Intersexuality is old news. The word hermaphrodite comes from a Greek term that combined the names Hermes (son of Zeus and variously known as the messenger of the gods, patron of music, controller of dreams, and protector of livestock) and Aphrodite (the Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty). There are at least two Greek myths about the origins of the first hermaphrodite. In one, Aphrodite and Hermes produce a child so thoroughly endowed with the attributes of each parent that, unable to decide its sex for sure, they name it Hermaphroditos. In the other, their child is an astonishingly beautiful male with whom a water nymph falls in love. Overcome by desire, she so deeply intertwines her body with his that they become joined as one.
If the figure of the hermaphrodite has seemed odd enough to prompt speculation about its peculiar origins, it has also struck some as the embodiment of a human past that predated dualistic sexual division. Early biblical interpreters thought that Adam began his existence as a hermaphrodite and that he divided into two individuals, male and female, only after falling from grace. Plato wrote that there were originally three sexes—male, female, and hermaphrodite—but that the third sex became lost over time.6
Different cultures have confronted real-life intersexuals in different ways. Jewish religious texts such as the Talmud and the Tosefta list extensive regulations for people of mixed sex, regulating modes of inheritance and of social conduct. The Tosefta, for example, forbids hermaphrodites from inheriting their fathers’ estates (like daughters), from secluding themselves with women (like sons), and from shaving (like men). When they menstruate they must be isolated from men (like women); they are disqualified from serving as witnesses or as priests (like women); but the laws of pederasty apply to them. While Judaic law provided a means for integrating hermaphrodites into mainstream culture, Romans were not so kind. In Romulus’s time intersexes were believed to be a portent of a crisis of the state and were often killed. Later, however, in Pliny’s era, hermaphrodites became eligible for marriage.7
In tracking the history of medical analyses of intersexuality, one learns more generally how the social history of gender itself has varied, first in Europe and later in America, which inherited European medical traditions. In the process we can learn that there is nothing natural or inevitable about current medical treatment of intersexuals. Early medical practitioners, who understood sex and gender to fall along a continuum and not into the discrete categories we use today, were not fazed by hermaphrodites. Sexual difference, they thought, involved quantitative variation. Women were cool, men hot, masculine women or feminine men warm. Moreover, human variation did not, physicians of this era believed, stop at the number three. Parents could produce boys with different degrees of manliness and girls with varying amounts of womanliness.
In the premodern era, several views of the biology of intersexuality competed. Aristotle (384—322 b. c.), for example, categorized hermaphrodites as a type of twin. He believed that complete twinning occurred when the mother contributed enough matter at conception to create two entire embryos. In the case of intersexuals, there was more than enough matter to create one but not quite enough for two. The excess matter, he thought, became extra genitalia. Aristotle did not believe that genitalia defined the sex of the baby, however. Rather, the heat of the heart determined maleness or femaleness. He argued that underneath their confusing anatomy, hermaphrodites truly belonged to one of only two possible sexes. The highly influential Galen, in the first century a. d., disagreed, arguing that hermaphrodites belonged to an intermediate sex. He believed that sex emerged from the opposition of male and female principles in the maternal and paternal seeds in combination with interactions between the left and right sides of the uterus. From the overlaying of varying degrees of dominance between male and female seed on top of the several potential positions of the fetus in the womb, a grid containing from three to seven cells emerged. Depending upon where on the grid an embryo fell, it could range from entirely male, through various intermediate states, to entirely female. Thus, thinkers in the Galenic tradition believed no stable biological divide separated male from female.8
Physicians in the Middle Ages continued to hold to the classical theory of a sexual continuum, even while they increasingly argued for sharper divisions of sexual variation. Medieval medical texts espoused the classical idea that the relative heat on the right side of the uterus produced males, the cooler fetus developing on the left side of the womb became a female, and fetuses developing more toward the middle became manly women or womanly men.9 The notion of a continuum of heat coexisted with the idea that the uterus consisted of seven discrete chambers. The three cells to the right housed males, the three to the left females, while the central chamber produced hermaph — rodites.10
A willingness to find a place for hermaphrodites in scientific theory, however, did not translate into social acceptance. Historically, hermaphrodites were often regarded as rebellious, disruptive, or even fraudulent. Hildegard of Bingen, a famous German abbess and visionary mystic (1098—1179) condemned any confusion of male and female identity. As the historian Joan Cadden has noted, Hildegard chose to place her denunciation ‘‘between an assertion that women should not say mass and a warning against sexual perversions. … A disorder of either sex or sex roles is a disorder in the social fabric. . . and in the religious order.’’11 Such stern disapproval was unusual for her time. Despite widespread uncertainty about their proper social roles, disapproval of hermaphrodites remained relatively mild. Medieval medical and scientific texts complained of negative personality traits—lustfulness in the masculine femalelike hermaphrodite and deceitfulness in the feminine malelike individual,12 but outright condemnation seems to have been infrequent.
Biologists and physicians of that era did not have the social prestige and authority of today’s professionals and were not the only ones in a position to define and regulate the hermaphrodite. In Renaissance Europe, scientific and medical texts often propounded contradictory theories about the production of hermaphrodites. These theories could not fix gender as something real and stable within the body. Rather, physicians’ stories competed both with medicine and with those elaborated by the Church, the legal profession, and politicians. To further complicate matters, different European nations had different ideas about the origins, dangers, civil rights, and duties of hermaphrodites.13
For example, in France, in 1601, the case of Marie/Marin le Marcis engendered great controversy. ‘‘Marie’’ had lived as a woman for twenty-one years before deciding to put on men’s clothing and registering to marry the woman with whom s/he cohabited. ‘‘Marin’’ was arrested, and after having gone through harrowing sentences—first being condemned to burn at the stake, then having the penalty ‘‘reduced’’ to death by strangling (and we thought our death row was bad!!)—s/he eventually was set free on the condition that s/he wear women’s clothing until the age of twenty-five. Under French law Marie/Marin had committed two crimes: sodomy and crossdressing.
English law, in contrast, did not specifically forbid cross-gender dressing. But it did look askance at those who donned the attire of a social class to which they did not belong. In a 1746 English case, Mary Hamilton married another woman after assuming the name ‘‘Dr. Charles Hamilton.’’ The legal authorities were sure she had done something wrong, but they couldn’t quite put their finger on what it was. Eventually they convicted her of vagrancy, reasoning that she was an unusually ballsy but nonetheless common cheat.14
During the Renaissance, there was no central clearinghouse for the handling of hermaphrodites. While in some cases physicians or the state intervened, in others the Church took the lead. For instance, in Piedra, Italy, in 1601, the same year of Marie/Marin’s arrest, a young soldier named Daniel Burghammer shocked his regiment when he gave birth to a healthy baby girl. After his alarmed wife called in his army captain, he confessed to being half male and half female. Christened as a male, he had served as a soldier for seven years while also a practicing blacksmith. The baby’s father, Burghammer said, was a Spanish soldier. Uncertain of what to do, the captain called in Church authorities, who decided to go ahead and christen the baby, whom they named Elizabeth. After she was weaned—Burghammer nursed the child with his female breast—several towns competed for the right to adopt her. The Church declared the child’s birth a miracle, but granted Burghammer’s wife a divorce, suggesting that it found Burghammer’s ability to give birth incompatible with role of husband.15
The stories of Marie/Marin, Mary Hamilton, and Daniel Burghammer illustrate a simple point. Different countries and different legal and religious systems viewed intersexuality in different ways. The Italians seemed relatively nonplussed by the blurring of gender borders, the French rigidly regulated it, while the English, although finding it distasteful, worried more about class transgressions. Nevertheless, all over Europe the sharp distinction between male and female was at the core of systems of law and politics. The rights of inheritance, forms of judicial punishment, and the right to vote and participate in the political system were all determined in part by sex. And those who fell in between? Legal experts acknowledged that hermaphrodites existed but insisted they position themselves within this gendered system. Sir Edward Coke, famed jurist of early modern England wrote ‘‘an Hermaphrodite may purchase according to that sexe which prevaileth.’’16 Similarly, in the first half of the seventeenth century, French hermaphrodites could serve as witnesses in the court and even marry, providing that they did so in the role assigned to them by ‘‘the sex which dominates their personality.’’17
The individual him/herself shared with medical and legal experts the right to decide which sex prevailed but, once having made a choice, was expected to stick with it. The penalty for reneging could be severe. At stake was the maintenance of the social order and the rights of man (meant literally). Thus, although it was clear that some people straddled the male-female divide, the social and legal structures remained fixed around a two-sex system.18