Genus evolution in the work The construction of the sex of Thomas Laqueur
Introduction
The construction of sex is a monograph written by Thomas Laqueur, sexologist and professor at the University of Berkeley, which contains writings that have previously been published and that analyzes the history of gender in Western civilization, from ancient Greece to Sigmund’s contributionsFreud.
The work is divided into six chapters, and the content of this can be differentiated in the situation of the genre before the time of Freud’s illustration and works, so, due to the wide historical space that covers, the book includes avery extensive and detailed observation about the evolution of gender in our culture.
Objectives
In very general terms, in this work Thomas Laqueur tries to explain that, above all, there is a misogynist system that influences the way that the investigation of interpreting the male and female part has, so that the scientific representations of the genre and thesex have socially built differences between totally barefoot and false women.
In short, each chapter could be recapitulated as follows:
- Chapter 1, about experience and meat. It is basically a summary of what will be discussed throughout the work and a set of opinions about gender, linking them with the sources that the writer has chosen.
- Chapter 2, fate is anatomy. It deals with the social construction of a unisexo model although two genres already differ. This chapter is divided into 4 sections.
- Chapter 3, New Science, Unique Meat. Here it is commented that as studies of science advance, the unisexo model becomes more viable. This chapter is divided into 3 sections.
- Chapter 4, the representation of sex. This chapter is divided into 4 sections, and instead of treating biomedical sources as before, the legal-literary sources are treated by showing how the latter emphasize the difference of the two genres and moves away from the unisexo model.
- Chapter 5, the discovery of the sexes. The author, dividing the chapter into 3 sections, exposes his opinion that the transition of a unisexo model to the two genres model was due to a purely social construction.
- Chapter 6, socialized sex. Divided into 4 sections, illustrates the parallel existence of the two models, the unisex and the two genres, to the illustration.
The first thing to understand before breaking down the historiographic problem that the work addresses, is to understand the two models of which Thomas Laqueur speaks, the unisexo model and the two genres model.
- The unisexo model was present before the Enlightenment and described that there were physical differences between the sexual organs of men and women, but these differences were never considered significant;"No one was very interested in seeking evidence of two different sexes, in anatomical and concrete physiological differences between men and women, until such differences became politically important" . Until the early 18th century, says Laqueur, the single -sex model dominated medical and philosophical literature and there was a knowledge network to support it.
- The two -sex theory states that the change of the single -sex model to the two -sex model created the foundations of the genre as we know them today.
From these concepts, the fundamental pillar of this work is that the role that women have had throughout history cannot be interpreted correctly because they have never been at the same level as men. Therefore, it is wrong to compare men with the women of the past since it would not really be fair.
The questions that the author poses are mainly how sex and gender were socially built, focusing above all on what have been the reasons why everything has evolved in the way it had to evolve and why it has been so. To a lesser extent, it also tells us about the natural difference between the two sexes and the relationship between the body and sexual differentiation. The author tells us that throughout history sex has always been a sociological and non -theoretical issue, something wrong that has disrupted the vision that should be had about man and woman.
Sources
The author uses a large amount of bibliography. The literary and especially scientific works that Laqueur uses to reinforce his book. Thomas Laqueur tells the conception that has been sex throughout history, supporting themselves with numerous texts of philosophy and medicine, and most of these seem to be favorable to feminist tendencies.
It is necessary to clarify that the author constantly makes a difference between gender (the social construction that represents the male and female roles that are assigned to people) and sex (biological characteristics), and Laqueur uses different sources to expose both concepts. Sex is natural and biological, while gender is something purely social.
Laqueur theorizes that a fundamental change in the concepts of human sexual anatomy occurred in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Before the 18th century, it was a common belief that women and men represented two different forms of an essential sex: that is, women had the same fundamental reproductive structure as men;The only difference was that the female genitals were inside the body and not outside it.
The anatomists saw the vagina as an inner penis, the vaginal lips such as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum and the ovaries as testicles. However, around the 18th century, the dominant vision became the one of two sexes directly opposed to each other. There were a lot of literature written in the 18th century that supported the model of the two sexes. Jacques-Louis Moreau (French anatomist) wrote that “not only the sexes are different, but are different in every conceivable aspect of the body and soul, in every physical and moral aspect. For the doctor or the naturalist, the relationship of women with the man is a series of opposites and contrasts ” .
It was then that men and women began to be considered complementary to each other. Gender, before the 18th century, was not prescribed in the individual;A man could be physically masculine, but he could have a female gender identity. This was considered normal and acceptable. With the change to the two -sex model, the differences that had been expressed with respect to gender were now expressed with reference to sex and biology.
Laqueur uses examples of philosophers of the ancient age to reinforce his affirmation of the mastery of the single sex model before the 18th century. He mentions Galen, who asks us to “think first, please, the external genitals of man who turn in and extend in between the rectum and the bladder. If this happened, the scrotum would necessarily take the place of the uterus with the testicles, laying off, next to him on each side."For Galen," women have exactly the same organs as men, but in the wrong places " . Women are lower versions of men, but they are after all men too (only not formed at all).
Laqueur provides us with the comparison of doctor between the eyes of a mole and the genitals of a woman: “The lunar eyes have the same structures as the eyes of other animals, except that they will not allow the mole to see. They do not open … Therefore, to make the female genitals they do not open and remain an imperfect version of what would be if they were expelled ” .
There were very few specific words associated with male or female anatomy in the time of Galen. The philosophers of antiquity "considered the organs and their location as epiphenomena of a major world order" . The absence of words associated with female anatomy shows that people did not want to see a difference between the male and female body. Laqueur argues that philosophers like Aristotle share Galen’s opinions about the single sex model.
Aristotle was committed to the idea that there were two different sexes, but saw men and women having certain roles in society, and these roles were not necessarily linked to their bodies. Aristotle said that "all male organs are similar in women, except that it has a uterus, which presumably is not the masculine" . Laqueur believes that men and women were seen as comparable variations of a type of sex;that there were many genres at this time, but there was only one sex.
At the beginning of the 19th century, it began to be determined that it was natural and that. Michel de Montaigne wrote about a group of girls who dressed as men and acted as such, and although for him it was normal since there was no theoretical sex in his opinion, for the two -sex model that was taking popularity in the time, we wanted to link biological sex with the theoretical genre and any idea that did not coincide with the two -sex theory was wrong.
The gender roles therefore ended institutionalizing, and society ended up causing women to dedicate themselves to the private sphere (mothers, wives and households) and men dedicated themselves to the public sphere (work and politics). From these sources Laqueur will argue that men subtilize anatomy and sexual differences to legitimize their superiority over women, which would begin with the hierarchy of the sexes and with the construction of the genre.
The rich men were those who contributed biological evidence to support the idea that women "were not suitable for chimeric spaces that the revolution had opened inadvertently" and thus the notion extended that women were lower than men.
Historical referents
We can group the historical referents in three great field change fields: Greco -Roman classical thinking, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Thomas Lequeur focuses on these three fields to explain the change in the understanding of sex throughout history, since these are the most important moments for the social construction of gender.
One of the authors who quotes is Aristotle, especially in the part of his work that tries to explain the conception of sex and gender in ancient times. From the Greek point of view, the important rhetoric is anatomical;Sex marks the difference between men and women. Laqueur agrees with Aristotle, but says he makes a mistake thinking that the woman is still a lower version of the man.
Another historical character who quotes considerably is Galen, who molded the Roman mentality, especially in the first parts of the book. Galen strengthened the idea of the unisexo model, women remained a lower version of man. Galen explains that a man is a complete and well -formed person, while a woman is a person in a lower version;Her body has not finished forming at all (like a small child). Galen, in addition, is based even more on genital differences.
In unisexo theory, the idea that a woman should have an orgasm to give birth was quite widespread. Galeno was one of the main exponents of this idea and explained that, when he reached orgasm, his belly opened and engulfed the ejaculation of man. It was said that women needed to have an orgasm to produce fluids during intercourse that, when mixed with the semen of man, created a human being. A biologist from the eighteenth century, Albrehet von Haller, believed that sexual experiences between men and women were the same, since for him "the analogy of sexually excited woman with the sexually excited man seemed common sense" .
A third author who names a lot is Andrés Vesalio, with which Laqueur advances to the Renaissance. Because at this time Christianity had settled strongly in the mentality of people, the biblical model of humanity became the norm. The unisexo model is reinforced, based on the fact that the woman was created from man and therefore is a lower and complementary version of man.
When the two -sex model emerged, it was conceived that the woman could give birth without having an orgasm. In the first part of the book, the author shows us a situation of a young woman who is in a coma that is not known if life will go out. When violated by a monk and have a child, it was already clarified that it was not necessary for a woman to have an orgasm to conceive. As a result, studies began to understand that sexual gratification really in the case of women came from the clitoris . From the 18th century, therefore, the body was considered the sign of the genre, and not the cause.
Finally, Thomas Laqueur names Freud a lot, and in general he quotes it throughout the work. By the time Freud’s era arrives, women are conceived as a genus torically different from man with their respective roles and contributions to society, in addition to creating the notion of femininity. Here is the idea that man maintains a position of power regarding women.
In the two -sex model, with the emergence that there are physical differences between men and women because it is also necessary to explain that they have differences when obtaining pleasure. According to Freud, the clitoris is "the organ through which the excitation is transmitted to the adjacent sexual parts" . For Freud there is no female interior if the pleasure is transferred from the clitoris to the vagina, and he tries to demonstrate evidence of a vaginal orgasm, to discredit the role of the clitoris and making his sexual needs secondary. Freud would end up contributing to the idea that women are an anti-passional being.
An obstetrician of this era, François Mauriceau, argues that the clitoris is the female equivalent of the glans . By changing the meaning of the orgasm of the clitoris, the woman is placed in opposition to the man and assigned it a social role, which socializes the sexuality of the woman.
According to the anatomical illustration of the Renaissance, women were perceived as a man, but from the reverse. The male and female organs were compared in order to expose their correspondence. Anatomist Andrés Vesalio represented female organs as a version of man in his three most influential works.
Writing and style
The work is an informative essay that presents good arguments and opinions on an important topic, and presents a well -organized structure that can be read without having to understand the structure of the book itself. However, the language you use is quite specialized and a person who does not have knowledge of the topics explained in the book will not correctly understand what it is about.
The author uses the third person and the verbal time he uses is the past, which somehow tries to make us empathize with ancient ideas, which are different from ours and therefore perhaps use the third person. Laqueur explains his research and tries.
Surely, Thomas Laqueur addresses an adult and specialized audience since it includes information that only a person of a certain age understands and concepts and arguments that can only be intelligible for people who know the topics of the work.
Laqueur treats the historical subjects he studies with considerable empathy, getting into his skin and thinking how they thought of the times of the characters he quotes. Give credit when one of the authors he names mentions a correct argument and transmits his opinions in a way that we understand ancient opinions.
The novelty of the work is probably. This means that the body is surely a social construction, something that had not been raised until relatively little;So it can be deduced that thanks to authors such as Laqueur, these concepts are also questioned.
Historiographic trends
The author comments on the preface that this work arose from the investigations carried out to make a history of female pleasure and the attempt of his disappearance but that, during the long process that would begin in 1977 and thanks to the historical and medical materials consulted,It became the story of how sex and gender were socially built, although emphasizing sex construction.
The conversion of the unisex model to that of two sexes would contribute to forming a new understanding of what gender is. According to Laqueur, there is an increase in the differentiation of male and female social roles. Conversely, this differentiation of roles and greater “delicacy and sensitivity” are seen as signs of moral progress.
Therefore, we could include the work within the history of women and gender ideology. However, many other scientific historians criticize Laqueur and argue that ancient texts do not expose the unisexo model that Laqueur claims. Therefore, this work could be considered that recent historiographic tendencies will be against the countercurrent.
conclusion
Personally, I have found the book somewhat confusing and difficult to understand. In order for the reader to perfectly understand the work, it is necessary to have knowledge of history and gender ideology.
In conclusion, what we can understand how thequeur counteracts the issues that arise when explaining the constructions of sex and gender is that history has focused above all (and erroneously) on legal sources instead of in scientific sources.
However, the book does a good job in explaining how the conception of genre has evolved throughout history and how this has affected the situation of women. From the beginning, women were not seen as an equal man and that has been the mentality until after the Enlightenment, mainly due to the two models that have existed: the unisex and the two genres. According to Thomas Laqueur’s point of view, this conception would explain the secondary position that would be imposed on women in Western civilization from the beginning of this.
Although today lacqueur would be right, formerly the conceptions of women made this the norm, so you have to study the past not as if it had always been wrong, but you have to empathize withThe ideas of the past.
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