But long before (and even since) the growing awareness about intersexuality issues, the possibility of someone having both male and female parts has served to illuminate rigid cultural attitudes about expectations for male and female behaviour.
Consider the women who have been accused of being hermaphrodites. Jamie Lee Curtis is rumoured to be one (if you go by Internet gossip). She wears her hair short. She doesn’t dye the grey. She is handsome, rather than conventionally pretty. She doesn’t fit ideals of what it means to be a woman, in other words.
And that holds true for assumptions about a woman’s sexuality. For example, the Duchess of Windsor, the twice-divorced American for whom Edward VIII abdicated the throne in 1936, was said to have a voracious sexual appetite with courtesan-like tricks up her Schiaparelli sleeves. Also somewhat mannish in appearance, she was rumoured to be a hermaphrodite.

See the full article from “Globe and Mail”



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