Elizabeth I - a hermaphrodite

[SerendipityJane]

it seems.

Or so someone posting in a discussion has just claimed.

There's a lot of speculation as to why Elizabeth I never married. One
theory is that she had a developmental sexual disorder (aka intersex)
which rendered her infertile and incapable of normal sexual intercourse.
That's the sort of thing which would, once, have been colloquially
referred to as being a hermaphrodite. Another theory is that she was a
lesbian. Neither of these has any significant support by historians.
Although, if she was a lesbian, that would actually explain some of the
rumours which circulated in her lifetime that she had a physical
deformity, as in the culture of the day the idea that a woman would
actually prefer physical intimacy with her own sex was considered
unthinkable.

Am I a little behind the times here ? My recollection was remaining unmarried was much more to prevent herself becoming eclipsed by her husband or (more likely) any male heir she delivered.

I am quite prepared to be enlightened. However somehow I can't see it.

Why would Elizabeth have married? She grew up having her face rubbed in how dangerous pregnancy and childbirth was. It's well-known that Jane Seymour, Elizabeth's first stepmother, died in childbirth when Elizabeth was 4, but her final stepmother Katherine Parr also died in childbirth, after marrying Thomas Seymour post-Henry.

That's 50% of the four women Elizabeth would have been encouraged (however briefly) to see as maternal figures after Anne Boleyn's execution.

She can't possibly have been a woman without having a man. Any woman who doesn't have a man to define her and to validate her existence as a woman (a service human to a male) MUST have something 'wrong' with her. She MUST either be a lesbian or have a birth defect because no 'normal' woman would actively chose reject a man in order to maintain her position of power. Because women NEED a man and if Elizabeth I didn't need a man it breaks our entire understanding of women as subservient to men.

Worst still she might become a dangerous role model for women, by legitimatising women who chose to live without a man as being enough. All those women who might chose power and influence over looking after some mans dirty underpants...

We wouldn't want that now would we?

A thought, Margaret Thatcher, ( person who I particularly loathe) depicted on spitting image, as a man peeing in the male toilets, in a pin striped suit

i always took it as funny, a criticism of her behaving just like a man.

hmmmm

There's a lot of speculation as to why Elizabeth I never married. One theory is that she had a developmental sexual disorder (aka intersex) which rendered her infertile and incapable of normal sexual intercourse.
That's the sort of thing which would, once, have been colloquially referred to as being a hermaphrodite. Another theory is that she was a lesbian.

This is ahistorical nonsense. Neither of those things would have stopped her from marrying. Marriages for the aristocracy and royalty were political alliances not romances. Who the woman wanted to have sex with was neither here nor there, and no one was being offered a trial run of the bloody queen in the sack to make sure she was copulatable.

As a ruler she was able to see the problems any marriage alliance would cause her, either to a man from the English nobility or a foreigner. And as a human I'd think she had a very good grasp indeed of how badly wrong a marriage could go for a woman of her time.

People just talk shit on the internet sometimes.

If she’d married she would’ve lost power to her husband, the minute she got married there would’ve been constant questions about when she would be pregnant, if it was really her husbands, if she’d had any difficulty getting pregnant then rumours would’ve been everywhere, she would’ve had to be confined during her pregnancy, there was the very real prospect of dying in childbirth. Any child would’ve been whipped away to be brought up by someone else in another household so she wouldn’t have had the experience of being a mother anyway. Getting married and having children was simply too dangerous a prospect for her.

This.

First undisputed Queen regnant was her sister Mary and she immediately had issues when she married.

Prior to that - Maud who fought a civil war and then had to let throne go to her son. Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany had better claim than King John spent her life locked up -after her brother was murdered -because of it. Elizabeth York who had to marry Henry VII and unite claims to get anywhere with claim.

Queen Mary was next Queen - her husband William was co-monarch and was thrid in line anyway and suited many to have dutch alliance and he was protestant - and the one the Lords behind the The Glorious Revolution wanted anyway.

Then Queen Anne - who seems to be first who husband wasn't a noted issue really. Then Victoria - who faced public worry about her husband and his power and influence.

Queens are allowed unlike as in other monarchical systems were they could not happen but were an anomaly and Queen power along side idea of wife obeying husbands in past was problematic.

So position of Queen Regnant was probematic position - as well as powerful lords already having issue with boss being a woman they also freuqnetly disliking having a foreign prince outrank them and potentailly drag them into foreign wars or one of their own raised up to higher power than them with marraige to the Queen.

Elizabeth did seem to think about it with Robert Dudely who wife died in mysterious circumstances though likely had breast cancer - but was too controversial and scandal ridden and her grip on power to insecure to risk scandal- Mary Queen of Scots later lost support when scandal engulfed her reign. Elizabeth later she seems to have used idea of her marraige as a poltical tool.

Also Elizabeth had bad history possible SA from her Step mother husband Thomas Seymour - who behaved very improperly towards a young teenager in his household and under his protection - to point it was speculated she could have been pg with his child - very unlikely - but she did do a PR campaigh at her brother's court to win back her reputation ie dressing very plain and modest and did put her household members she was close to at risk as they were questioned.

Upshot Tudor dynasty not secure - few others had better claim - Elizabth not secure as only second accepted Queen of England and her sister first had has a really shaky run and her husband Philip of Spain didn't help that.

All candiates had downside and she liked a male court running round flirting with her and doesn't seem particularly bother by babies and kids and would have know how dangerous childbirth was in Tudor times - she lost two step mums to childbed not to mention numerois babies lost and pg issues in her famly and false pg her sister went thorough with loss of reputation.

The way I read that is “there are rumours that she may have been intersex, but there is no evidence so historians think this is very unlikely”.
Would be the same as “some people think vaccines cause autism, but there is no evidence to say they do and scientists dispute this claim”.
I don’t think this person actually thinks she was intersex. Of course, I don’t know if they said anything else, but based on what you’ve quoted here I think you’re getting the wrong end of the stick.

per the op, none of these 'theories' have any support at all, that I'm aware of, from mainstream historians. the standard set of candidate explanations seems very comprehensive.

Elizabeth I has been described by some in very unflattering terms, for centuries. That's because she was a powerful Queen who held on to power for more than 44 years. She was very well educated, spoke several languages, and was politically astute. Gossips, sycophants and enemies surrounded her, as did suitors, keen to take the power of the throne for themselves.

The idea that she was an hermaphrodite is risible. She was a woman. Her early life was imbued with danger and violence, her father King Henry VIII having executed her mother, Anne Boleyn, and declared Elizabeth to be illegitimate as a consequence. Perhaps the danger and intrigues of her early life set her up to understand and employ the level of ruthlessness combined with diplomacy needed to become Queen.

People need to use their intelligence to see these outrageous, facile suggestions for the worthless claims they are. Anyone can claim anything they like, but before jumping headlong into some kind of viral river of misinformation, think.

My initial response was BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA ! but I wanted to drone on respond first, before laughing loud and long.

I recall an assertion in a film that she was pressured into marrying the dauphin
but that she found out he was a cross dresser so declined.

I am about as convinced by that as i am the suggestion she had a DSD.

All bollocks basically.

As well as the many, many negative examples of marriage she was surrounded by, there were also the positive examples of unmarried (or effectively unmarried) women. The only stepmother who did OK out of her marriage to Henry VIII was the one treated as never really having been married. Virtually all the women at the time with any sort of personal power status were widows or nuns.

Between that general societetal background, and the specific political difficulties of her choosing any one man over another, it really doesn't need further explanation.

And she wasn't 'getting on a bit' either. At 25 she was pretty much bang on average age for a first marriage at the time. The aristocracy sometimes did it a lot earlier for reasons of alliance, but the wider population considered mid 20s to be the normal age to settle down.

That's a lot of warming pans.

No but she was renowned for being very ugly. Horrible Histories aren’t kind on her!

Horrible Histories is horrible history.

I find quite a lot of people forget, or really have never considered, the realities of sexual activity for women before easy effective birth control was available.

I think television is partly to blame, people are always shagging in historical dramas without getting pregnant or bearing children with sexual diseases or dying in childbirth or having their vaginas fall out at age 40.

If she had married and died giving birth early in her reign it would have created a succession crisis, as her successor would have most likely been either Mary of Scots (Catholic) or James (then a very young child). Neither of them would have provided stability and there would have been a civil war. James did eventually succeed but much later in his 30s and was not named as her heir until Elizabeth was dying.

Elizabeth clearly understood that her position was stronger if it was ambiguous, so she deliberately kept it unclear throughout her reign who her successor would be, even when seriously ill, to avoid triggering a coup from opposing factions.

Tickling her and slapping her bottom, all of which she regarded as horseplay I doubt would be enough to put someone off marriage

There is no evidence of sexual assault and hardly likely to be anything of the kind when servants slept in the same room as her and she would have been chaperoned all the time.
There is also no evidence of Seymour getting her pregnant @ohyesido

Misogyny is alive and well. Woman not doing womanly things? Must be something wrong with her.

Yes - It's crazy how quickly this has been forgotten, and just how very dangerous childbirth was for women until recent times, and how dangerous it remains in many places. And the stigma of pregnancy outside wedlock. And having to give up your child because you were destitute.

Other reasons I can think of for less sex happening: lack of privacy in the home and community, sexual trauma as rape wasn't punished, chronic pain and infirmity from diseases that weren't treatable then (including STDs such as syphilis, which in those days could kill you eventually), social stigma about sex including very strong social stigmas about anything other than heterosexual sex.

And other less negative reasons, such as celibacy being a respectable choice, even a vocation, and not seen in any way odd.

I'm certainly not suggesting that no sex was going on. I recently read a biography of Samuel Pepys and he and his rich social circle certainly put it about, but I agree that modern notions of what went on in the past are way out of whack.

Lots of the reasons above (no privacy, poverty etc) wouldn't have applied to Elizabeth I but the point is that the would have been nothing odd about her not having any sex- the only moral issue would have been her failure to give birth to an heir.

This ⬆️.
She was a powerful woman, and a successful monarch at a time when women didn't have rights. She liked male company, but didn't want a husband to rule over her.

I read "Henry's Children" last year and it was highly informative, Alison Weir (?) stated that it was vanishingly unlikely that she'd been pregnant as a 14 year old.

Apart from what you've all mentioned, regarding not wanting to destabilise the country, or risk dying in childbirth, she was intensely aware that Mary had increasingly - against her better judgement - agreed to do things demanded by her husband, Philip.

Elizabeth also would not have married beneath herself and as pointed out, allowed the promotion of her in laws. The Woodvilles and Richard III were in living memory at the time.

Oh yes - of course she wasn't a bloody man, FFS!

I thought she was into Robert Dudley in a big way?

She carried on a long flirtation wth Robert Dudley, and if I recall, some in her government were worried that she'd marry him. She was also unpleasant to Lettice Knollys, who Dudley eventually married.

The idea that a woman who did not marry must be defective in some way is vile misogyny.

Elizabeth 1st would have been 2nd to a husband. Immediate demotion. Why would she chose that? One of the few women with power in her era? The only thing that would have made her consider marriage was the duty to produce a Tudor heir.

Also goodness knows what was passed on to Henry VIII children. Syphilis and chlamydia can be passed to babies during birth, either would cause problems with conception and healthy children. His early children with Bessie Blount could have been conceived prior to him contracting STDs.

I hope she enjoyed life to the full post menopause 😁.