The Fascinating Case of Jaqueline Foroni: An Intersex Identity in 18th-Century Italy

A rare case that still echoes in today’s debates on gender and the body

A plate from: Ėtienne Marie Siauve (trans. and ed.), Jaqueline Foroni rendue a son veritable sexe ou rapport, reflexions et jugement presentes a l'academie de Mantoue par la classe de medecine sur le sexe d'un individu vivant, connu sou le nom de Jaqueline Foroni. Milan, 1802.

In 1802, in the city of Mantua, the body of Jaqueline Foroni became the subject of legal, medical, and social scrutiny. Raised as a girl, Jaqueline continued to live as a woman into adulthood — until a commission of doctors and officials declared her “true” sex to be male. What followed was not just a reclassification, but a forced reordering of identity under the weight of law, science, and societal expectation.

The commission produced a report, Relazione, riflessioni e giudizio sul sesso di un individuo umano vivente chiamato e conosciuto sotto il nome di Giacoma Foroni. This rare document, translated into French in the same year, offers a striking window into how bodies that did not conform to binary norms were interpreted and spoken over. And although the language and assumptions are rooted in the past, the story feels surprisingly modern.

A Body Examined, Classified, and Decoded

The case centers on a medical investigation intended to determine Jaqueline's “real” sex. Physicians reported “distinctly marked” male genitals and “no real clitoris,” and used that observation to justify reassigning Jaqueline as male. No consideration was given to identity, upbringing, social role, or personal choice.

Historian Catriona Seth highlights that the body in cases like Foroni’s was treated as an “archive” to be read and interpreted by experts. Anatomy became a text, full of signs that could be deciphered to fit legal and social categories. Diagnosis became destiny.

This reflects a broader mindset of the period: medicine positioned itself as arbiter of truth, even when that truth contradicted lived experience. The body was read as evidence, and deviation from anatomical expectations triggered intervention — legal as well as social.

A plate from: Ėtienne Marie Siauve (trans. and ed.), Jaqueline Foroni rendue a son veritable sexe ou rapport, reflexions et jugement presentes a l'academie de Mantoue par la classe de medecine sur le sexe d'un individu vivant, connu sou le nom de Jaqueline Foroni. Milan, 1802.

Law, Gender, and Social Order

Intersexuality was not only a medical concern; it posed a perceived threat to legal and social categories. Marriage, inheritance, morality, and religious roles all depended on a rigid understanding of sex. Any ambiguity risked destabilizing the system.

By reclassifying Jaqueline, authorities were not simply correcting a record — they were enforcing the boundaries of gendered expectation. In the eyes of the court, ambiguity was not an identity but a problem to be resolved.

Seth also notes that the medico-legal report functioned as more than a judgment on Foroni: it served as a template for handling future cases, creating a precedent for how bodies outside the binary could be classified. The document had performative power beyond the individual life it addressed.

Language of the Time — Echoes of the Present

The original report referred to Jaqueline as a “hermaphrodite,” a term common in the period but medically and ethically outdated today. In modern language, we would speak of intersex variations, natural expressions of biological diversity that do not fit neatly into male/female categories.

The discomfort shown by early 19th-century authorities with ambiguous sex traits mirrors a struggle that continues. Even now, intersex individuals are often subjected to medical intervention, legal erasure, or social misunderstanding, sometimes without consent.

Despite Jaqueline’s self-identification and social life as a woman, the commission, perhaps understandably, elevated anatomy over lived reality. Stories like this one show how history challenges the neat categories we inherit. They also demonstrate the value of rare books and archival documents in understanding how we got here.

Cf. Seth, 'Sexing the body. The case of Giacoma Foroni', in: Eighteenth-Century Archives of the Body (2013), pp. 67-81.

A plate from: Ėtienne Marie Siauve (trans. and ed.), Jaqueline Foroni rendue a son veritable sexe ou rapport, reflexions et jugement presentes a l'academie de Mantoue par la classe de medecine sur le sexe d'un individu vivant, connu sou le nom de Jaqueline Foroni. Milan, 1802.