You can be what you want to be when you're a...

The section from the book, "Sexing the Body," was very interesting, it pretty much told the history of hermaphrodites and their place in history. I found it very interesting that in ancient Greece, the word hermaphrodites is derived from a story about two greek gods and their supreme child. Then as we moved forward in time, hermaphrodites were allowed to grow up as they wished, whether it be as a man or a woman. The story about the, I believe, roman soldier was somewhat comical to me; one of the soldiers gave birth to a baby girl while on a campaign. I can't help but wonder how this pregnant man made it through battles and s/he and the baby survived. I noticed that it wasn't until there was a rising interest in science that being a hermaphrodite became a bad thing. First, scholars had to come up with a reason why these people were formed, and then progressed to dissecting and taking biopsies when the microscope was introduced. The part of this section that I found most interesting was that, for the most part, people were ok with hermaphrodites, it was only when they switched genders did they face repercussions.

In book one of Middlesex, we didn't really learn much about the character her/himself, only that s/he was a greek hermaphrodite living abroad. However, we did learn a lot about the speakers family, starting from her/his parents story trying to conceive a girl. It was very interesting to read about the old methods of predicting the sex of the baby and other old school ways to try and have a child of a certain sex. One of the most surprising was the statement made about sperm and how the male sperm swim faster than the female. I thought it very odd however, when the parents of the narrator left in the middle of some function to go have sex.

After learning about the narrators parents, we learn of his/her grandparents and their journey from Greece where they lived as brother and sister harvesting silk from silk worms. I didn't quite expect the story that came about, as i was reading, i somewhat expected the two characters to split and go their separate ways when Lefty started looking for a woman. It is very strange to me to think about these two people falling in love because they were brother and sister. In the story, even they had trouble dealing with what they were doing because on the boat to America they were trying to make themselves forget about their past relationship and almost create a new identity for their own well-being. So far, I am unsure about what his/her parents and grandparents relationships have to do with his life other than the fact that this mutated gene got passed down and incest might have something to do with it.