Synopses & Reviews
An adolescent girl is mocked when she takes a bath with her peers, because her genitals look like those of a boy. A couple visits a doctor asking to "create more space" in the woman for intercourse. A doctor finds testicular tissue in a woman with appendicitis, and decides to keep his findings quiet. These are just a few of the three hundred European case histories of people whose sex was doubted during the long nineteenth century that Geertje Mak draws upon in her remarkable new book.How did people deal with such situations? How did they decide to which sex a person should belong? This groundbreaking analysis of clinical case histories shows how sex changed from an outward appearance inscribed in a social body to something to be found deep inside body and self. A fascinating, easy to follow, yet sophisticated argument addressing major issues of the history of body, sex, and self, this volume will fit advanced undergraduate courses, while challenging specialists.
Synopsis
This groundbreaking analysis of nineteenth-century European clinical case histories of hermaphrodites shows how sex changed from an outward appearance inscribed in a social body to something to be found deep inside body and self.
About the Author
Geertje Mak is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Gender Studies and the History Department of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Table of Contents
IntroductionPART I - INSCRIPTION 1. Secrecy and disclosure: Politics of containment2. Early sex reassignments and the absence of a sex of self3. Herculine BarbinPART II - BODY4. How to get the semen to the neck of the womb5. Justine Jumas: Conflicting body politics6. The dislodgement of the personPART III - SELF7. Sex assignment around 1900: From a legal to a clinical issue 8. The turn inwards9. Scripting the self: N. O. Body's autobiographyConclusionBibliographyIndex