Ever since antiquity, the western world has conceptualized the human body as being naturally either male or female, rendering as deviant those humans whose bodies display characteristics of both sexes. Today, the medical terms intersexuality or DSD (Disorders of Sex Development) encompass a wide range of what is considered an aberration of embryonic sex development. Some of these conditions manifest themselves in a discrepancy between the genetic code, the gonadal tissue, and the phenotype of a human being. Other forms of intersexuality lead to an ambiguous phenotype of the external genitalia. Since the 1950s, intersexed children have been subject to surgical “corrections” of their bodies as a consequence of the attempt to render intersexuality invisible and to guarantee an outwardly homogenous body. Not until the end of the twentieth century has the socalled surgical fix been severely criticized for in fact mutilating the bodies and psyches concerned. As a consequence, politically motivated activist groups formed in the 1990s in both the United States and in Europe with an agenda of publicizing the stories of intersex individuals and the stigmatization and discrimination they suffered. The internet, in particular, served as an easily accessible platform for introducing the stories of intersex individuals to a wider public. Since then, an increasing number of people have entered the public domain, telling previously withheld stories of psychic and physical wounds caused by the medical treatments.

Concurrent with these developments, twenty-first-century fiction has displayed a heightened interest in these stories, too. In this chapter, I will elaborate on the discussion of intersexuality in twenty-first-century German crime fiction. Crime fiction that treats intersexuality revives the genre’s centuries-old concern with gender deviance, and the link between deviant bodies, deviant psyches, and crime. The gender deviance of the intersexed body, on the one hand, and the intersexed infant’s difficult psychic situation resulting from the medical treatment and the often difficult and abusive relationships with doctors and parents on the other, contribute to a largely traumatic childhood. Twentieth-century psychology, in turn, has associated childhood trauma with an adult’s tendencies to engage in crime, as the modern phenomenon of the “serial killer” illustrates.