Herculine Barbin
Raised as a girl, reclassified as a man by a court – the memoirs of this intersex teacher are one of the earliest first-person accounts of intersex life.
Herculine Barbin was born in western France in 1838, assigned female at birth and called Alexina by the family. The family was poor, but a scholarship made it possible to attend a school run by Ursuline nuns. Alexina trained as a teacher and in 1857 began working at a girls’ boarding school.
There Barbin fell in love with a fellow teacher, Sara, and the two became lovers. At the same time, Barbin suffered from severe pain, and the body did not develop as expected of a girl. After Barbin confided in a bishop, a doctor carried out an examination in 1860 and found that Barbin had both female and male characteristics. A court then declared Barbin legally male. From then on the name was Abel.
Barbin had to leave both the beloved and the job and moved to Paris, where Abel Barbin lived in poverty and wrote memoirs. In them Barbin described life before the decision as a girl and young woman and felt the reclassification as a punishment and a loss of home.
In February 1868 Barbin was found dead in a room in Paris, having taken their own life, aged 29. If you are struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or to a crisis line in your country. The memoirs survived; in the 1970s the philosopher Michel Foucault republished them and made them known worldwide. Barbin’s birthday, 8 November, is marked as Intersex Day of Remembrance.