Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 354 - Why is Intersexuality Relevant to the History of Lesbianism?

Saturday, October 17, 2026 - 07:00 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 354 - Why is Intersexuality Relevant to the History of Lesbianism? - transcript (Originally aired 2026/10/17) Content Note Let’s start with a content note. Historic discussions of intersexuality have a hard time avoiding the word “hermaphrodite,” which today is considered offensive when applied to intersex persons. However, in historic use, “hermaphrodite” was used in a variety of contexts to indicate combinations of masculine and feminine attributes and applied to the entire spectrum of sex, gender, and sexuality. This could include people with ambiguous genitalia, but also people who combined aspects of performative gender assigned to both men and women, or who performed gender attributes not matching their assigned sex. Pre-modern gender theory did not clearly distinguish these concepts. I acknowledge that the use of the word “hermaphrodite” in the context of intersexuality is considered…