Medieval Silence and Modern Transsexuality

Abstract

Psychoanalysis and science respond to the transsexual claim of wrongful embodiment with radically different models of treatment. Yet both disciplines construct the figure of the transsexual from a heteronormative and patriarchal perspective. The 13th-century text Le Roman de Silence, which deals with the gender transformation of its heroine, Silence, is similarly biased. Moreover, this romance theorizes a relationship between gender and the body that closely parallels the psychoanalytical and scientific discourses about transsexuality. Silence's social isolation confirms the varying levels of dislocation that transsexed individuals, both male and female, attribute to their condition, but her powerlessness to determine her own gender identity is more akin to the modern treatment of intersex children. The ambiguity surrounding Silence's return to femininity at the end of the romance, however, suggests that the medieval author can see beyond the binary system of gender that structures his society and that continues to structure ours.

Notes

¹See, for example, Gender in Psychoanalytic Space: Between Clinic and Culture (eds. Muriel Dimen and Virginia Goldner, 2002). All but one of the contributors to this collection of essays are practicing psychoanalysts.

²I follow Heldris's example and alternate between “he” and “she” according to context.

³Many authors reject Benjamin's (1966) model of a continuum of sexual behaviors and instead distinguish between transvestism and transsexuality. The former is classified as a sexual fetish for wearing women's clothing whereas the latter, defined as a desire to become the opposite sex, is divorced from the sexual stimulation association with transvestism (Califia, 1997, pp. 57–58).

⁴Benjamin (1966) uses the older term hermaphroditism (p. 13).

⁵Benjamin (1966) concentrates on male rather than female transvestites because, in his estimation, “Female transvestism seems to be rare and of somewhat doubtful reality” (p. 31).

⁶Benjamin (1966) is primarily interested in male-to-female transsexuals because of his impression that female-to-male transsexuals are much rarer than male transsexuals (p. 147).

⁷See, for example, Freud, S. (1995). Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. Dr. A. A. Brill New York, NY: Modern Library. Originally published in 1905.

⁸“Sexually, female transsexuals can be ardent lovers, wooing their women as men do, but not as lesbians, whom they often dislike intensely” (Benjamin, 1966, p. 150).

⁹“In my so-called daydreaming, I have often visualized the satisfaction I would derive from possessing a penis and in being able to perform normal intercourse with a woman rather than engage in homosexual acts” (Benjamin, 1966, p. 246).

¹⁰But I have a mouth too hard for kisses, / and arms too rough for embraces. / One could easily make a fool of me / in any game played under the covers / for I'm a young man, not a girl (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, ll. 2646–2650).

¹¹Her skin was as white as fresh-fallen snow: / she had no problem with wrinkles; / she was not old enough yet / to have to worry about creases, / not at all; she was round and smooth and soft (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 179, ll. 3793–3797).

¹²But he wasn't at all interested, / because his nature kept him from responding (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 179, ll. 3823–3824).

¹³…on the advice of his…advisers (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, 313, ll. 6679–6680).

¹⁴Silence was deeply disturbed about this, / for her conscience told her / that she was practicing deception by doing this (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 116, ll. 2497–2499).

¹⁵Joan's case is a vivid illustration of how gender, in Adrienne Harris's (2005) terms, is “assembled.” The femininity imposed on him was comprised of overlapping factors that themselves stem from socially constructed notions of what it means to be either male or female: the loss of his penis, his parents' desperation, and the pressure exerted by the medical team supervising him to surgically and psychologically turn him into a “normal” girl.

¹⁶The warning that Butler (1993) raises in Bodies that Matter is no less relevant in John's case. Despite her desire to respect his narrative, here too, she points out the naivety of uncritically accepting the manner in which he presents his early childhood experiences (Butler, 2001, pp. 629–630). John's unhappy childhood and anger when he discovered the truth no doubt influences the degree to which he represents his early engendering as brutally coercive.

¹⁷When they practiced wrestling, / jousting or skirmishing, / he alone made all his peers tremble (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 117, ll. 2494–2496).

¹⁸Colapinto (1997) points out that when John reached puberty, he went through a growth spurt and started developing more masculine features. He theorizes that John's natural hormones were in conflict with the estrogen pills he had been taking.

¹⁹I don't want to lose my high position; / I don't want to exchange it for a lesser, / and I don't want to prove my father a liar (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 125, ll. 2651–2653).

²⁰In public, he called himself Malduit, / because he thought himself very badly brought up, / very badly educated with regard to his nature (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 149, ll. 3177–3179).

²¹If it should happen that King Evan / died today or tomorrow, / women would inherit again (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 132, ll. 2831–2833).

²²And you are now so fierce / that you know nothing of women's arts (Roche-Mahdi, 1999, p. 132, ll. 2834–2835).