ALBERT THE GREAT ON NATURE AND THE PRODUCTION OF HERMAPHRODITES THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS (original) (raw)
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This article examines how ancient and medieval Christians invoked ideas about ‘hermaphrodites’ to work out fundamental questions about who we are as humans. What was the original or ideal state of humanity? Was the division of sex into male and female an inherent part of human nature? Certain Christian theologians, beginning in antiquity, claimed that Adam – the first human, according to the biblical book of Genesis – was an ‘androgyne’ or ‘hermaphrodite,’ that is, a combination of male and female sex. Similarly, some medieval theologians speculated that all post-resurrection bodies were androgynous. In conversations about both the creation and the resurrection, questions about sexual difference thus surfaced repeatedly, revealing key assumptions about the sexed body and its place in the narrative of Christian history. This article suggests that such debates were key to ancient and medieval efforts to determine which sexes were legitimate sexes, and therefore which lives were redeemably human.
Gender & History, 2023
This article focuses on four individuals from France and Italy who were viewed as hermaphrodites and their attempts to become members of the Catholic clergy between c.1650 and 1720. Drawing on largely unexplored material from the archive of the Roman Congregation of the Council, this article argues that whether, and how, bodies were problematised as hermaphroditic depended on the different and changing thresholds of masculinity and femininity they were confronted with. Offering a fresh perspective on practices of constructing sex and sex difference, this article suggests that the decades c.1700 saw marked transformations in the defining and assigning of sex both in theory and social practice. Medical and ecclesiastical decision-makers shifted their attention from a broader spectrum of behavioural and bodily signs to the anatomy of genitalia. The trend towards heightened vigilance and intransigence towards perceived sexual ambiguity was, however, highly asymmetrical, targeting mainly individuals initially believed to be women. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
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Actes des journées d’études : First international workshop of the Jean Monnet module « European law and gender » (ELaN), University of Pisa Press, 2020
L’ONU définit les personnes intersexes comme celles « nées avec des caractéristiques sexuelles qui ne correspondent pas aux définitions typiques de « mâle » et « femelle » ». Si certains pays ont fait évoluer leur législation afin d’intégrer les personnes intersexes en n’imposant plus une détermination sexuelle binaire de l’enfant à sa naissance, la plupart des états se montrent encore majoritairement hostiles ou, au mieux, indifférents à l’égard de l’intersexualité. Projetons-nous quelques vingt siècles en arrière en territoire romain. A Rome, toute personne manifestant une ambiguïté sexuelle est désignée par le terme d’hermaphroditus. Au cours de la période archaïque et au début de la république, les personnes intersexuées, considérées comme monstra, c’est-à-dire des manifestations de la colère divine envoyée aux hommes sur terre, des êtres contre-nature, devaient être éliminées. Plus tard, vers la fin de la République, le traitement juridique des hermaphrodites change. Autrefois source de crainte, ils deviennent des objets d’amusement et de curiosité. Comme les Romains ont horreur du vide et qu’il n’est point question de reconnaître l’existence d’un troisième genre, le législateur va intervenir, assignant l’hermaphrodite à un genre en fonction du sexe considéré comme dominant chez lui.
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