The article aims at make problematic the theme of sexual definition when there is a medical "diagnosis" of "ambiguous genitalia." The analysis is centered on performances and social practices taken by health professionals in the moment of the decisions concerning "genitalia correction" in intersexual children, which goes from the moment a certain alteration is perceived, the moment it is diagnosed as intersexual, until it is decided to intervene aiming at adapting the body to one or another sex. It goes from two analytical axes: notion of knowledge field and the perspective of gender. It is shown that the decisions are elapsed by different views on specific knowledge areas amid the much ampler field of medicine and psychology. It is also argued that such decisions, supposedly neutral, are informed by cultural factors, what points at new apprehensions on dichotomies of nature/culture and sex/gender.
Intersexes; Sexuality; Gender; Science anthropology