Thomas(ine) Hall. Gender Fluidity in Colonial Virginia.

This paper contextualizes the unusual case of Thomas(ine) Hall, an 17th century individual that likely suffered from androgen insensitivity syndrome, a condition that makes children appear to have female genitalia in infancy, while later developing what seems to be male genitalia after reaching puberty. Born in England, Hall alternated their gender identity from female to male and vice versa all through their life. Reaching notoriety after moving to the Virginia colony in the late 1620s, within colonial America's limited understandings of sex and gender, Hall accounts for one of the earliest recorded instances of social grappling with non-binary gender identity. Drawing on court records and contemporary scholarship, this paper analyzes the court's decision not merely as a response to a social anomaly, but as a means of enforcing social order, and how colonial legal and cultural structures sought to discipline and define ambiguous identities.