GLEESON, Juliana
Hermaphrodite Logic: A History of Intersex Liberation

Hermaphrodite Logic is a bold examination of intersex liberation. Juliana Gleeson reveals how a movement challenged systemic medical abuses to reshape our understanding of sex. Blending philosophical insights and personal testimonies, Gleeson argues that intersex people have been harmed not just for therapeutic reasons but to ease professional and parental anxieties. [publishers’ note]

“As someone with a ringside seat to the emergence of intersex activism in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s—the in-your-face Hermaphrodites With Attitude newsletter was edited by members of my collective household—I’m thrilled to see this short, sharp history of a now-international movement. Gleeson’s critical perspective make a welcome contribution at a time when much of intersex discourse no longer politically challenges medical power.”
—Susan Stryker

“Juliana Gleeson has long operated at the forefront of contemporary sex-liberationist thought and the cutting edge of a Marxism against cisness. In this moving tribute to intersex liberation, she demonstrates exactly why and how the oppression of so-called hermaphrodites illuminates the whole edifice of sexed unfreedom for everyone, while their collective struggle and reason—albeit often shamefully neglected on the left—shows us the only real way out. Especially in this time when powerful cissexist actors are seeking (as it were) to make sexuation great again, Hermaphrodite Logic is exactly what antifascists need: an eminently usable ensemble of political theory and strategy grounded in historical counter-reality.”
—Sophie Lewis

Published by Verso, 2025
Politics / Queer Culture / Gender Studies