Signed N. O. Body: Writing the Body

This paper contains a selection of passages from Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference (Routledge, ).

Somebody, who had chosen the pen name of N. O. Body, wrote a beautiful, moving memoir originally published in 1907 under the title Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years (1907/2006). Since the pseudonym “N. O. Body” can be read alternatively as “No Body” or “Nobody,” the choice will be left to you. The title referred to Theodor Herzl's then-famous utopian novel, Old New Land, which was published five years earlier. If his pen-name called up the desperate character who was shown ready to throw away his life on an experiment in the 1902 novel, the real N. O. Body published his memoirs because he felt his life had been an “experiment.” The consequences were so dire that he reached a point when he wanted to end his own life. N. O. Body's memoir opens with the revelatory statement: “This book tells a true story. … I was born a boy, raised as a girl.”

Indeed, N. O. Body was born in 1885, assigned a female identity, and raised as a girl. During her childhood, she nevertheless engaged in what was considered stereotypical male behavior. Her adolescence was dark and tortuous as her body developed in a masculine manner and she developed a strong attraction for women. After two decades of feeling at odds in her body, passionately in love with a married woman and contemplating suicide, a doctor suggested “a minor operation,” declaring: “You are as much a man as I am!” That statement gave N. O. Body courage and hope. Moreover, the doctor added that for that kind of transformation, “the authorities could not deny permission” (Body, 1907/2006, p. 99).

The memoir's author was born twice: first as a baby girl named Nora, and then again as a 22-year-old man called Norbert. N. O. Body was in fact Karl M. Bauer, a person who would today be called intersex. Bauer was born as Martha in 1884 and died as Karl in Israel in 1956. His flat gravestone in the Kiryat-Shaul