Donnerstag, 30.10.2025

Veranstaltungen

Evening Lectures: "Decisions about Sex"

Invitation to Evening Lectures as part of the Collaborative Research Center “Sexdiversity” (CRC 1665)

Newborn bodies that are too ambiguous to be classified as male or female challenge society’s assumptions of sexual dimorphism and generate the need for postnatal decisions. Following a diagnosis of DSD (Differences of Sex Development), questions arise about classification, medical treatment, and conditions for valid informed consent. CRC 1665 Sexdiversity invites you to discuss these issues.  

"Decisions about Sex"

6. November 2025 | 17:00–19:00

Institut für Medizingeschichte und Wissenschaftsforschung, Universitity of Lübeck

Königstraße 42, Lecture Hall (not barrier-free)

Speakers: 

    Maren Heibges (Berlin)

    Deciding elsewhere: Shared decision-making as a fleeting promise

    Amets Suess-Schwend (Granada)

    The right to informed decision-making in health care for intersex people: Human rights perspectives

 Moderation: Sophia Wagemann, Alik Mazukatow

    Maren Heibges contrasts theoretical ideals of informed consent with the realities of medical practice, showing how every decision-making process is deeply situated.

    Amets Suess-Schwend explores the contribution of human rights perspectives in health care for intersex people, informed decision-making and medical education. 

Abstracts:

Maren Heibges (Berlin)

Medical decisions are rarely clear-cut. Shared decision-making, while promoted as a gold standard, unfolds in distributed, relational, and sometimes ambiguous ways. Ethnographic research in Berlin hospitals highlights how real-world decisions emerge in conversations, expectations, and guidelines—challenging us to rethink medical decision-making as a social practice. 

Amets Suess-Schwend (Granada)

Intersex people often cannot participate in early medical decisions about their bodies. At the same time, recent studies observe a frequent lack of access to needed health care over the lifespan. Activists and scholars demand a ban of non-consented surgical interventions on the sex characteristics of intersex people, as well as access to human rights-based health care, emphasizing the right to bodily integrity and autonomy, as established in the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10 and supported by international and regional bodies. Suess-Schwend will discuss how human rights perspectives can contribute to modify clinical practices, decision-making processes and medical education, promoting respectful and rights-based health care.