the five sexes, revisited
The five sexes –Anne Fausto Sterling
23 years old Levi Suydam resident of Connecticut asked the town board of selectmen to confirm his right to vote as a Whig in a emotionally argued local election.
The request raised a flurry of objections from the conflict party from reasons that must be unusual in the records of American democracy it was said that Suydam was more female than male and could not be allowed to cast a election.
To settle the dispute a physician, one William James Barry, was brought in to examine Suydam. And, likely upon facing a phallus, the good doctor declared the future voter male. Whigs won the election by a majority of one.
Barry's diagnosis, however, turned out to be somewhat premature
He discovered that Suydam menstruated regularly and had a vaginal opening.
She had narrow shoulders and broad hips and felt l sexual desires for women.
Western culture is deeply committed to the idea that there are only two sexes. Even language refuses other possibilities; to write about Levi Suydam had to design conventions s/he and his/her to mean someone who is clearly neither male nor female or who is perhaps both sexes at once. Legally, too, every adult is either man or woman, and the difference, of course, is not unimportant.
In many parts of the United States, for instance, two people legally registered, as men cannot have sexual relations without violating anti-sodomy laws.
It is extremely difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality,
The psychologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in the study of congenital sexual-organ defects, suggests intersexual may form as many as 4 percent of births.
Almost at once such infants are entered into a program of hormonal and surgical management so that they can slip quietly into society as "normal" heterosexual males or females.
The word hermaphrodite comes from the Greek name Hermes, variously known as the messenger of the gods, the supporter of music, the
23 years old Levi Suydam resident of Connecticut asked the town board of selectmen to confirm his right to vote as a Whig in a emotionally argued local election.
The request raised a flurry of objections from the conflict party from reasons that must be unusual in the records of American democracy it was said that Suydam was more female than male and could not be allowed to cast a election.
To settle the dispute a physician, one William James Barry, was brought in to examine Suydam. And, likely upon facing a phallus, the good doctor declared the future voter male. Whigs won the election by a majority of one.
Barry's diagnosis, however, turned out to be somewhat premature
He discovered that Suydam menstruated regularly and had a vaginal opening.
She had narrow shoulders and broad hips and felt l sexual desires for women.
Western culture is deeply committed to the idea that there are only two sexes. Even language refuses other possibilities; to write about Levi Suydam had to design conventions s/he and his/her to mean someone who is clearly neither male nor female or who is perhaps both sexes at once. Legally, too, every adult is either man or woman, and the difference, of course, is not unimportant.
In many parts of the United States, for instance, two people legally registered, as men cannot have sexual relations without violating anti-sodomy laws.
It is extremely difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality,
The psychologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in the study of congenital sexual-organ defects, suggests intersexual may form as many as 4 percent of births.
Almost at once such infants are entered into a program of hormonal and surgical management so that they can slip quietly into society as "normal" heterosexual males or females.
The word hermaphrodite comes from the Greek name Hermes, variously known as the messenger of the gods, the supporter of music, the