Research Commons
      • Browse 
        • Communities & Collections
        • Titles
        • Authors
        • By Issue Date
        • Subjects
        • Types
        • Series
      • Help 
        • About
        • Collection Policy
        • OA Mandate Guidelines
        • Guidelines FAQ
        • Contact Us
      • My Account 
        • Sign In
        • Register
      View Item 
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Research
      • Arts and Social Sciences
      • Arts and Social Sciences Papers
      • View Item
      •   Research Commons
      • University of Waikato Research
      • Arts and Social Sciences
      • Arts and Social Sciences Papers
      • View Item
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

      Experiencing “the Wrong Kind of Puberty”: Navigating Teenage Years with a Variation in Sex Characteristics

      Joy, Eileen; Lundberg, Tove; Roen, Katrina
      Thumbnail
      Files
      youth-03-00032-v2.pdf
      273.5Kb
      DOI
       10.3390/youth3010032
      Link
       www.mdpi.com
      Find in your library  
      Permanent link to Research Commons version
      https://hdl.handle.net/10289/15665
      Abstract
      There are many different variations in sex characteristics, some of which have implications for how the body goes through puberty. This paper draws from critical disability studies and childhood and youth studies to understand the teenage experiences and aspirations of young people with variations in sex characteristics, focusing particularly on navigating puberty. We undertook a reflexive thematic analysis with interview data from 12 young people in England, all assigned female at birth. Our analysis produced a central theme: aspiring to certainty through “fixing” the wrong kind of puberty. Participants experience puberty as a time where things exist on a continuum of rightness and wrongness in comparison with their peers and in relation to their specific variation. We suggest that the neoliberal aspiration to and illusion of bodily control and certainty provides the context within which the medical management of variations in sex characteristics makes sense. Going through medical intervention in relation to a variation in sex characteristics provides a very particular aspirational context for young people. The experience of puberty is intersectionally differentiated for young people with variations in sex characteristics.
       
      © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
       
      Date
      2023
      Type
      Journal Article
      Publisher
      MDPI AG
      Collections
      • Arts and Social Sciences Papers [1443]
      Show full item record  

      Usage

      Downloads, last 12 months
      14
       
       
       

      Usage Statistics

      For this itemFor all of Research Commons

      The University of Waikato - Te Whare Wānanga o WaikatoFeedback and RequestsCopyright and Legal Statement