Fernanda Fernandez

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of fairly recent events and people in LGBTQIA+ history — heck, I just wrote about two people who are still alive. In a row! So, to veer away from people with Instagram accounts, I’ve decided to go much further back. After all, one of the reasons I’m doing this is to detail queer history back to the beginning of human history. I’m not going quite that far back today though.

Fernandez is not by any means the first intersex person in the world — intersex people appear in Sumerian mythology that predates written language and is consistently mentioned as being a thing that exists in virtually all societies thereafter. But Fernandez is one of the earliest intersex people who’s name has survived in records to today.

There are no pictures of Fernanda Fernandez so here’s a picture of Capuchin nuns that I borrowed from Wikipedia.

Now, Fernanda Fernandez was born in 1755 in either Baza or Zújar — but definitely in Granada in Spain. There is nothing written or discussed about her childhood up until she took her vows to become a nun of the Capuchin Poor Clares in April of 1774 — at which time she was either seventeen or eighteen, depending on who you ask. It really depends on what month she was born in, but there doesn’t seem to be any decisive record of that.

In 1787, Fernandez began noticing that she appeared to be becoming more masculine in some ways and was starting to get sinful lustful feelings for her fellow nuns. Fernandez was a devout believer, was not trying to rock the boat, and just wanted to do right by society and God. So she reported it and asked to be separated from the other nuns. At first, everyone assumed she was going crazy. Nobody did anything.

Worried she wouldn’t be able to resist the temptations she was feeling, she started actively avoiding the other nuns. She also started a routine of strict penitence, flagellating herself spiked chains. (I guess there is kind of a case to be made that she was going crazy, but it’s probably only because people thought she was going crazy.) Doctors, to help her deal with the craziness, prescribed regular bloodletting. Let’s just take a moment to be thankful that nowadays, doctors who incorrectly think someone is going crazy usually just prescribe pills.

Within the next several years, Fernandez started becoming visibly more masculine. So an investigation was begun. She was isolated from the rest of the nuns. Doctors were called in, theologians, even the archbishop. She explained again what was happening, but this time they actually listened (kind of). A midwife examined her and discovered what she’d been telling everyone all along — that she was developing male characteristics. Including a functional, albeit small, penis. They declared her a man and took steps to make that declaration formal and legally binding.

On January 21, 1792 Fernandez was expelled from the nunnery — technically, this is what she’d asked for back in 1787, but she certainly wasn’t happy about it. She actually liked being a nun. On February 11, she was formally released from her vows and sent back to her parents, who were definitely living in Zújar at that time. (What’s kind of amazing is, this is all pretty well documented except for like who are the parents?) She was forced to change her name to “Fernando” and required to begin wearing exclusively male clothes. Despite this, she continued to occupy her time with the duties and skills of women of the time, and missed her life in the nunnery. Nothing else is recorded about her after 1792, so it’s a little tough to say, but it seems like she identified as a woman, and was likely pretty freaked out about growing a penis in her twenties. I’m sure none of what she went through helped with that.

What’s interesting is the follow-up. There are other cases in Europe and even Spain where medical examinations revealed similar findings, and it was argued that the person in question was committing fraud, pretending to be something they weren’t, and had always been the sex that was uncovered. But no such arguments were made in Fernanda’s case — it was widely acknowledged and accepted that she had been a woman and changed into a man. This is something doctors of the time widely stated was impossible. But they never denied that it happened to Fernanda Fernandez and given where medical science was at the time, that was pretty open minded of them.

Ewa Kłobukowska

In more recent years, many governments and organizations have worked to undo the injustice that’s been committed against LGBTQIA+ people throughout history — pardoning those convicted of homosexuality or cross-dressing when those were crimes, writing obituaries for notable queer people in history, etc. But there’s some glaring instances where an injustice clearly could and should be rectified — but no justice has been forthcoming. One egregious example of this is that of Ewa Kłobukowska.

Ewa Kłobukowska was born on October 1, 1946 into a family of intellectuals in Warsaw, Poland. She grew to become an incredible athlete, competing as a sprinter in the Olympics in 1964. She won a gold medal in the 4×100 meter relay with a time of 43.6 seconds — breaking the world record she had set only a month before with a time of 44.2 seconds, as well as earning a bronze medal in the 100 m sprint.

The following year, she graduated from the Technical School of Economics No. 6 and set a new world record for 100 m sprint, with a time of 11.1 seconds. In 1966, she competed in the European Championships and — although she didn’t set any new world records, she still managed to earn a two gold medals and one silver medal. Not bad, right?

In 1967, Ewa took a traditional gender verification test for the European Cup track and field competition in Kiev, administered by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). She failed the test — Ewa had an intersex condition that even she was wholly unaware of. The Polish Federation decided to send Ewa to compete anyways — which the IAAF did not appreciate. In response, they publicly announced that Ewa had “one chromosome too many.” A medical journal published her results — a chromosome makeup of XX/XXY. Ewa was labeled as a “hermaphrodite” in the media. She disappeared from sports completely.

In 1968, instead of competing in the Olympics, Ewa got pregnant and had a son. I guess that’s a pretty worthwhile use of the time. Meanwhile, also in 1968, the standard gender verification test that was previously used was abandoned in favor of the “Barr Body Test” — a gender verification test that, incidentally, Ewa would have passed. (This starts getting into like genetics and science stuff I don’t really understand so I can’t explain really why she would have passed, but she would have.) That’s right, if she’d been tested just one year later all of the humiliation she suffered — and would continue to suffer — would have been avoided.

But that didn’t stop the IAAF from erasing all of her world records in 1969. They allowed the Polish team to keep the medals she had helped them earn in the relays. How gracious, right? Ewa has done her best to stay out of the public eye since then, though she graduated from the Warsaw School of Economics in 1972. Gender verification tests were abolished in sports altogether 1999.

She’s still alive and kicking at 72 years old. And yet, Ewa’s records still have not been restored to the record books. At this point, it doesn’t seem that there’s any reason they shouldn’t be.

Carlett Angianlee Brown

You remember the story of Christine Jorgensen — the first American to have gender confirmation surgery. It was a pretty joyful story of fame and success.Well, we’re going to talk about the woman who might have been the first African-American woman to have gender confirmation surgery. It’s a very different story.

Carlett Angianlee Brown was born around the year 1927 and originally named “Charles Robert Brown“. She joined the navy in 1950. Another reason she had for joining up was to receive medical treatment — she had a problem where every month she had rectal bleeding, as well as regularly occurring nosebleeds. The doctors examining her diagnosed her with the “serious mental illness” of wanting to be a woman — and also discovered she had female glands. Turned out she was intersex (and yet still, wanting to be a woman was a “serious mental illness” because sexism). The doctors recommended having the female glands surgically removed — but she had other plans. She gave herself the name Carlett and began working professionally as a female impersonator, and also earned money by selling her blood and plasma.

She began researching sex reassignment surgery (as it was called then). At the time, Christine Jorgensen had recently become a household name so Carlett wrote to Jorgensen’s doctor Christian Hamburger as well as two other doctors in Europe. She was advised she would need to renounce her U.S. citizenship to undergo the surgeries unless she received special permission from the government (as Jorgensen had from the Danish Prime Minster). That special permission was denied to Brown.

At some point during this research phase, Brown had begun a relationship with a G.I. stationed in Germany named Eugene Martin. She devised a plan to go to Germany, become a citizen there, and marry Eugene. She is quoted as saying “I just want to become a woman as quickly as possible, that’s all. I’ll become a citizen of any country that will allow me the treatment that I need and be operated on.”

And so she applied for her passport and made plans to have a check-up with Dr. Hamburger in Bonn, Germany in August of 1953. She headed to Boston, signed papers in the Danish consulate to renounce her U.S. citizenship.

Carlett Angianlee Brown described in JET Magazine

And then things took a turn. Brown had been living as Carlett for some time by now, dressing and living as a woman. But cross-dressing was illegal in the United States and the Boston police arrested her and kept her in jail overnight. She was not deterred but she did postpone her trip to Europe to go to New York to have a $500 feminizing facelift done in order to avoid any further arrests.

And then she got hit with news from the IRS that she owed more than $1200 in unpaid back taxes. Brown couldn’t afford that, but a friend helped her get a job as a cook at a frat house at Iowa State. The job paid $60 a week. She intended to work that job and save until she had paid off the back taxes and paid her way to Europe so she could have her surgery and marry Eugene.

And that is the last thing anyone seems to know. There is no record of whether or not Brown ever made it to Europe, ever had her surgery, or ever married. All of this seems to come from a series of (brief, and not exactly kind) articles in issues of JET magazine and that’s as far as the articles go. I can’t find any other sources, any other information. So, sorry to leave you all on a cliffhanger but at least we’re all suffering together here.

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)

Prehistoric Queer Art

The earliest depictions of homosexuality in art are a subject that’s up for a lot of debate — and that’s understandable considering that we’re talking about primitive rock art. Our cavemen ancestors may have been a lot of things, but Picasso wasn’t one of them. Actually, maybe Picasso isn’t the best example… My point is, there’s a lot of room for interpretation.

Arguably, the oldest depictions of homosexuality are the Grotta dell’Addaura (or the Addaura Cave) in Sicily. These particular images are estimated to date back to somewhere roughly between 9,600 and 5,000 BCE.  The area had already been studied by paleontologists, because there’d been remains of a dwarf elephant nearby but in 1943 Allied forces invaded the island. They decided to store ammunition in some of the caves near Palermo. Some of the ammunition being stored in this particular cave exploded — revealing previously buried rock art. Obviously, there was a war going on and a recent explosion of valuable ammo, so studying the rock art wasn’t an immediate priority. Nevertheless, Jole Bovio Marconi studied the rock art extensively and published her findings in 1953 CE. The particular drawing of note in this cave — which Marconi herself believed was a homoerotic image — shows a circle of people around two men who are arching their backs. It’s been argued this isn’t actually an image of gay sex (and — again — it’s a little hard to tell but if it is, it seems kind of, I dunno, kinky?) Some people say it’s an image of hunters hunting (hunting what?) or of a religious ceremony, or possibly of acrobats. I honestly couldn’t tell you but that’s why I included a picture of it. I sort of see seals but what do I know, really?

The oldest rock art to definitively show some man-on-man action is in Zimbabwe, painted by the San people. These paintings date back to roughly 8,000 BCE and some are especially controversial because they appear to show three men engaged in a sexual act together. I don’t have a picture of that one, and I am really sorry about it. It must really be something to see.

Art — both drawings and figurines — dating between roughly the years 7,000 BCE and 1,700 BCE also seem to depict transgender and/or intersex people and even some individuals are depicted without any defining gender or sex characteristics at all. At least one figure found thus far seems to depict what some have called a “third sex”, with breasts and male genitals. I wasn’t able to find any pictures of these yet, but I will definitely keep looking!

So what’s the take away here? We’ve been here, we’ve been queer, and the world should definitely be used to us by now.

(Adapted from a Facebook post.)