Discourses on Intersex, 1573-2003
How did the rhetoric and imagery around bodies that defy binary categorizations of sex and gender shift over six centuries?
To be human is to have notions of physical sex and cultural gender placed upon you, yet not all bodies are clearly “female” or “male.” Today, the widely accepted term for those people whose bodies cannot be strictly categorized within a male-female binary of sex is “intersex,” which evokes the sense of occupying a space between sexes. Before the term “intersex” was coined in the early 20th century though, the word “hermaphrodite” was much more common, a term now largely unused because of its derogatory connotations among intersex people. But this term was applied both widely and inconsistently in early modern society, referring to those with variations in physical sex and also those who subverted norms of gendered behavior and relationships. Many early modern and modern sources that discuss the “hermaphrodite” or the intersex body engage simultaneously with ideas of ambiguity of physical sex and nonconformity of social gender.
This exhibit examines changing definitions, perceptions, and imagery around intersex bodies from the sixteenth to twenty-first centuries, which echo drastically changing relationships between medicine, sex, and gender occurring during the same time span.
