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Despite the increasing visibility of variations in sex/gender identities, society maintains a strict sex dichotomy. The commitment to the female/male sex distinction and the resistance to acknowledge or accept sex variability results in the silencing of people born intersex, the medicalization of the various "conditions," and their stigmatization. Although activists and scholars are beginning to educate the public and the medical community, sex and gender reassignment protocols and surgeries upholding the sex dichotomy remain intact. Due to contemporary trends and medical approaches, the authors argue it is necessary to explore how intersex is represented and communicated to the public by the mass media. Using textual analysis, the study examines how primetime television programs portray contemporary intersex patients, specifically in medical dramas that feature a storyline about the identification of intersex variation in infants and adolescent children. Altogether six episodes from five shows are analyzed. The authors find that, although some storylines "possibilize" some progressive portrayals of intersex, the shows' representations of sex variations are treated as violations of established sex and gender binaries, ultimately portraying intersex in such ways as a social transgression or medical threat, thereby neutralizing the existence of intersex attributes and recuperating and normalizing the sex dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]