La fabrique du sexe : Essai sur le corps et le genre en Occident

by Thomas W. Laqueur, Michel Gautier (Traduction)

L'Occident n'a cessé depuis les origines de s'interroger sur la différence des sexes. Mais parle-ton de l'homme et de la femme que l'on a encore rien dit : se réfère-t-on au genre - définition culturelle par des qualités morales, affectives, sociales... - ou au sexe - définition par des spécificités anatomiques ? Jamais, en effet, les deux notions ne se recouvrirent. Dès l'Antiquité, Aristote, par la définition de l'ordre des êtres, et Galien, par la définition du corpus anatomique, fondent le modèle du sexe unique, qui sera dominant jusqu'au XVIIIe siècle, et dans lequel le genre définit le sexe. Au XVIIIe siècle, émerge l'autre modèle de la différence sexuelle : le modèle des deux sexes, dans lequel, au contraire du premier, le sexe définit le genre : parce que, au niveau de l'anatomie comme de la physiologie, femmes et hommes sont incommensurablement différents, les genres définissent dès lors qualités, vertus et rôles selon des racines biologiques. Ces deux modèles, toutefois, ne se succèdent pas dans une histoire linéaire : dès le XVIe siècle, des auteurs posaient l'irréductible différence anatomique ; au XXe siècle encore, d'autres - tel Freud - pensent la sexualité selon le modèle du sexe unique... Les deux modèles coexistent dans le temps ; si leur prégnance sur les esprits peut être liée à des évolutions générales - économiques, culturelles, sociales - elle ne peut en aucun cas être strictement expliquée par celles-ci, et moins encore par les progrès de la connaissance anatomique qui se moulent le plus souvent dans les représentations dictées par chacun de ces modèles...

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Gender, Sexuality, Feminism, Philosophy, Gender Studies

576 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1990

About the author

Thomas W. Laqueur is an American historian, sexologist and writer.
He is the author of Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation and Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud as well as many articles and reviews. He is the winner of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award and is Professor of History at the University of California.

Reviews

[Alok Vaid-Menon · Rating 4 out of 5]

While people might understand the fact that gender is constructed, they often maintain that ‘sex’ is fixed. However, definitions of sex change drastically over time. Historian Dr. Laqueur reminds us that “the differences that make a difference are historically determined.” In other words, what people notice and elevate to the status of a different category has to do with cultural and political context. He traces two millennia of thinking on the category of sex, demonstrating how the west transitioned from a “unisex” model to a “binary sex” model in the late 18th / early 19th century.

Previously males and females were viewed as different forms of the same sex. The idea was that everything in the universe had a temperament: things that were hot and dry (like the sun) were considered masculine and things that were cold and moist (like the moon) were considered feminine. It was believed that people had the same sex organs, only differentiated by the presence of more heat in males. Sex non-conformity was understood as having too much heat or having too much cold.

The vagina was understood as an interior penis, the womb as a scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles. This is evidenced in the illustrations of the body by Andreas Vesalius, the founder of anatomy. To be a male or a female was to hold a cultural role. Bodies were seen as illustrative, not defininitive. As Aristotle argued, sex was a cosmic principle and reproductive organs were just instruments. In other words, while today our society understands the “body” as more real than “culture,” pre-Enlightenment it was the other way around: bodies weren’t as important as dualistic properties of the universe.

After the Enlightenment, anatomists developed new methods to measure sexual difference. In 1803 French physician Jacques Louis Moreau argued against Aristotle and Galen, maintaining that males and females were “different in every conceivable aspect of [the] body.” Male scientists utilized the same methods (like phrenology) to prove that males and females were anatomically opposite that they used to establish “biological differences” between races. Organs that had shared a name (ovaries and testicles), became linguistically distinguished. Structures that were thought to be the same in all people (the nervous system), became differentiated.

With the advent of the new sex binary: males and females were understood as anatomically distinct and opposite. “Differences” that had not been considered relevant or important for centuries were now foundational to categorization. Grounding sexual difference in the body played to Enlightenment ideas that nature prescribed the laws of society and that the body was a visual blueprint for society. Dr. Laqueur argues that it wasn’t advancements in science that led to the creation of the sex binary model, it was politics.

With the industrial revolution, the French revolution, and new developments in religion and feminism, scientists were explicitly looking for a way to justify the sexual separation of spheres (the idea that men should have access to rights and women should remain at home as caretakers). The new ssex binary permitted men to justify denying women’s rights on the basis of “nature” (not political choices). What we can learn from the transition of a unisex model to a binary sex model is that often times it’s not about actual differences, but perceived differences. Perception is informed by culture: we take what we see as fact, but we don’t question what we’ve been taught to notice in the first place. The experts writing about heat from 250 years ago might perplex us now, but imagine what people will think about our “scientific” writing about sex 250 years from now?

Both the unisex and binary sex models were developed by men to position men as superior. In the present day, people try to use the category “sex” as if it’s outside of politics and firmly rooted in “nature.” What they neglect is that it was white male scientists who defined the criteria for “nature” as a way to naturalize inequality. We should always question: who gets to speak for nature and why? As Dr. Laqueur concludes, there is no nature outside of culture: almost everything one wants to say about sex (the body’s natural roles) already has a claim about gender (cultural ideas of what men and women should be).

[I. Merey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sex is the reality, gender is the construct.
Women are from Venus, men are from Mars.

Probably the two most basic truisms that Laqueur's book seeks to most closely examine, if not destroy.

When did we start thinking of men and women as being opposites?

Currently, more people are willing to consider the idea of men and women (alternatively, masculinity and femininity) as steps or shades on a scale, even more broadly, as a sphere, as opposed to two opposite and mutually exclusive camps. Which would make one believe that in the past, gender was even MORE antipolar... Laqueur tries to show via a myriad examples how this may not be so.

At one point, his evidence argues, men and women were seen as versions of each other (I should say women as versions of imperfect or not quite formed men) and genitalia analogous (so ovaries were female testes; vaginas inverted penises...). Essentially, there was one sex (with versions)...as opposed to two totally distinct separate sexes standing opposite.

What came first, the gender or the sex? Laqueur shows many examples in which the reality of sex may possibly be just as tenuous and subject to "social thuggery" as the reality of gender--now as well as back then....

[Didi Aphra · Rating 2 out of 5]

i feel like i just wasted my time reading a guy from the 90s explain to me things that were believed about sex, procreation, women's bodies, and the clitoris that turned out to be wayyy wrong for two hundred and something pages...(the last hundred pages of the book is just references)

of course, there were good parts like the rare physician convincing others of actually accurate things but ofc back then nobody believed them. and i learned interesting things too, but overall it wasn't what i expected to get out of the book. i guess that's my fault tho bc the title literally suggests the content consists of this kind of history......but i thought it would be more interesting...

also, there were some triggering accounts of what women had to endure throughout history i.e. SA, r*pe, gaslighting, etc. there are also some triggering things that these physicians did to animals in the name of....discovery? knowledge advancement?

so definitely keep that in mind if you are considering reading this book.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprise! Sex is a historical construct too.

[Moyokoyani Armando · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una biblia para todo aquel que desee internarse en la concepción del cuerpo y la distinción entre hombres y mujeres como fruto de la anatomía, un inmenso compendio de conocimientos en todas las áreas, medica, fisiológica, artística, histórica, léxica, filosófica, política, respecto a las diferencias sexuales desde el 350 a.C. hasta el mediados del S. XX, una maravilla. No muy bien escrito, pues la cantidad de datos es inmensa y no lleva un orden estricto en la forma que los presenta, hay que leerlo un par de veces para ordenar el conocimiento, y lo que intenta decir, y la redacción no ayuda mucho, pero desborda conocimientos y referencias históricas, no se toma la molesta de poner un extracto de bibliografías, pero las refiere a lo largo del libro en notas al pie, que hacen terriblemente cansada la lectura, pues varían de dos a seis por página y la totalidad de las páginas los tienen. Debe tener unas 800 o 1000 referencias según mis cálculos, le tomó 20 años escribirlo y a mí 8 meses conseguirlo, no lo encontrarán fácilmente pero vale la pena, y mucho.

[Kayrah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was shocking to learn that through history that they tried to classify the female reproductive system as literally the male system inverted, such to the stage that they would alter their medical diagrams to fit the model, all tying back to the notion of women as lesser men. More shocking was women undergoing voluntary oophorectomy to treat supposed mental conditions. However it is understandable that it was difficult to know what was going on before the advent of being able to look at an ovum under a microscope. It just seems ludicrous now that the ancient greeks thought women bled because they were getting rid of excess heat. It was an interesting and at times amusing journey through history.

[Stacie · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK. I didn't really read the WHOLE book, but instead read the parts that I needed to...basically the early ideas up to the 17th century or so. While it was textbooky, it had a lot of good information. My favorite, by far, is the previous belief that women had to orgasm in order to get pregnant. C'mon - let's be realistic. If that was the case, we wouldn't have this population problem we have!

All in all, a good, information book.

[DoctorM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laqueur examines how anatomists imagined the underlying ground of sexual difference from the late middle ages through Freud's day. The question he's interested in is what the body means--- how sexual difference is generated. Up through the end of the 1600s, he argues, anatomists saw the body as essentially possessed of a single set of organs--- male organs and female were seen as the same basic structure inverted. A vagina was simply a penis turned inside out; ovaries and testes were basically the same structures. Gender difference was a priori--- the fleshly body simply reflected pre-existing higher truths. From about 1700, Laqueur argues, there's a conceptual change. Differences in gender--- in the social consequences of being male or female ---come to be derived from the facts of anatomy rather than reflected in anatomy.

"Making Sex" does link both to the Renaissance idea of the body as microcosm, as a mirror and symbol of a macrocosmic higher truth--- an idea further explored in, inter alia, Frances Yates' "The Rosicrucian Enlightement" ---and to the idea found in both Umberto Eco and Foucault that the medieval and Renaissance mind saw the world as a whole field of symbols and similitudes. It links as well to Judith Butler's idea that it's impossible to speak of structural differences between male and female bodies without immediately importing social ideas of gender, that language is so implicated in gender that it's impossible to have a purely biological view of male and female anatomy.

Although the medical illustrations Laqueur provides could be larger and more clear, and though Laqueur (who did attend a year of med school as preparation for writing this) could have offered up more guidance about what the structures of the body do, "Making Sex" is a fine piece of medical history and social theory, and serves as a necessary companion for anyone who wants to look at books such as Butler's "Bodies That Matter".

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

" it is disingenuous to write a history of sexual difference... without acknowledging the shameful correspondence between particular forms of suffering and particular forms of the body, however the body is understood. The fact that pain and injustice are gendered are correspond to corporeal signs of sex is precisely what gives importance to an account to the making of sex."


interesting text about historical understandings of sex difference and gender roles and how these changed from a biological hierarchy to a dichotomy in common understanding. I feel however that while this is interesting insight into 'high science' and the history of medicine, the text almost exclusively looks to philosphical and learned Men's writings and theories to figure out what everyone was thinking about the sexed body. This is a flawed concept, as the majority of women's health needs were seen to not by Men of Medicine but by midwives. While the book recounts how little these upper class Men understood about reproduction and uses this as evidence for his thesis of the One Sex model, I theorise that midwives and women themselves have long since known and understood more about the female body than perhaps even modern science does, which is evidenced in works such as by Christine de Pizan, who wrote in the 1400s about the ridiculousness of Men's theories about women's bodies and stated that women themselves knew these theories to be simply untrue.

[kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entiendo que el libro trata sobre la construcción del sexo, pero también parece prometer que va a observar la construcción del género a través del sexo y no es así.

Me ha faltado que el autor explicase la influencia en la sociedad de estas teorías, ¿cómo la construcción del sexo afecta a la percepción del género? ¿Cómo hace la biólogos para modificar la cultura y los roles de género sociales?

Asimismo, es cierto que Freud fue nefasto en el desarrollo de sus teorías con respecto al género/sexo, pero es TAN evidente que el autor detesta a Freud... que me ha distraído un poco de la lectura 🙁

Entiendo la importancia de este texto para el área del sexo en los estudios de género, pero en lo que a género respecta es bastante deficiente.

[Pavel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Můžeme sice spolu s autorem doslovu k českému vydání pochybovat, zda základní koncept knihy, takzvaný “jednopohlavní model”, je jednopohlavní a jestli je to model. To ale nic neubírá na skutečnosti, že Laqueur na základě bohatého historického materiálu přesvědčivě ukazuje, jak naivní je naše obvyklé přesvědčení o založení pohlavní diference na základně jakýchsi biologických fakt (například muž má penis, žena ne). Fakta se vždy prezentují v rámci určitého diskurzu a teprve na tomto použití záleží, zda pohlavní diferenci budou, nebo nebudou zakládat. Slovy autora: “Můj archimédovský bod však neleží v realitě transkulturního těla, nýbrž v prostoru mezi tímto transkulturním tělem a jeho reprezentacemi.” To znamená, že chápání pohlaví není něco samozřejmého, ale zároveň to není něco zcela libovolného. Nakonec, už v první části nás Laqueur ujistí, že na otázku, jakým způsobem se vlastně těla určují a co přesně míníme sexuální diferencí, nenabízí žádnou odpověď. To by musel, dodávám už já, vykročit mimo pole biologie a obrátit pozornost ke zkoumání touhy, což by nás nutně dovedlo k něčemu hluboce spirituálnímu.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

By coincidence, there was an article in the paper this morning about a woman in Ohio complaining about her son being forced to think about whether Leonardo d Vinci was gender-fluid, and saying that she believed in the Biblical belief that men are men and women are women.

What Thomas Laqueur shows is that this idea of fixed genders is about 200 years old: less Biblical, more Darwinian. Until about 1800, there was only one gender (male), and a woman could become male by "perfecting" herself (or by taking a lot of exercise while she's menstruating: that works too).

Modern science then came along, and explained that women weren't inferior men, they were the opposite to men, and therefore needed to be controlled: binary difference supports political patriarchy (well, why not?).

What this book did for me is make me question stuff: how much of what I believe is complete cobblers too? How can I believe two opposite things simultaneously, both of which are self-evidently true?

Oh yes, and Aristotle believed that a man with a smaller penis was more manly. Way to go, A.

[Vitani Days · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un saggio sicuramente interessante, che offre una visione esaustiva della storia del conflitto tra genere e corpo nel mondo femminile. Laqueur esplora il mondo della sessualità della donna da un punto di vista certamente originale, non (solo) psicologico, non (solo) sociologico, bensì anatomico. E in questa scelta si sente il suo essere figlio di un patologo. Il saggio è corredato da una bella galleria di illustrazioni, e qui e lì l'autore snocciola degli aneddoti divertenti e dei commenti ben poco imparziali. Il problema è, semmai, di altra natura: premesso che le tesi contenute nel saggio potevano stare tranquillamente in cinquanta pagine invece che in più di trecento, forse a causa di una cattiva traduzione il tutto risulta spesso fin troppo soporifero. In conclusione, comunque, il saggio in sé è interessante e amplia tesi che già circolavano spingendosi là dove altri non osavano. Dentro, letteralmente, il corpo della donna.

[Daniela Faria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Livro muito bom, uma pena a tradução ser tão esquisita, basicamente tive que decifrar a escrita do início ao fim. E é válido ressaltar que hoje é preciso muito cuidado para, em meio a tanto negacionismo, trazer a discussão de como a ciência serve às demandas culturais.

"Dois sexos não são a consequência necessária e natural da diferença corporal. Nem tampouco o sexo único. As formas com que a diferença sexual eram imaginadas no passado são muito desassociadas do que era realmente conhecido sobre essa ou aquela parte da anatomia, esse ou aquele processo fisiológico, e derivam das exigências retóricas do momento."

[Nikayla Reize · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting - similar to Blackledge. For centuries we thought there was one-sex (male) and females were just distorted/inverse/softer males... Not only gender, but biological sex is a cultural construct too

"“In the one-sex model, dominant in anatomical thinking for two thousand years, woman was understood as man inverted: the uterus was the female scrotum, the ovaries were testicles, the vulva was a foreskin, and the vagina was a penis...Women were essentially men in whom a lack of vital heat—of perfection—had resulted in the retention, inside, of structures that in the male were visible without.”

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the general "modern"statements made by Laqueur are outdated nearly 30 years after the book's publication, but as a historiolgical examination of how people defined and examine sex and gender in the time frames of the book offer insight and add to an understanding of where we are in our understanding and opinions of sex and gender today.

[Phoebe · Rating 3 out of 5]

required reading for my sociology of the body final and the first full book i've read in months. eurocentric af and the author sucks as a person but i did learn some things.

i read it in english to save time and then had to find my quotes in the french translation which was stupidly annoying. excited to go back to reading books i want to read at some point.

[feenymphee · Rating 5 out of 5]

La teoría del paradigma unisexo hace tambalear toda la realidad que tomamos como estable y dada por un orden natural, te vuelve imposible ignorar a la cultura como factor mayoritariamente determinante de las diferencias que creemos tan intrínsecas y naturales a categorías social e históricamente construidas.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and approachable read! Really explores the nature of society and science and how even our most objective observations are written with the pens of social construct and culture. Highly recommended!

[Radu Deme · Rating 3 out of 5]

ce periplu interesant prin istorie...

[Neil Cochrane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating and illuminating, it at times difficult, read.

[Samuelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Wow! Wow!

[James Goode · Rating 2 out of 5]

Laborious read from grad-school. Probably interesting when it came out, but several ideas debunked since. Laqueuer isn’t a bad writer, but it wasn’t an easy read.

[Solange · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had to speed read this but really really enjoyed it and definitely want to come back to spend some more time with it soon.

[Cora Reese · Rating 2 out of 5]

The content of this book is really good but it is written in a very boring manner. No book has taken me this long to read. I dosed off after every 3rd word.

[Alex Prong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too bad the copy I had from the library didn’t have this ✨ alluring ✨ cover

[Rye]

Super informative!

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

from the library

p4,5 Galen and the Greeks before him

OMG We are all one sex and some of us are less formed than others so women are the less "baked" men. Our insides are not formed enough to emerge and so stay hidden in our bodies. Our reproductive organs are male but not baked enough to emerge and be hung outside like a fully formed man has. One or the other of our progenitors was so weak in energy that when ejaculation took place the vital essence of the combined fluid just wasn't up to providing enough energy to produce a male child. At least my progenitors had enough vital energy in all their body parts that I have all of mine. Otherwise if one of my parents had had weak legs or eyes I might have been born that way too. As it is I was born female and my parents evidently never had enough vital energy between them to produce a male child. (It's a) Good thing nature made enough of humans defective to keep producing the generations.

Lancaster uses similiar materials to TL to show that biology has little to do with how people think about the genders.
The Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture

ON THE OTHER HAND:
"The problem is that Laqueur simplifies. He attempts to argue, based on little understanding of the complexity of medical models used either in antiquity or in the Middle Ages....." Renee L. Goethe who goes on to say,"If you really want to understand pre-modern concepts of the body, set Laqueur aside and pick up Cadden instead. While Laqueur's model is a nicely simplified version of the past, the question has to arise -- when does simplification become distortion? How much detail about the past can be safely ignored in the name of simplicity before you create a useless model? But for those who only want a cursory investigation into the history of the body through a primarily medical lens, by all means read the Laqueur. He's far easier to read than Cadden. He's just not as reputable."

Joan CaddenThe Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Natural Philosophy, and Culture

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly not dated given the pace of academic research. This text remains a go-to standard for understanding contemporary gender-criticism in the context of Western historiography. Laqueur introduced a major paradigm shift, of particular relevance when reading ancient and late-antique texts, away from assuming a biologically rooted "two sex" model of human nature. Instead, Laqueur proposed, sex was as much a social construct as gender, and compellingly made his case through a sweeping history of the way our conception of sexual difference has shifted over time. At least in the field of early Christian studies (which is the context in which I ran across several secondary sources citing this text which, in turn, caused me to read this text), Laqueur's views have achieved consensus: the ancients did not think in terms of two sexes, but one sex - male - and varying degrees of physical, social, and moral imperfection away from that ideal.

Once you get it, once you see what it is that Laqueur was identifying, it is literally everywhere in ancient texts - texts whose statements concerning human sexuality are often adopted for contemporary culture war debates without a critical appraisal of the underlying theory of human sexuality (which is, frankly, not compatible with either egalitarian feminism nor male-centered complementarianism).

[Quin Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling, informative, and richly supported account of the history of representations of sex in discourse. Makes a strong case for a shift from a paradigm of one sex to two. While the entire book was interesting, for me it really picked up in chapters 5 and 6, where Lacquer clearly delineates the shift from one to two sexes and, more saliently, places this in it's political/historical/social context. Of interest to feminists seeking to challenge sexist, essentialist accounts of "sexual difference." I read it alongside Anne Fausto-Sterling's "Sexing the Body," and they complement each other well.

One major weakness was a lack of attention to the inextricable co-construction of sexual and racial difference. I plan to read the "Specter of Sex" soon to remedy this gap, and it may be of interest to others for similar reasons.