The Ambiguous Beginning of Life and the Binary Pattern: A Phenomenological Analysis of Intersexual Experience
The Ambiguous Beginning of Life and the Binary Pattern: A Phenomenological Analysis of Intersexual Experience

Summary/Abstract: In the paper, I offer a phenomenological analysis of the lived experience of intersexuality, which I view from the perspective of indeterminacy concerning the horizon of the givenness of the homeworld founded on the broader basis of the pregivenness of the lifeworld. These horizons define the structure of the sedimentation of subjective experience, as well as the layers of cultural meanings sedimented in the lifeworld. The sedimented layers of self-experience and of the shared lifeworld function as a sphere of indeterminacy, that is, the horizons of constituted phenomena. In this sense, all intentional acts have the nature of horizontal indeterminacy, the layers of which are revealed in the genetic question (Rückfrage) directed toward them. Horizontal indeterminacy also accounts for the distinction between the homeworld and the alienworld, which appears as something unobvious and unexpected against the obviousness of the homeworld, at the same time thematizing the latter. The notion of human corporeality as given in the sex/gender binary is one element of the sedimented conceptual system, which operates as the horizon of indeterminacy of both self-experience and the pre-reflective life-world. A unique opportunity for phenomenological insight into the constitution of the phenomenon of sex/gender is provided by Hida Viloria’s account of her lived experience of intersexuality. Her lived body, first experienced pre-reflectively as a transparent medium and a perfectly handy tool of undisturbed intentionality and unproblematized in sexual activities, gradually underwent alienation under the objectifying gaze determined by the binary pattern of sex/gender. Becoming an alienated object, Viloria’s body lost its transparency. She began to experience her corporeality and identity in a way determined by the sedimented “ideology” of sex and gender. Having “tried on” the constructs of masculine and feminine identities, Viloria eventually overcame alienation and, in the process of secondary self-identification, reclaimed her lived body in its intersexuality and her identity in its non-binary gender fluidity

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