Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud [Paperback]

Joan Cadden's much more important and accurate book, _The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages_, opens by taking Laqueur's premise to task. And she's right to do so -- someone had to.

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, that a one-sex model predominated in medicine. And while, to a degree, he's right, he's equally wrong. He would be correct if Aristotle's model of the human body were the ONLY one used either in antiquity or the Latin west. But Aristotle pointedly presented his model of gender in opposition to that proposed by the Hippocratics. Galen, who obviously knew both Aristotle and Hippocrates, then modified the idea of what constitutes sexual differentiation even further. After Galen, we have centuries of commentary and modification by Arabic scholars -- Avicenna predominates -- before we get to the Latin translations which spurred scholastic debate in the universities of the west. Their model of the body was not simple or limited, it didn't rely solely on authoritative sources from the past, and it never solidified into a unified theory. To argue that it did would rob these individuals of their collective rationality and treat them like amusing children -- something a historian should avoid whenever possible.

In order to create a readable and comprehensible text, Laqueur elided the complexities of the arguments common in the medieval universities regarding sex difference and reproduction in order to present his readers with a neat and tidy package. Whenever presented with a neat package in history, doubt the source.

Cadden's work is a direct refutation of Laqueur's. In it, she attempts to detail the confusing and complex model of sexual differentiation inherited by the Latin west from antiquity, including Galen's two-seed model and all the implications thereof. She furthermore attempts to demonstrate the application of these theories of gender and sex. She grounds her arguments much more firmly in the context of the time than Laqueur ever managed to do.

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.

Baffling as it is, my book doesn't feature any imprint whatsoever. The bibliography clocks out with books of 1990 and amazon says it was published on February 1, 1992. Of the some 330 pages, 56 are reserved for the bibliography and far too many footnotes. Also integrated are 63 smaller black and white images, some of them too dark.

The book has many interesting historic concepts to offer. For example that the Greeks used tricks to make their penises appear SMALLER. That for two millennia the same name for homologous organs for "both sexes" was used, e.g. for what today is called ovaries/testes. That in Latin "vagina" wasn't used for what it means today, but additionally in good humor for "anus". That anatomic drawings were made in a way to make them appear the same for women and men (just inside and outside the body). And that at one point the mind was considered the self, which is bodiless, hence no sex difference of mind. However, as other reviewers have pointed out in more detail already, Thomas Laqueur presents the one-sex-concept historically too monolithic. Indeed, The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) is much more complex and should be considered obligatory reading, if "Making Sex" is read. Also of interest may be Nature's Body: Gender In The Making Of Modern Science and Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex.

I find "Making Sex" a bit difficult to read. It isn't the vocabulary. Compared to other books, I did not have to grab the dictionary for more than a dozen times. (Which didn't help me with "micturation", though. I had to browse the internet and stump even some dictionaries there to finally find the euphemism for "urination", whyever we need one...). Let's say, the writing style is rather dry and feels repetitive, even though it isn't REALLY. The author "just" repeats the same issues in the light of many epochs again and again. Which comes with the subject matter I guess, but that doesn't change the fact, that it isn't exactly a pleasurable reading experience.

Also, the book seems to be even more devoted to the connection (or not) of orgasm and conception than on the construction of sexes. The reader may get the impression at several points (including in the footnotes) that males do not lactate, even if mentioned that historic sources thought so. Well, the author is wrong on this one: Men are very much able to lactate and that in numerous circumstances, but in the early 1990s, this wasn't really accepted yet (again) in the West. Laqueur doesn't seem to agree as well with historic sources that the prepuce enhances lubrication. Which makes me wonder how to think otherwise. Putting aside the flawed continued chain of historic reasoning that this would be necessary for conception, clearly the prepuce distributes equally any lubrication such as preejaculate. Last not least there are no "races" among humans, and the N word should be avoided accordingly...

Laqueur argues that like sex much like gender, which is now recognised to change with the times, has reinvented by people throughout time. Societies and communities tend to construct categories by which they organise things, people and their societies; whilst, these categorical tools appear legitimate and obvious to the historical actors who employ them, historical hindsight effectively demolishes their innateness. Laqueur argues that sex is not something that exists outside of us but within us, something that is transformed and made by communities and not by nature. Lauquer suggests that ideas of sex can be separated into two groups: the single sex model which precedes the 18th century and the two sex model which follows the invention of sex (which he claims occurs in the 18th century). Further, Lauqueur claims that these changes in the conception and implications of sex changed as a function of society and were independent of scientific advances. Despite presenting a number of interesting case studies and examples Lauquer's evidence does not adequately support his thesis because historical knowledge challenges the one sex model; the lack of categories does not imply the lack of separate entities; the analysis of the implications of the language utilised by historical actors is problematic.
Reading Aristotle also suggests that at least him considered sexes to be separate. He compares slaves to women and implies that there are separate. The historical record challenges Laqueur's assertions because societies have frequently divided roles, and sexual mores according to sex.
Much of Laqueur assertions lay on the apparent absence of separate categories for men and women. He argues that throughout history women were seen as imperfect men, or inverted men (if we look at some of the dissection drawings made - it is clear from the similarities between vaginas and penises that they thought women were inverted males). Thus, Lauquer argues that women were considered to lack the heat required to be male. From this and the lack of different terminology (to which I'll get on later) he extrapolates that there was but one gender. However, he recognises that people were able to distinguish between man and women but the basis of this distinction was not there genitalia. Women were supposed to perform certain roles and also lacked heat; whereas men, who were seen as more rational and superior were expected to fulfil a different set of roles ergo men and women were separated and perceived to be different. While, the basis on which the distinction was made may not have focused on their genitalia the distinction existed and separated society into two groups; coincidentally (or not) once genitalia is used to separate the sexes along with their respective traits and roles the membership of groups does not change. Ergo, there is functionally no change; whereas prior to the 18th century (assuming Lauquer is correct) women were perceived to have certain characteristics and amongst those was their inverted penises; now, these same characteristics were perceived to result from the presence of said genitalia. We are left with a perfect correlation and a distinction that does not affect the interactions between said groups nor their composition but only their name.
Laqueur also explores the language used by historical actors and whilst language can be very important to understand how and what people thought its significance must be properly analysed. Laqueur argues that the fact that people used similar terms to refer to male and female reproductive organs means that these were not differentiated in the minds of those that utilise them. The fact that ovaries were referred as testes according to Laqueur means that these people did not separate the sexes. Alas, they (and may I add we still) refer to other organisms penises as penises; are we to extrapolate from this; that there is or that historical actors thought there was only one species? The fact we call these organs by the same name does not imply we consider them to be the same. Further, we still refer to some of these structures using the same names: gonads, gametes, secondary sexual characteristics; despite the fact we recognise that whilst these structures differ they are functionally homologous.