Sex, gender, sexuality and orientation in biomedical research articles on intersex variations: a diachronic corpus analysis

This article examines how biomedical research articles construct sex, gender, sexuality and sexual orientation in relation to intersex variations. We analyse 368 biomedical articles (approximately 1.3 million words) from PubMed spanning 1950–2020, comparing publications before and after the 2006 ‘Chicago Consensus’ statement that introduced the terminology ‘disorders of sex development’ (DSD). Using multidimensional analysis and corpus-assisted discourse analysis, we identify key semantic domains and trace collocational patterns around terms including sex, gender, identity, sexual, and psychosexual. Findings reveal that while gender increased four-fold in frequency post-2006, indicating expanded psychosocial vocabulary, core pathologising logics persisted across both periods. Collocational patterns consistently linked intersex variations to sex assignment, disorder, and atypical development, positioning intersex bodies as requiring medical surveillance and intervention. Post-2006 discourse extended clinical authority into previously under-scrutinised domains of gender identity and sexual orientation through proliferating psychosexual risk frameworks, rather than representing genuine paradigm shift. These discursive patterns constitute a form of intimate governance that constrains sexual citizenship by determining which bodies are deemed intelligible within binary frameworks, which intimate futures are constructed as viable, and whose consent suffices for irreversible bodily modification. The analysis demonstrates the epistemological structures through which medicine governs both bodies and intimate possibilities.