Unmaking Sex

The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France

Anne E. Linton

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781009063012
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

During the nineteenth century, words like 'intersex' and 'trans' had not yet been invented to describe individuals whose bodies, or senses of self, conflicted with binary sex. But that does not mean that such people did not exist. In nineteenth-century France, case studies filled medical journals, high-profile trials captured headlines, and doctors staked their reputations on sex determinations only to have them later reversed by colleagues. While medical experts fought over what separated a man from a woman, novelists began to explore debates about binary sex and describe the experiences of gender-ambiguous characters. Anne Linton discusses over 200 newly-uncovered case studies while offering fresh readings of literature by several famous writers of the period, as well as long-overlooked popular fiction. This landmark contribution to the history of sexuality is the first book to examine intersex in both medicine and literature, sensitively relating historical 'hermaphrodism' to contemporary intersex activism and scholarship.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Reviews
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Note on the Text
• Introduction: Gender Revolution Before Intersex or Transgender
• Part I: A Cultural Prehistory of Intersex from the Archives
• Part II: Contextualizing High and Low Literary Narratives
• Epilogue: The Nineteenth-Century Roots of Contemporary Resistance to “True Sex”
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index