A generation after the Chevalier d'Eon's death, a group of French doctors examined another puzzling corpse--that of a thirty-year-old railroad employee who had committed suicide in a squalid attic room in Paris. Abel Barbin, known for twenty-four years as Adelaide Herculine Barbin (and called Alexina), had been born with a body that appeared female. She was raised in a convent and became a teacher at an all-girl boarding school. Severe pain in her lower abdomen caused Alexina to seek medical assistance while employed at the school. The results of the doctor's examination changed her life forever. "His hand was already slipping under my sheet and coming to a stop at the sensitive place. It pressed upon it several times, as if to find there the solution to a difficult problem. It did not leave off at that point!!! He had found the explanation that he was looking for! But it was easy to see that it exceeded all his expectations!"

The doctor had discovered Alexina's undescended testicles and small penis, though he did not reveal this information to either Alexina or her employer, and instead advised the headmistress of the school to terminate the young schoolmistress. Alexina sought the advice of her bishop, who sent her to a second physician, a researcher, who prepared "a voluminous report, a masterpiece in the medical style, intended to ensure before the courts a petition for rectification." In June 1860, the birth register in Barbin's home district was amended, and the female Alexina became the male Abel--by an act of law, not surgery. Though the body remained the same, the legal person was transformed from female to male. The scandal that ensued when the newspapers and the public discovered that a man had been teaching in an all-girl boarding school condemned Abel to "abandonment, to cold isolation." His life as a man began in pain and confusion and plummeted rapidly into despair. He attempted to make a fresh start in Paris, but, impoverished and alone in a city that granted anonymity if not happiness, Abel was unable to make the transition from convent-bred woman to working man. He committed suicide at the age of thirty, overcome by feelings of isolation and desolation, the sense that he was absolutely alone in the world.

In his journal, Abel predicted that after his death his anomalous body would become a teaching tool and an exemplar of oddity. "When that day comes a few doctors will make a little stir around my corpse; they will shatter all the extinct mechanisms of its impulses, will draw new information from it, will analyze all the mysterious sufferings that were heaped up on a single human being." This premonition was fulfilled as Abel's body was autopsied and the genitals and internal organs probed, studied, and sketched for the edification of future physicians pondering the riddle of "hermaphrodites," individuals whose bodies did not conform to traditional notions of male and female anatomy

With an eye for the sensual bloom of young schoolgirls, and the torrid style of the romantic novels of her day, Herculine Barbin tells the story of her life as a hermaphrodite. Herculine was designated female at birth. A pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, a bewildered adolescent enchanted by the ripening bodies of her classmates, a passionate lover of another schoolmistress, she is suddenly reclassified as a man. Alone and desolate, he commits suicide at the age of thirty in a miserable attic in Paris.

Here, in an erotic diary, is one lost voice from our sexual past. Provocative, articulate, eerily prescient as she imagines her corpse under the probing instruments of scientists, Herculine brings a disturbing perspective to our own notions of sexuality. Michel Foucault, who discovered these memoirs in the archives of the French Department of Public Hygiene, presents them with the graphic medical descriptions of Herculine's body before and after her death. In a striking contrast, a painfully confused young person and the doctors who examine her try to sort out the nature of masculine and feminine at the dawn of the age of modern sexuality.

Cammile is a bit of a rip of George Clinton's use of slowed down voices.

Don't forget the little person in the Wizard Of Oz.

Since we've recently had a thread about Prince's brilliant alter-ego "Camille", I thought it appropriate to take a look at the person who is widely believed to be the inspiration for the character, Herculine Barbin.

Barbin was a hermaphrodite, living in the 19th century. One of hir nicknames was "Camille". Here's a couple of sources of info I found:

From The Riddle of Gender
Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights by Deborah Rudacille:

.

Here's a review by Le Monde of Michael Foucault's biography, which incorporates Barbin's own memoirs:



Personally, I find it HIGHLY likely that Prince found a kindred soul in Barbin. Someone who was feminine inside, yet was attracted to women as well. The conflicted emotions and sense of alientation that Barbin felt are also points to which Prince's works at the time also hinted at.

If I recall correctly Prince admitted the connection a few years ago when a fan asked him.

If I recall correctly Prince admitted the connection a few years ago when a fan asked him.

KoolEaze said:

Yahoo Internet Life: This may sound nuts, but does the Camille alter ego, which you used on Sign O' the Times, have anything to do with the famous nineteenth-century hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, who was nicknamed Camille? If so, my younger brother will be very, very happy, since he has spent roughly a decade trying to convince me of this.

: Your brother is very wise.

Herculine
Herculine
Herculine...



Just kidding. Yes, the concept of the altered voice was most likely inspired by George Clinton but I highly doubt that choosing the name Camille was a coincidence.I skimmed thru the text (thanks Jedi Master) and see the comparison. I wonder what the proposed Camille movie Prince was toying with would have been like. I remember the basic premise was Prince's character and Camille were musical rivals. Toward the end we find out that Prince/ Camille are schizophrenic and are actually one in the same.Interesting.

Here's the bit about Camille:



To me, this is an admission, but some folks disagree. This was debated on the other Camille thread, and actually led me to create this thread.

JediMaster said:

Yeah - thanks fro creating this dude, as I was thinking recently about bringing this up - you beat me to it! Very interesting topic I reckon, so kudos.

What a life she had.

His Camille voice always reminded me of Stevie Wonder, ala Maybe Your Baby

Here's the bit about Camille:



To me, this is an admission, but some folks disagree. This was debated on the other Camille thread, and actually led me to create this thread.

Stevie Wonder also used the sped-up voice in the early 70s. Check out "Maybe Your Baby,'' especially at the end.