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These behaviours were���������������������������������������������������������������� later re-classified by others as hermaphroditism, bisexuality, transvestism, transsexuality etc. Von Krafft-Ebing claimed that homosexuality was either acquired (brought on by certain conditions or behaviour) or was congenital, and a sign of hereditary degeneracy. By 1901 he was arguing that homosexuality was always inborn and not pathological per se. Gert Hekma, ‘A Female Soul in a Male Body’, in Gilbert Herdt (ed.), Third Sex, Third Gender (New York, 1994). 94
. As a result, ‘her performance is a kind of transvestism’. 66 Here, in contrast to those critics who argue that Chaucer intends us to sympathise with the Wife’s reflexive exposure of clerical misogyny, I will argue that Chaucer himself satirises her performance. Even though Alisoun relies on familiar clerical and scholastic modes of argument, such as appealing to traditional