The Hermaphrodite, Fecundity and Military Efficiency: Dangerous Subjects in the Emerging Liberal Order of Nineteenth-Century Spain

Abstract

In an 1886 medico-legal report on a ‘case of hermaphrodism’, the unnamed subject of the doctors’ examination was declared to possess a womb and internal female organs, incomplete external female organs and complete perfect male external organs. Given these characteristics, whereby the external was deemed more significant than the internal in the determination of the ‘true sex’ of the individual in question, it was agreed that the male sex predominated and the conclusion to the report read: ‘el individuo en cuestion pertenece al sexo masculino con vicios de conformacion y anomalías de desarrollo congénitos que permiten considerarlo como hermafrodita andrógino (esto es, del sexo tambien masculino)’ [the individual in question belongs to the male sex and has congenital vices of conformation and developmental abnormalities which mean that he is to be considered as an androgynous hermaphrodite (that is, also of the male sex)].1 This rather complex diagnosis as an ‘androgynous hermaphrodite’ meant that the person should dress as a man and should devote himself to male labours, thus conforming to prevailing gender norms in terms of dress codes and socioeconomic behaviour. In the nineteenth-century endeavour to fix the ‘true sex’ of ambiguous persons, maleness resulted from what was held to be the possession of a predominance of male genitalia, and in this particular case was confirmed despite the presence of a vagina and womb and the need to operate on the penis to establish the ‘ordinary flow’ of the urine.