Beauvoir's Ambiguity and Unruly Bodies

The aim of this project is to account for why we often denigrate intersex and trans bodies as disruptive and threatening. Within a binary understanding of sex and gender, we might call these bodies unruly. They deviate from what is normal but also challenge the very conceptions of normality. Appropriating Simone de Beauvoir's concept of ambiguity as the "paradox of man," I argue that intersex and trans bodies unsettle us because they reflect the freedom of the body and our associated responsibility in choosing how we live the body. We denigrate these individuals from within a spirit of seriousness, claiming that sex and gender are absolute to abdicate any responsibility for them. That is, we denounce unruly bodies in an attempt to flee from the freedom and responsibility of our own bodies.