Abel Barbin

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Abel Barbin (* 1838 in Saint-Jean-d'Angély , † February 1868 in Paris ) was a male hermaphrodite .

Life

Abel Barbin was initially mistaken for a girl and was given the name Herculine Adélaïde Barbin. In his childhood he was called Alexina. At the age of twelve, the child, who was brought up in an Ursuline institute, fell in love with a blonde schoolmate. When this became known, he was almost denied first communion . When the supposed girl was 17 years old, she moved to Le Château and received a teacher training there. Again a friendship developed with a classmate. This Thécla was often kissed by Barbin, which aroused the suspicion of the teaching staff. While the comrades developed into young women, Barbin's first beard growth and thicker body hair, which he tried to remove by secretly shaving. In 1857 he got a job at a girls' school. There a love affair began with a colleague named Sara. This was not hidden. Barbin also began to suffer from severe pain during this period. A doctor was consulted, who apparently discovered that Barbin was not a woman, and turned to the school administration. Apparently he expressed himself so unclearly with the suggestion to remove Barbin from the asylum that no consequences were drawn. But Barbin himself felt guilty and turned to the Bishop of La Rochelle , Jean-François-Anne Landriot . He asked Barbin to break the confessional secret and to contact his own doctor. This Dr. Chesnet found that Barbin had a vagina and urethra like a woman, but otherwise no female sexual characteristics, but night dreams that ended with ejaculations . In 1860 a court ruled that Barbin was a man. He left his position at the girls' school and from then on lived under the name Abel Barbin. After some furore in the press, it fell silent about Barbin, who was looking for the anonymity of the big city and moved to Paris. There he wrote down his memoirs.

At the age of 29, the lonely Abel Barbin committed suicide in his room on rue de l'École-de-Médecine in Paris. He used a gas stove for this . Barbin's memoirs were found next to the body.

Aftermath

Barbin became one of the most famous hermaphrodites of the 19th century. Dr. Régnier, who had to investigate the suicide, initially suspected that the young man had suffered from syphilis . When he was about to examine his genitals, he was surprised. Régnier gave the notes to Barbins Auguste Ambroise Tardieu ; the body was examined by E. Goujon at the university's medical school. In 1869 Goujon's Étude d'un cas d'hermaphrodisme bisexuel imparfait chez l'homme appeared , the subject of which was Barbin. In 1874, Tardieu published part of Barbin's memoirs in his work Question médico-légale de l'identité dans ses reports avec les vices de conformation des organes sexuels .

In the late 19th century, Barbin's fate appeared in several literary works, including a work by Oskar Panizzas in 1893 and in Armand Dubarry's L'hermaphrodite in 1899 . In 1908 FL von Neugebauer dealt with Barbin's life. In 1978 Barbin's texts were published, in 1980 an English translation by Richard McDougall appeared . The introduction was written by Michel Foucault , who had dealt with Barbin several times. Another publication of the French original followed in 2008. In the meantime, Barbin's fate is also being discussed in school lessons.

The 1984 film Le Mystère Alexina also addresses Barbin's life.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c G. S. Rousseau: Herculine Barbin. Being the recently discovered memoirs of a nineteenth-century hermaphrodite. translated by Richard McDougall. Harvester Press, Brighton, Sussex 1980. (Review In: Med Hist. 25 (2), April 1981, pp. 211f. PMC 1139024 (free full text)
  2. ^ Herculine Adélaïde Barbin: Mes souvenirs.
  3. ^ A b Armand Marie Leroi: Mutants. On Genetic Variety and the Human Body. Penguin Books, 2003, ISBN 0-14-200482-0 , pp. 217-244.
  4. ↑ Alice Domurat Dreger: Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex. Harvard University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-674-00189-3 , p. 16 ff.
  5. ^ Herculine Adélaïde Barbin: Mes souvenirs. Éditions de Boucher, 2002, ISBN 2-84824-004-0 , p. 3.
  6. ^ A b Andrea Rossi: Herculine Barbin, Mes souvenirs. Histoire d'Alexina / Abel B. La cause des Livres, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-917336-01-4 . ( Review In: Foucault Studies. 15, February 2013, pp. 187–189)
  7. ↑ Processing of Barbin's fate for school lessons on queerhistory.de
  8. ↑ Le Mystère Alexina. on: www.allocine.fr
personal data
SURNAME Barbin, Abel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barbin, Alexina; Barbin, Herculine Adélaïde
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French hermaphrodite
DATE OF BIRTH 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Jean-d'Angély
DATE OF DEATH February 1868
Place of death Paris