Heinz-Jürgen Voss (2009): Konstituierung von "Geschlecht" in westlichen modernen biologisch-medizinischen Wissenschaften – Ausgangspunkt Hermaphroditismus. In: Invertito, 11, S.49-75.

English Summary
The Constitution of "sex" in Modern Western Bio-Medical Sciences - Starting Point: hermaphroditism

In the 17th century numerous characteristics like body structure, clothing and behavior used to indicate the „true” biological and medical sex of a person - male or female. In the 19th century, the gonads, and at the beginning of the 20th century, the gonads and the chromosoms were considered the exclusive signs of the „true sex”. Biological and medical sciences supply the basic and so-called „natural” theories for constructing the only two sexes of western societies. One of the most prominent inicial points of those theories about sex was hermaphroditism. Hermaphrodites were seen as rarely, fascinating and threatening, lateron, in the 19th and 20th century, as an aberrance of a sex-pathway with only two opportunities. Hermaphrodites also make up the starting point for this article to take the fascinating and threatening biological and medical theories of sex into focus; and to show, how biological and medical sciences are involved in the construction of the two sexes of modern western societies. The article offers some alternative thinking and emphasizes, that biological and medical theories about sex are embedded in society and changeable as well.