comartha bandachta: Approaching sex characteristics in early Irish literature
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33353/scf.157303Abstract
A wealth of complexity in medieval texts has been hidden behind modern assumptions, both popular and scholarly. One area in which modern ideas often silently influence our ideas of medieval texts is in the realm of sex/gender. Public discourse in the English-speaking world differentiates ‘sex’, a set of physical characteristics including genitals, chromosomes, and hormones, from ‘gender’, a set of social roles. Assuming that medieval narratives make this same distinction can colour modern interpretations of these texts. In this paper, I follow a strand of trans studies which argues there is no clear distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’; that both are ultimately socially constructed and not demarcated by an immutable set of physical rules.
I will use this approach to consider a short Irish account of St Eugenia/us; ‘The Story of the Abbot of Drimnagh’ in which a person undergoes a transformation between sexes; and a narrative of infant transformation in the Irish Life of St Abbán. I argue that social markers of sex/gender — including clothes, possessions, and interpersonal relationships — are as central to the construction of sex/gender as the physical body. This not only proposes a new way of understanding sex/gender in medieval Ireland, but also shows the relevance of trans studies to medieval Irish literature as a whole.
