In 1623 — as Kit Heyam writes in Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender — Warraskoyack, Virginia, "an English colonial settlement, on Powhatan land," had a population of "twenty-nine white and four Black people." This included a person named Thomas Hall, who worked as a servant to two men. Hall's story was that they had grown up as a girl in England, then dressed as a young man to fight on the Île de Ré in the 1620s, then resumed employment as a woman in needlework for a few years before sailing for America in 1627.
The small community in Warraskoyack had differing opinions of Hall's gender, which seems not to have been a problem for about a year, but in early 1629 became the subject of debate and investigation when Hall was said to be having sex with a person known as "great Bess," who was a maid to a plantation manager. Hall also wore women's clothing and claimed to like sex with men too.
Heyam writes that, in 1629, "around one third of the Warraskoyack population had directly involved themselves in the task of establishing whether the person they knew as Thomas was 'man or woman'." Hall, when asked directly, asserted that they were both. One of Hall's employers likewise answered that he believed Hall to be both. The community then "sought to prove the 'truth' of Thomas(ine)'s gender by inspecting their genitals repeatedly and violently." No one agreed whether Hall's genitals were male or female, and "the case was passed to the Jamestown court," which decided that Hall should be treated as both "a man and a woman."
Heyam points out that "intersex bodies have always been made to stand for more than they are: for God's judgement, for hte supernatural or monstrous, for threats to the patriarchal order. People whose intersex traits are obvious have rarely been able to fly under the radar. While trans history is often hidden behind ambiguous motivations for gender-nonconforming behaviour, intersex history is often violently laid bare before an invasive medical, religious or literary gaze." Unfortunately, some "trans people have appropriated intersex traits and identities to validate our genders or access medical treatment." Nonetheless there are some similarities between trans and intersex experience, including that "medical and legal professionals" try to interfere and to change trans and intersex people's bodies against their wishes. "The same doctors who were keen to change intersex bodies, which they saw as in need of 'correction', were reluctant to help trans people, whose problems they understood as psychological, not physical." Some people therefore asserted that they were intersex because it was a way for them to seek hormones and surgeries.
The life of Thomas Hall can be seen as part of intersex history, trans history, or both.
Please do check out the book Before We Were Trans because it is full of insightful ideas like this.
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