Doubting sex

A Man and a Perpetuum Mobile? Assigned Hermaphrodite Andreas Bruce's Memoirs

“…According to the rationale that Mak calls sex as inscription, people were assigned the sex that best suited the way they were inscribed in their society. 68 Someone who looked like a man, did men's work and in all other ways behaved like a man was, quite simply, a man. A person's sex was decided by the ways in which they could live up to the expectations of this sex.…”

“…Mak claims that these interpretations existed in parallel and overlapped, even if the balance between them changed over time. 70 Most likely, there were several understandings of sex at once. This does not only pertain for a geographical area as large as Europe, but also for a small and largely rural country like Sweden.…”

Transgender and The Literary Imagination

“…159 Cases of 'doubtful sex', as she puts it, were only considered problematic if they presented a challenge to this social order; in the event of such a challenge a medical expert might be called upon as an expert witness but adjudication would reside with the courts and legal authority. Mak observes that 'in many cases of hermaphroditism until around the 1860s and 1870s, the initial response was not to disclose the sexual body to a physician in order to have it examined objectively', 160 acknowledging that in 'cases of publicly visible sexual ambiguity, the modern reader unfamiliar with medical history is surprised by the lack of urgency to have the body examined'. 161 Moreover, this was the era of 'bedside medicine' in which medical examination was limited to the external and visible aspects of the body; more intimate or internal contact with the naked body, especially the female body, was not considered within the proper realm of respectable medicine.…”

“…Mak observes that 'in many cases of hermaphroditism until around the 1860s and 1870s, the initial response was not to disclose the sexual body to a physician in order to have it examined objectively', 160 acknowledging that in 'cases of publicly visible sexual ambiguity, the modern reader unfamiliar with medical history is surprised by the lack of urgency to have the body examined'. 161 Moreover, this was the era of 'bedside medicine' in which medical examination was limited to the external and visible aspects of the body; more intimate or internal contact with the naked body, especially the female body, was not considered within the proper realm of respectable medicine. The case studies which Mak analyses come from largely rural, rather than urban or industrial, communities and while tolerance of intersex people is not universal there is evidence of their integration as individuals: 'There might be something odd or idiosyncratic about them, but they were no threat to the social or moral order because they had more or less grown into the community in the way they had turned out to be' [emphasis in original].…”

“…The case studies which Mak analyses come from largely rural, rather than urban or industrial, communities and while tolerance of intersex people is not universal there is evidence of their integration as individuals: 'There might be something odd or idiosyncratic about them, but they were no threat to the social or moral order because they had more or less grown into the community in the way they had turned out to be' [emphasis in original]. 162 In this context, I will conclude by returning to an eyewitness testimony published in The Lancet in 1895 by a Captain who had seen Barry in Trinidad in 1844: '"The impression and general belief was that he was a hermaphrodite and as such escaped much comment or observation in places where everyone was used to him."' 163 This account (which fi nds echoes in later testimonies by Billy Tipton's friends and family) punctures the anticipation of scandal or sensation which narratives of revelation seek to generate by depicting Barry as an individual integrated into a community, his identity impervious to posthumous revelations bringing 'news' that has no currency or purchase for those who knew him.…”