Middlesex (2002)
By Jeffrey Eugenides
Gender; Hermaphroditism; Mutations; Nature/nurture
While explaining his female-to-male transition, Cal Stephanides explains how his hermaphroditism arose from mutations in the family’s gene pool, and how his apparent gender role conflicts with his biologically-determined one.
Cal Stephanides details three generations of his family’s history in order to explain his female-to-male gender transition. Born with an XY karyote but raised as Calliope because of an ostensibly female appearance (including genitalia), Cal has inherited a recessive genetic mutation on the fifth chromosome which causes hermaphroditism. He tracks the mutation’s inevitable appearance to the 1920s, when siblings Lefty and Desdemona succumb to incestuous desires and marry shortly after fleeing war-torn Turkey. They move to Detroit, bootlegging through the Prohibition and establishing a family. Once Desdemona realizes the potentially disastrous effects of her sexual union with her brother, she inspects her children Milton and Zoe for inherited “curses,” not realizing that the genetic mutation that causes hermaphroditism lingers in their DNA. When Milton marries his cousin Tessie, the mutated gene’s potential increases until it manifests in Cal. Calliope is not immediately recognized as a hermaphrodite, since male genitalia does not begin to develop until puberty. Calliope must struggle through an unusually harsh adolescence, hiding secret sexual desire for her best friend while her development diverges from that of her female classmates. The condition is discovered only after a minor accident that lands Calliope in the emergency room, and her parents take her to a gender specialist in New York for treatment. There, when faced with the prospect of surgical gender assignment to remove male genitalia, Cal runs away to pursue his true identity as a male.
Cal is regarded by the specialists as a unique example of the conflict between biology (sex) and culture (gender), where culture initially – though superficially – reigns. Although Calliope presents as a female, Cal’s emergence indicates the apparent superiority of nature; genetic composition directs many of Cal’s desires and impulses from childhood, even if they are not recognized as male traits at the time. The specialists theorize that Cal’s gender identity was established at age two, yet Cal easily adapts to a male gender role. Calliope performs “female” activities as a child – feeding a bottle to a toy doll, for instance – which implies that at some point, Cal identified with the female role. Indeed, certain learned traits, like walking patterns, occasionally reappear in his adulthood. Cultural determination of both nurture and nature cannot be discounted, for the unique cultural heritage shared by generations of Stephanides influences the subsequent intrafamilial marriages. The cultural requirement to marry a Greek girl leads to the marriage between Lefty and Desdesmona, who come from a tiny village with only three eligible females, and this marriage initiates the appearance of Cal’s genetic mutation. Cal also implies that motifs and scenarios are passed in DNA from parents to children; Tessie and Milton seem to repeat the same courting and marriage scenario that earlier unites Lefty and Desdemona. The repetition within families apparently supports Desdemona’s theory that fate is largely a genetically-written instinct.
Evaluation: Eugenides tells Cal’s story with genuine sympathy, without sensationalizing the concept of hermaphroditism or gender transformations. While Cal’s perspective is distinctly colored by his culture, this story resonates beyond Greek traditions and can be applied to wider conflicts between genes and social influence.
– Natalie Champ