In Re-membering a Queer Body' (1994), Holmes describes how surgery on intersex infants is undertaken to make bodies conform to heterosexual norms: when a genetically male child (XY) is considered incapable of achieving "normal" heterosexual activity as a male, he will be reassigned as female even though the micropenis would be functional ... if one is born with a vagina, the appropriate sexual activity will be as receptor and not penetrator.
Thus, when a body which has been designated female (either through chromosome testing or anatomical standards) possesses a phallus, the surgical procedure remains roughly the same as that for treating the micropenis: remove the phalloclit in a process of either partial or total clitorectomy.
In Distracted Attentions: Intersexuality and Human Rights Protections (2005), she discusses the conceptualization of an intersex birth as an emergency, negating requirement for informed consent.
In her book Intersex: A Perilous Difference (2008) Holmes argues that there is a duty to understand the stakes involved in conflating what is supposedly 'natural' with what is statistically 'normal', and of what is 'normal' with what is 'healthy'."
She "singles out" the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, "and episodes of The X-Files for constructing intersex characters whose lives essentially reproduce the social fascination with the monstrous and the deviant.
The book has been described as "an important book" (Anne Fausto-Sterling), "the 'go to source' for a contemporary, international representation of intersex studies,"[8] making "contributions that are precise, plainly written and very illuminating... the detail is fascinating and somewhat unnerving... beautifully clear and compassionate" (Contemporary Sociology), and "an important collection" (Suzanne Kessler, State University of New York).