Queering Vulnerability

Vulnerability is a concept often used in bioethics. However, it is seldom interrogated from a queer point of view. By queer inquiry, I refer to an umbrella understanding of gender and sexuality as diverse. In this article I discuss lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex -related (LGBTQI) approaches to vulnerability. Framing these discussions from queer and LGBTQI bioethical theory, I offer an original approach to vulnerability based on queer bioethics and on a layered understanding of vulnerability. After considering queer bioethics and its (queer) critiques, I conclude that a layered understanding of vulnerability has strong potential for analyzing LGBTQI/queer vulnerabilities in bioethics. For further research, I formulate four layers of queer vulnerabilities to demonstrate some of that potential. I call these the layer of ethical sustainability, the layer of queer agency, the layer of interrogatory intimacy, and the layer of troubled kinship. I insist all layers should be critically evaluated and developed further with intersectional approaches. Keywords: vulnerability; LGBTQI; queer bioethics; queer-feminist anthropology of vulnerability; layers of queer vulnerabilities

Queer Bioethics for Everyday Medical Technologies

Multimodal tools and systems form the foundations of knowledge: the design of the tools, systems, and databases used everyday form what is known and how it is known. The health humanities can be energized by integrating a humanities-based approach to these tools so as to help students understand the politics such systems enact. In this chapter, the author presents a how-to guide for incorporating technologies as critical bioethical method into course pedagogy, including a short syllabus. The essay is oriented, in other words, to help those with little background in multimodal methods use it in their courses in a way that goes beyond only the instrumental. It articulates how to use such methods as critical inquiry about tools and systems themselves, by centering its example in the intersections between queer theory, critical media studies, and bioethical knowledges.

Intersex in the Age of Queer Bioethics

Queer Bioethics and the inventory of its potential populations include a wide range of queer subjects: lesbian parents, HIV-positive gay and bisexuals, transgender youth, and non-cisgendered individuals, to name a few. With the ethical dilemmas and ethical duties couched inside of a Queer Bioethics in mind, this article will consider one of the field’s most enduring citizens: the intersex child. More specifically, the figure of the intersex child with ovotesticular non-normativity will be scrutinized on ethical and clinical planes – a major aspect of queer bioethics is, after all, clinical ethics for queer populations. Ovotesticular conditions will be covered at length; we discuss different variations in addition to narrowing the topic to those with 46,XX and ambiguous genitalia, specifically those 75% diagnosed under the age of 20, and speak on issues related to this population. We will also briefly discuss the population of the 20% diagnosed under the age of 5 years old. Interventions will be discussed in all realms of intersex conditions – specifically ovotestes. We will conclude with a principalist approach to ethical topics such as autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence, weighing these principles equally and ultimately erring on the side of autonomy within pediatric ethics where possible.

Considering Unicorns

This article discusses queer bioethics, a critical stance for dismantling cis- and heteronormativity in bioethics, together with intersectionality, the investigation of and potential for social justice-oriented change. I discuss the difficulties of navigating plurality with solidarity and ethical sobriety that I call the problems of identity, essentialism and relativism in intersectionality theory. I then proceed to ponder how queer bioethics relates to intersectionality, and close by offering some remarks for further research. Certain intersectional approaches share key queer bioethical imperatives in exposing how seemingly neutral antidiscrimination discourses rely on bias and privilege. Both powerfully demonstrate how ostensibly objective methodologies are often inadequate for addressing socially sanctioned bias or for unpacking oppressive habits of the mind. Intersectionality interrupts narrative norms and disrupts easy binaries, such as male/female or homo/hetero. Because it is practice-oriented and has a social justice mission, intersectionality approaches analysis and advocacy as necessarily linked, which corresponds to queer bioethics arising from LGBTQI activism. However, establishing intersectional queer bioethics requires further investigation into cases of race, sexual and gender diversity with queer bioethics as the background moral theory, formulation of which I suggest should be inspired by feminist metaphysical advances.