« Garçons sous-virilisés » et « filles élevées en garçons »

This article draws on fieldwork I conducted on the case management of variations of sex development in surgical missions in West Africa. My analysis will focus on two kinds of situations encountered at the missions: “undervirilized boys” who present with a rather common variation of sex development called hypospadias; and “girls raised as boys,” i.e., children with more complex intersex conditions who would have been assigned to the female sex in the North, but were raised as boys in West Africa in the absence of an early diagnosis. The analysis of the surgical and nonsurgical management of these situations in a postcolonial context and within the Western paradigm of evidence-based medicine makes it possible to cast a new light on clinical practices and questions that are central to the current debates for the recognition of human rights for intersex people: the issue of performing or not “normalizing” genital surgeries, and the best criteria for sex assignment.