The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Aren’t Enough
Author(s)
Fausto-Sterling, Anne
Abstract
For some time medical investigators have recognized the concept of the intersexual body. But the standard medical literature uses the term intersexes a catch-all for three major subgroups with some mixture of male and female characteristics: the so-called true hermaphrodites, whom I call herms, who possess one testis and one ovary (the sperm- and egg-producing vessels, or gonads); thennmale pseudohermaphrodites (the merms), who have testes and some aspects of the female genitalia but no ovaries; and the female pseudohermaphrodites (the ferms), who have ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but lack testes. Each of those categories is in itself complex; the percentage of male and female characteristics, for instance, can vary enormously among members of the same subgroup. Moreover, the inner lives of the people in each subgroup-their special needs and their problems, attractions and repulsions have gone unexplored by science. But on the basis of what is known about them I suggest that the three intersexes, herm, merm and ferm, deserve to be considered additional sexes each in its own right. Indeed, I would argue further that sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of even five categories.
