Often when a book or article brings in literary criticism to discuss a historic topic, I feel like it's more of an intellectual game. But in this case, it really does feel like the literary ant the real-life aspects are so solidly braided together that the approach makes sense.
LHMP
Blog entry
In parallel with the 19th century French medical establishment's difficulties in responding to non-binary bodies, French literature enjoyed playing with ambiguous gender, and reflected many aspects of the medical trends.
Linton goes deeply into the details of the 19th century French conflict between the law and biology around sex categorization.
For years, as I've been reading historic research related to lesbianism, I've regularly come across topics and people where my first reaction is: "Why isn't the question of intersex being raised here?" A very few authors have integrated the topic into a general history of sexuality, but eventually I decided to pick up some more focused studies. Now I keep having to remind myself that intersexuality is tangential to my central topic and I shouldn't go haring off after biographies and whatnot.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 354 - Why is Intersexuality Relevant to the History of Lesbianism? - transcript
(Originally aired 2026/10/17)
Content Note
This book and the previous one I blogged could hardly be more different in approach, given that they both revolve generally around intersexuality. While DeVun focused on philosophy and symbolism in medieval Europe generally, while also addressing the practical consequences for people with ambiguous bodies, Linton narrows in on the specific concerns of 19th century France and the interaction of medical and literary discources. I appreciated that Linton clearly addressed the question of why 19th century France was something of a special case.
I could have sworn I'd finished posting all the chapters of DeVun, but I went to start the next book and found this one still in queue. I have my second book on intersexuality all written up and will start posting it tomorrow. And the related podcast will come out this weekend.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 353 - On the Shelf for October 2026 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2026/10/03)
Welcome to On the Shelf for October 2026.
For those who have been following the saga of my broken wrist, I’ve been officially released from physical therapy. I still have some range-of-motion issues, but they’ll have to work themselves out through ordinary activity.
The most significant thing that hits me as I read DeVun's history of the (European) attitude toward intersexuality is how little has changed. There is still a prevailing attitude that everyone must be shoehorned into either "clearly male" or "clearly female" and that the opinions and preferences of the person involved are of little moment. (One change is that in the pre-modern period, it appears that questions over classification and surgery appear to have been raised primarily on reaching adulthood, whereas the modern approach makes those decisions for newborn babies.)
If people today -- with the availability of modern medical understandings of sexual development and variation -- can have such difficulty fitting intersex people into their understanding of the world, just imagine how much more confused pre-modern people may have been. Though pre-modern people had the advantage of allowing for types of causation that had no actual biological basis. This chapter of DeVun reviews several of the stages of theorizing about non-binary bodies and how to deal with them that prevailed in the medieval era.
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