Intersexed Individuals and Colonial Medical Knowledge

In Martha Few’s article “That Monster of Nature” she details the case of an intersexed person in late colonial Guatemala, Juana Aguilar, who was charged with double concubinage (unmarried living with a man and a woman).  Juana is revealed to be intersexed, then described using the term hermaphrodite.  A physician is called in to examine Juana after Juana has been examined by midwives and lay surgeons.  This physician, Narciso Esparragosa, attempts to debunk the declaration that Juana is a hermaphrodite.  Instead of being both “man and woman” Juana is “neither man nor woman”.  He comes to this conclusion after examining Juana’s genitalia.

I thought that it was interesting that Esparragosa defines Juana as “neither man nor woman” which is of course what intersexed people are.  Esparragosa has an oddly advanced attitude toward what we know as intersexuality.  However, in other ways his attitude is very chauvinist.  He believes, for example, that Juana’s enlarged clitoris would lead her to be more “lascivious” than a woman with a smaller clitoris.  It was funny/sad/racist that he claims that “Egyptian” women typically have larger clitorises, and provides a justification for female genital mutilation.  He claims it is a “necessity” to maintain honor.  Esparragosa also assumes that there is some legitimate standard to judge what a nomral clitoris (and male genitalia) looks like. His arrogance is astonishing.

I really can’t imagine what it must have been like for Juana. They charge her with a crime, have her examined by any number of experts, and then hire Esparragosa to write a report about her.  His report is published in a newspaper even.  Also, during his examination he attempts to stimulate her to find out if she is able to have sex as a “man” which is really quite disturbing.  Juana is even given a nickname “Juana La Larga” which means “Long Juana”.  While all this is going on, I’m sure that she was struggling with her own feelings about her sexuality and gender.  I’ve mentioned before the Argentinian film XXY about an intersexed individual Alex who also has a less than ideal interface with the medical establishment.  I think I will never understand why people have a strong aversion to accepting that everything is a little more complicated and unknowable (especially something as complicated as sexuality and gender) than we would like to think.