Memoirs of a man's maiden years
By: N.O. Body ; preface by Sander L. Gilman ; afterword by Hermann Simon ; translated by Deborah Simon.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 136
ISBN-13: 9780812239089
Subjects: Body, N. O., 1885-1956; Sexual orientation; Sex (Psychology); Hermaphroditism
Description: ""I was born a boy, raised as a girl. One may raise a healthy boy in as womanish a manner as one wishes, and a female creature in as mannish; never will this cause their senses to remain forever reversed."" "So writes the pseudonymous N. O. Body, born in 1884 with ambiguous genitalia and assigned a female identity in early infancy. Brought up as a girl, "she" nevertheless asserted stereotypical male behavior from early on. In the end, it was a passionate love affair with a married woman that brought matters to a head. Desperately confused, suicidally depressed, and in consultation with Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the most eminent and controversial sexologists of the day, "she" decided to become "he."" "Originally published in 1907 and now available for the first time in English, Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years describes a childhood and youth in Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany that is shaped by bourgeois attitudes and stifled by convention. It is, at the same time, a book startlingly charged with sexuality. Yet, however frank the memoirist may be about matters physical or emotional, Hermann Simon reveals in his afterword the full extent of the lengths to which N. O. Body went to hide not just his true name but a second secret, his Jewish identity. And here, Sander L. Gilman suggests in his preface, may lie the crucial hint to solving the real riddle of the ambiguously gendered N. O. Body."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.