Herculine Barbin
Herculine Barbin (November 8, 1838 – February 13, 1868) was a French intersex person who was assigned female at birth and raised in a convent, but was later reclassified as male by a court of law, after an affair and physical examination. In 20th-century medical terms, she had male pseudohermaphroditism. She is known for her memoir, Herculine Barbin, which was published and studied by Michel Foucault.
“You are to be pitied more than I, perhaps. I soar above all your innumerable miseries, partaking of the nature of the angels; for, as you have said, my place is not in your narrow sphere. You have the earth, I have boundless space. Enchained here below by the thousand bonds of your gross, material senses, your spirits cannot plunge into that limpid Ocean of the infinite, where, lost for a day upon your arid shores, my soul drinks deep.”
Herculine Barbin
“May you hear my feeble voice! It will tell you that here below there is a heart full of the memory of you.”
Herculine Barbin
“Oh! To live alone, always alone, in the midst of the crowd that surrounds me, without a word of love ever coming to gladden my soul, without a friendly hand reaching out to me!”
Herculine Barbin