Abstract
This paper examines sexual anomaly as read about in Chinese texts from the first to the fourteenth centuries. The genres encountered include portent interpretations in Confucian exegeses and dynastic histories, Buddhist and Daoist stories of pious women turning into men, anecdotal and encyclopedic writings about human anomalies, and medical records of human bodies that were “neither-male-nor-female” and “dual-formed.” Through a critical reflection on modern categories of sexuality and normalcy, I investigate how the human body was conceptualized and norms established in these sources. I argue that the formation of sexual anomalies as a distinct category, occurring in the late-thirteenth century, was not simply a result of ethnic tension under Mongol rule nor intellectuals’ responses to perceived political turbulence. It was also a historical contingency, brought forth by a combination of several not necessarily related developments in areas like text production and genres. The present study is ultimately an alternative history of gender discourse that reconsiders how power works, where authority anchors itself, and what accounts for historical change in perceptions of bodily and sexual anomaly.
Keywords
Sexual anomaly, sex change, normalcy, portent interpretation, Chinese medicine, Chinese religions
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