The project seeks to evaluate the co-morbidity of gender dysphoria (a form of depression specific to confusion over one?s gender identity) and intersexuality (a condition in which sex chromosomes, genitalia, and/or secondary sex characteristics are neither clearly male nor female). The hypothesis is that specific social-cultural conditions related to the treatment of genital ambiguity are associated with the co-morbidity of gender dysphoria and intersexuality. Research will be assessed through ethnographic analysis in Egypt -- a world region in which individuals with genital ambiguity are not always subject to surgical operations at infancy. This study has important implications for the clinical management of intersexuality, which according to current medical practice, assumes that genital ambiguity itself regardless of the situation in which it is received -will inevitably lead to gender dysphoria. Project also bears broad implications for the study of the formation of gendered identity and the relationship between phenotypic sex and gendered behavior.
