunt the content. While the symposium was supposed to focus on gender identity, there was an almost constant slippage to discussion of the biological, and of intersex variations. Both the publication and the symposium represent boundary work between concepts of sex, gender and sexuality, but also between the biological, the psychological and the social. This effected both British and international clinical and social approaches to sex, gender and sexuality, including the healthcare protocols for intersex and transgender individuals.