RICHARD Goldschmidt, in proposing the term intersex, noted the limitations of previous terminology and the significance of his different approach to the subject.
Goldschmidt proposed that better terminology was needed when intersex was viewed from the then new perspective of “cytology, genetics, teratology, physiology, serology, endocrinology, etc.” He also invited endocrinologists to view sex differentiation with an “open mind and without prejudice.”
Prior to this paper intersex was largely in the domain of medical experts that specialized in thinking problems such as psychiatrists and psychologists. Few other fields of medicine were involved because in 1901 there was little that medication or surgery had to offer.
Intersex in humans was at that time largely limited to external appearance save for those who were discovered to be ‘internal hermaphrodites’ when autopsies were conducted. The standard test for the living was a ‘hands-on’ affair where some kind of medical ‘expert’ would view and touch the offending organs and make a pronouncement of male or female. That pronouncement was entirely dependent on the size of the ‘protrusions’ felt.
Goldschmidt sagely observes that “we often take the fact of the existence of two sexes for granted” and then notes that “the causes of normal distribution of the sexes is difficult to ascertain.”
Richard Goldschmidt: Intersexuality and the Endocrine Aspect of Sex, 1901, screenshot.
Goldschmidt clearly understood the difference between hermaphrodite and intersex. On page 446 of his paper he dismisses reported cases of “hermaphroditism” and “pseudo-hermaproditism” as being “probably cases of hormonal intersex.”
Over 100 years ago science was aware that sex exists on a gradation or continuum. Goldschmidt was aware that old terms often proposed without the benefit of science were inaccurate and were not reflected in scientific discoveries of the time.
Hermaphrodite and allied terms were never science. Those terms arose from Greek and Roman mythology and were adopted by the priests, alchemists and soothsayers of prescience seeking an explanation for what was otherwise inexplicable to them.
Still today there are those in science, journalism and especially mental health who prefer those ancient terms heavy with prejudice, myth and mystery.
A difficulty experienced to this day by intersex is the over-representation of psychology, psychiatry and allied professionals in constant discourse on intersex. One of the most active busybodies is an historian who decided the best way to ‘help’ was to pathologize us as ‘disordered’ and discourage the term intersex. The world’s leading experts on being intersex are intersex. We are rarely consulted or included when studies are being conducted about us. Our bodies are consulted though and viewed, as a sausage is, as a bag full of mystery.
Far too often intersex is viewed through a lens of mental maladjustment and pathologised as that in diagnostic manuals such as the DSM-IV and DSM-V. The mental health issues experienced by intersex are more often post-traumatic stress reactions to a society that is so confronted by our differences that we are subjected to unnecessary cosmetic surgery and gender-reinforcing disciplining, which we most often fail, and the burden of carrying a shameful secret if we succeed.
So for goodness sake why does a third-rate historian from an obscure North American university get to make the definitions around intersex? What is so dreadful about us that we are so unworthy to decide how we are spoken of?
