Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite) by Herculine Barbin, Michel Foucault Seller Firefly Bookstore LLC Published 1980 Condition Used Very Good ISBN 628 Item Price $. Herculine Barbin (November 8, 1838 February 13, 1868) was a French intersex person who was assigned 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. In 20th-century medical terms, she had male pseudohermaphroditism.

1. Herculine Barbin Foucault
2. Herculine Barbin Characters
3. Herculine Barbin Summary
4. Herculine Barbin Photographs

Herculine Barbin Foucault

Herculine Barbin

Herculine Barbin (1838–1868) was a Frenchintersex person who was treated as a female at birth but was later redesignated a male after an affair and physical examination.

• Early life1
• Puberty2
• Reassignment as male3
• Death4
• Memoirs and modern commentaries5
• Commemoration6
• Sources and further reading7
• External links8

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 regarded 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. She would trim the hairs on her upper lip and cheeks which only made the hair thicker and more noticeable.

In 1857 Barbin received a position as an assistant teacher in a girl's 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 was bodily masculine and had a very small penis and testicles inside her body. In modern 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 following the declaration. Nevertheless, she clearly regarded herself as punished, and 'disinherited', subject to a 'ridiculous inquisition'.

Death

In February 1868, the concierge of Barbin's house in rue de l'École-de-Médecine found him dead in his home. He had committed suicide by inhaling gas from his coal gas stove. His memoirs were found beside his bed.

Memoirs and modern commentaries

Dr. Regnier reported the death, recovered the memoirs and performed an autopsy. Later he gave the memoirs to

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. It inspired the French film The Mystery of Alexina. and Jeffrey Eugenides in his book Middlesex treats concurrent themes, as does Virginia Woolf in her book, Orlando: A Biography. Judith Butler refers to Foucault's commentary on Barbin at various points in her 1990 Gender Trouble, including her chapter 'Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity.'

Barbin appears as a character in the play A Mouthful of Birds by Caryl Churchill and David Lan. Barbin also appears as a character in the play Hidden: A Gender by Kate Bornstein. Herculine, a full length play based on the memoirs of Barbin, is by Garrett Heater. Kira Obolensky also wrote a two-act stage adaptation entitled The Adventures of Herculina.

Commemoration

The birthday of Herculine Barbin is marked in Intersex Day of Remembrance on 8 November.

Sources and further reading

External links

• (French)Mes-souvenirsAdelaïde-Herculine Barbin, .
• Commentary about the memoirs in the PubMed Central.

• (Spanish) Herculine Barbin. Hermafroditismo y condena.

Herculine Barbin Characters

Biography

French hermaphrodite, born in the eighteenth century with ambiguous genitalia and was consigned the female sex, named Adelaide-Herculine Barbin. She was usually called Alexina. Her father, a sabot maker, died some time early in her life and when she was age seven her destitute mother accepted the offer of a Mother Superior in a convent. Barbin was moved from the hospital where she had lived since birth into a Catholic orphanage where she lived as a pious girl, 1845-53.

From 1853-56 she lived in La Rochelle as a boarding student. In the following two years she completed her teaching certificate at the normal school of Oleron at the top of her class. During this time she cut away with scissors the light down growing on her upper lips and cheeks and kept her body concealed when the female trainee teachers went swimming.

From 1858-60 she became schoolmistress at a nearby town, falling passionately in love with Sara, another schoolmistress. They moved from bedmates to lovers.

In 1860 Barbin returned to La Rochelle and confided her predicaments to a bishop who sent her to a doctor. The doctor's reports revealed that Barbin in her 22nd year was 1.59m (five foot two) and had brown hair. She was androgynous when dressed, but with a man's chest, slightly brown and hairy upper arms, hips and pelvis of a man, and buttocks and thighs covered in abundant black hair. Barbin had never menstruated. A sort of clitoris-penis of about 5cm (one and a half to two inches) long -- or an imperforate 'little member' -- was located between two prominent hairy labia majora which were 'only the two halves of a scrotum that remained divided.' A centimeter (four-tenths of an inch) below the 'penis' was an urethral opening that was 'completely feminine' through which she would urinate and apparently pass sperm. Between the urethra and anus there was an orifice nearly 5cm (two inches) deep, a cul-de-sac with recto-vaginal walls, but no cervix.

Barbin was subsequently renamed 'Abel' instead of 'Adelaide-Herculine' with the changes made on her birth certificate on 22 June 1860 to officially reclassify her as a man. Abel's story was reported in the press in July 1860.

Moving to Paris, Abel became an employee of the railroad administration, continuing his correspondence with Sara. He committed suicide close to age 30 (in February 1868) --asphyxiating himself with carbon dioxide by means of a charcoal stove in a miserable attic in Paris. Barbin was alone and he left a letter saying he had killed himself in order to escape the sufferings that constantly obsessed him.

Events

• Family trauma 1845 (Age seven, sent to orphanage)

• Social : Begin a program of study 1853 (Boarding school, three years)

• Work : New Career 1858 (Began teaching)

• Social : Secrets revealed 1860 (Confided in Bishop about sexuality)

Herculine Barbin Summary

• Misc. : Released from waiting 22 June 1860 (B.C. officially changed from female to male)
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• Social : Secrets revealed July 1860 (Story reported to press)
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• Death by Suicide February 1868 (Gas, age 29)
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Source Notes

Sy Scholfield quotes Michel Foucault who discovered the memoirs of Barbin in the archives of the French Dept of Public Hygiene: Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite by Barbin, with introduction by Michel Foucault, translated by Richard McDougall (NY: Pantheon, 1980), p. 150 cites birth record: 'In the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty eight, on the eighth of November, at three o'clock in the afternoon, ....appeared Jean Barbin...who presented to us a child of the feminine sex, born last night at midnight in the home of the father and mother...to whom he gave the first names Adelaide Herculine.'

Categories

• Diagnoses : Psychological : Depression

• Family : Childhood : Family traumatic event (Dad died, mom went into convent)

• Family : Childhood : Memories Bad (Identity confusion)

• Family : Relationship : Married late/never (Never)

• Lifestyle : Social Life : Misfit

• Lifestyle : Home : Homeless more than 2 mo. (Raised in orphanage eight years)

• Passions : Sexuality : Sex Organs (Certified hermaphrodite)

• Personal : Death : Short Life less than 29 Yrs (Age 29)

• Personal : Death : Suicide (Carbon dioxide poisoning)

• Vocation : Education : Teacher (Schoolmistress)

• Vocation : Travel : Crew/ Ship, Train, Bus (Railroad administrator)

Herculine Barbin Photographs