Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal: Inquisitors, Doctors, and the Transgression of Gender Norms by François Soyer (review)

Iberian Golden Age theatergoers watched in fascination as stage actors dramatized frequent acts of gender manipulation, deception, and fluctuation. But each play always ended in a neat conclusion, with every character happily embracing his or her “correct” gender identity as the drama came to a close, reaffirming that physical traits and genitalia designated any given individual’s true and actual gender. François Soyer examines the small body of surviving inquisitorial evidence documenting the untidy reality of ambiguous gender in early modern Spain and Portugal, seeking information about broader attitudes on gender identity, its malleability, and how the manipulation of gender could lead to inquisitorial investigations. Soyer’s handful of cases also provides insights on how ambiguous gender intersected with a presumed popular generalization of sexual passivity or aggression in male same-sex sexual unions. Soyer does not make ambitious claims, given that his cases offer only a very limited range of anecdotal evidence. However, his narratives, drawn from autobiographies given to inquisitors as well as witness statements and expert testimonies, draw the reader into an eye-opening world of brave and cunning sexual deceptions on the part of daring gender manipulators.

Each case challenges the assumption that functioning genitalia defined gender identity. Most of the defendants described here endured intrusive physical exams by medical practitioners hired by the inquisition tribunal for their expertise. The results of these exams contradicted the defendants’ reputed gender, as culturally defined by their dress, facial appearance, hairstyle, occupations, mannerisms, and sexual partners. The apparently definitive results of intimate exams did not change the minds of witnesses, who held on to their convictions regarding each of these individuals’ gender identity. For those involved in these trials, a broader range of cultural factors defined gender identity.

While the book provides background on early modern and Enlightenment understandings of the differences between male and female genitalia, hermaphrodites, lesbianism, and sodomy (especially, according to a more traditional approach, the invisibility of lesbianism and the harsh persecution of sodomy), the case studies themselves contain little analysis. Soyer just presents a summary of the documents surviving in trial records, leaving the narrative in an almost note-taking form. The reader gets this impression because the book narrates events in order of how surviving documents present them; the book is not a chronological narration of events as they occurred. It would not be difficult to instead tell a biographical account of each individual, thus making his or her intriguing life stories more readable and accessible to a wider range of readers.

Most of the book consists of four extremely detailed long case summaries that could have used some heavy editing to highlight their truly important, revelatory elements. Indeed, it sometimes seems that the point of the book is to present the minutiae of Holy Office procedures, not the fascinating lives of gender manipulators. Three of the four cases depict individuals with male genitalia persecuted for having acted in a sexually “feminine” way, seducing men by claiming to be secretly women or promoting a sexual identity that confused their neighbors and ultimately church authorities. The first case study tells of a mid-seventeenth-century married man named Francisco Roca who was investigated by the Spanish Holy Office after witnesses saw him in a passive sexual position with several men and heard rumors of his lacking religiosity. Until his physical exam, the documents suggest that many believed that Roca was a woman or a hermaphrodite. The next case, from the late seventeenth century, discusses a priest who apparently seduced men by claiming he was a woman. While the exam again indicated he had male genitalia, witnesses strongly believed that they had had sex with a woman. Both of the above gender manipulators created elaborate autobiographies highlighting their adventures and their unique sexual histories, a common practice among those seeking to evade rigid...