This is Not a Hermaphrodite: The Medical Assimilation of Gender Difference in Germany around 1800

In 1801 an obscure young woman in Berlin discovered to possess “an unusual formation of the sexual organs” became the flashpoint of professional debate between some of Germany’s most prominent physicians. Doctors’ opinions regarding sexual indeterminacy were always circumscribed by the limitations of their capacity to observe the human body. Because of this, “hermaphrodites” had considerable latitude in constructing bodily experience and sexual histories which would support their own largely incontrovertible claims about their bodies. Their rejoinders to the normalizing, binary notion of gender held by both physicians and jurists are remarkable.