Name Herculine Barbin | ||
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Died February 1868, Paris, France Books Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite | ||
Herculine barbin alexina b caso hermafrodita analizado por michel foucault por fernando figueroa
Herculine Barbin (1838–1868) was a French intersex person who was determined as female at birth and raised in a convent, but was later reclassified as male by a court of law, after an affair and physical examination.
Contents
- Herculine barbin alexina b caso hermafrodita analizado por michel foucault por fernando figueroa
- HERCULINE BARBIN A HISTRIA DA PRIMEIRA HERMAFRODITA DA ERA MODERNA
- Early life
- Puberty
- Reassignment as male
- Death
- Memoirs publication
- Commemoration
- References
HERCULINE BARBIN: A HISTÓRIA DA PRIMEIRA "HERMAFRODITA" DA ERA MODERNA.
Early life
Most of what we know about Barbin comes from her later memoirs. Herculine Adélaîde Barbin was born in Saint-Jean-d'Angély in France in 1838. She was assigned as a girl and raised as such; her family referred to her as Alexina. Her family was poor but she gained a charity scholarship to study in the school of an Ursuline convent.
According to her account, she had a crush on an aristocratic female friend in school. She regarded herself as unattractive but sometimes slipped into her friend's room at night and was sometimes punished for that. However, her studies were successful and in 1856, at the age of seventeen she was sent to Le Chateau to study to become a teacher. There she fell in love with one of the teachers.
Puberty
Although Barbin was in puberty, she had not begun to menstruate and remained flat chested. The hairs on her upper lip and cheeks were noticeable.
In 1857 Barbin received a position as an assistant teacher in a girls' school. She fell in love with another teacher, Sara, and Barbin demanded that only she should dress her. Her ministrations turned into caresses and they became lovers. Eventually rumors about their affair began to circulate.
Barbin, although sick her whole life, began to suffer excruciating pains. When a doctor examined her, he was shocked and asked that she should be sent away from the school, but she stayed.
Eventually, the devoutly Catholic Barbin confessed to Jean-François-Anne Landriot, the Bishop of La Rochelle. She asked him permission to break the confessional silence in order to send for a doctor to examine her. When Dr. Chesnet did so in 1860, he discovered that even if Barbin had a small vagina, she had a masculine body type, a very small penis, and testicles inside her body. In 20th-century medical terms, she had "male pseudohermaphroditism".
Reassignment as male
A later legal decision declared official that Barbin was male. She left her lover and her job, changed her name to Abel Barbin and was briefly mentioned in the press. She moved to Paris where she lived in poverty and wrote her memoirs, reputedly as a part of therapy. In the memoirs, Barbin would use female pronouns when writing about her life prior to sexual redesignation and male pronouns, including Alexina and Camille, following the declaration. Nevertheless, she clearly regarded herself as punished, and "disinherited", subject to a "ridiculous inquisition".
In his commentary to Barbin's memoirs, Michel Foucault presented Barbin as an example of the "happy limbo of a non-identity", but whose masculinity marked her from her contemporaries. Morgan Holmes states that Barbin's own writings showed that she saw herself as an "exceptional female", but female nonetheless.
Death
In February 1868, the concierge of Barbin's house in rue de l'École-de-Médecine found her dead in her home. She had committed suicide by inhaling gas from her coal gas stove. Her memoirs were found beside her bed.
Memoirs publication
Dr. Regnier reported the death, recovered the memoirs and performed an autopsy. Later he gave the memoirs to Auguste Ambroise Tardieu, who published excerpts as "Histoire et souvenirs d'Alexina B." ("The Story and Memoirs of Alexina B.") in his book Question médico-légale de l'identité dans ses rapport avec les vices de conformation des organes sexuels, contenant les souvenirs et impressions d'un individu dont le sexe avait été méconnu ("Forensics of Identity Involving Deformities of the Sexual Organs, Along With the Memoirs and Impressions of an Individual Whose Sex Was Misidentified") (Paris: J.-B. Ballière et Fils, 1872). The excerpts were translated to English in 1980.
Michel Foucault discovered the memoirs in the 1970s while conducting research at the French Department of Public Hygiene. He had the journals republished as Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite. In his edition, Foucault also included a set of medical reports, legal documents, and newspaper articles, as well as a short story adaptation by Oscar Panizza.
Commemoration
The birthday of Herculine Barbin is marked in Intersex Day of Remembrance on 8 November.