Bodily Transformations

Responses to Intersex Individuals in Early and Imperial China

Bibliographic Data

ID19509987
AuthorsOlivia Milburn (0000-0002-0340-0013, Seoul National University, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume16
Issue1
Pages1-28
Publication date2014-09-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNAN Nü (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1387-6805 • E-ISSN: 1568-5268
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/15685268-00161p01
OpenAlexW2026891543
LanguageEN
Citations received3

This paper discusses the most important accounts of intersex individuals in early and pre-modern China, focusing specifically on the records which describe these people as changing sex at puberty. Contemporary medical knowledge interpreted this as a spontaneous sex change; in fact underlying sex was being revealed. Such transformations came to be interpreted in dynastic histories and other official texts as omens of dynastic change; when the same stories appear in anomaly accounts, they are understood simply as curious or strange incidents. Intersex individuals were uniquely challenging to gender norms, and as such they provide an important focus of discussion about social attitudes towards appropriate roles and boundaries. From the late Ming dynasty onwards, particularly with the case of Li Liangyu, members of the literati elite in China began to do more than simply record the reintegration of intersex individuals into mainstream society through categorization into the opposite gender followed by marriage, as they started to consider the difficulties they suffered

Ancient history · Categorization · China · Elite · Epistemology · Mainstream · Neo-Confucianism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Psychology

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