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

Decisions about Sex

6. November 2025 | 17:00–19:00
Institut für Medizingeschichte und Wissenschaftsforschung, Universitity 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

The Event:

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.

• 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 what constitutes good care and valid informed decision-making for patients with DSD from a human rights perspective.

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. Activists and scholars advocate for human rights-based care, emphasizing bodily integrity and autonomy (Yogyakarta Principles plus 10). Suess-Schwend will discuss how human rights perspectives can reshape clinical practices, medical education, and ensure respectful, rights-based health care.