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Conference Presentation on “Gender Transgression”
My talk at ECIS 10 (Leiden 21-25 August 2023) was entitled “Gender Transgression in Premodern Persianate and Shiʿi Legal and Medical Discourses: the case of intersex.” It was part of our panel on “Gender and (Un)Belief Transgressions in Persianate Culture and Shiʿi legal Discourses.”
Abstract:
The present traditional Muslim and orientalist approaches assert that Islam is intolerant of trans-genderism or non-binary sex/gender divisions. By contrast, Islamic medical and legal discourses on sex and/or gender are oftentimes surprisingly more flexible than one might expect. Although the dominant discourse in premodern Islamic culture amplifies a dichotomous of sex/gender, I challenge the exclusive binary notion of gender in Islam and Persianate cultures. To elaborate, on the one hand, a number of classical Persian medical experts have transgressed the gender norm and apparently suggested a discourse on non-binary conceptions of sex/gender. On the other hand, a group of Shiʿi jurists, notably since the post-classical period of the 14th century, have categorised indeterminate intersex people as a third nature (third sex and/or gender). Focusing on two premodern treatises entitled “Risāla fi al-ubna/al-Dā’ al-khafī (the Hidden Illness)” and “Risāla fi al-khunthā,” composed by the physician Muḥammad b. Zakariyyā al-Rāzī (d. 925) and the jurist Sayyid Muḥammad Kāẓim al-Ṭabāṭabā’ī al-Yazdī (d. 1919) respectively, I shall examine the aforementioned legal and medical assessments of intersex as illustrations of non-binary conceptions of sex/gender in Shiʿi and Persianate cultures. I will also elaborate on how these two figures debated and classified intersex nature within various human categories.
*The pictures were taken by Narcis Frotan.
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