Just what is a real man? Indeed, what constitutes a man or a woman at all? This study is devoted to these questions based on the male drag and pregnant figures depicted in German tales of the 13th century in association with theories of the American philosopher Judith Butler. Because feminine men are not limited to any one literary genre, but rather occur in very different contexts such as in legends of the saints, secular epics and novels, the volume looks not only at the basis of gender relations and the relationship between body, identity and desire, but also at the poetological functions of delimiting gender in the respective context.