Summary:

Since the nineteenth century, western traditional medicine has taken to colonize research and treatment of intersexuals with the objective of “normalizing” bodies that defied normative sexual binarism, impacting in the ways gender is subjectified in agreement with rules of conduct aspiring to a cis-hetero-patriarchal ideal. Anne Fausto-Sterling and Sara Ahmed, each from their own disciplinary fields, inquire into these models of “normalization” from the medical and subjective interventions intersexuals and queers are subjetcted to, particularly in childhood. Following this line of thought, this work will dedicate itself to interpret the place the ideal of happiness occupies in these processes.

Key words: intersexuality | pathologization | happiness | biomedicalization