These movements can assist in bring about significant and widespread changes in the social norm, such as the sexual revolution and the advent of feminism.
Overview of Theory and Practice
Theories regarding gender and sexuality date back to ancient Rome and Greece. Of those that are particularly interesting is the greater acceptance of same sex relations in ancient history and culture; between men, between women, and between men and boys.
One of the earliest 'feminist' from the same era is Sappho, who has been particularly influential because of her expression and lesbianism. She is one of the few if not only female voices from the literature that dates back to Ancient Rome and Greece.
In "Making Sex" Thomas Laqueur, examines how sexuality from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Renaissance period was structured especially differently than in the nineteenth century or in modern times. He specifically points to the influences of science prior to the mid eighteenth century and the propensity toward a perception of men and women as versions of a single sex: women were seen as lesser men with a uterus and clitoris that were inverted versions of the male scrotum and penis.
Given Laqueur's one sex model, the differences between men and women, then, would not be clear or even as important as they are made out to be in other theoretical constructs. For Laqueur, both men and women were seen as unequal parts of a larger cosmological order that posited sexuality not gender as being historically determined.
This book, then, is about the making not of gender, but of sex. I have no interest in denying the reality of sex or of sexual dimorphism as an evolutionary process. But I want to show on the basis of historical evidence that almost everything one wants to say about sex -- however sex is understood- already has in it a claim about gender. Sex, in both
the one-sex and the two-sex worlds, is situation; it is explicable only within the context of battles over gender and power.
In this way, Laqueur has aligned himself with the poststructuralist and Foucault who oppose even the most traditional notions of feminist distinction between one's bodily sex (nature) and one's acquired gender (nurture).
Many scholarly accounts posit the eighteenth century as a period of transition in the understanding of sexuality and gender. During this period, the foundation for the "naturalization" of gender categories was established, which became particularly important in the next century, and further would provide for the belief that gendered behavior was a biological matter; in essence, biology was destiny.
The strict binary system was made way for by eighteenth century medical science and the discovery of the incommensurable differences between female and male bodies. Laqueur laments, "Sometime in the eighteenth century, sex as we know it was invented."
For the first time, men and women were seen as opposites in most areas, in this new system of sexual dimorphism. Women were seen as passionless and passive, and men were regarded as sexually charged and aggressive, for instance. The evolution of binary gender was not an overnight or expedited process. Particularly relevant to this writing is the rise of Enlightenment in this period where values of fraternity, liberty and equality were introduced, which many women philosophers and thinkers argue needed to have been made applicable to all humanity including women.
Mary Wollstonecraft's book, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" is an example of Enlightenment values and was instrumental in calling for women's own distinct inalienable rights.
The idea of "natural" gender distinctions purportedly dominated nineteenth century thought and theory. The conception of normative sexuality centered on the middle class family was birthed during this era. However, many non-normative forms of sexuality were also expressed including non-heterosexuality and non-procreation.
The public and private spheres were considered complementary but separate entities of middle class culture that resulted from industrialization, urbanization, and significant economic growth. These distinctive spheres were loosely commensurate with the binary gender distinctions; however, the public sphere was male dominated as it was the dimension of money making, politics, business, industry, empire building and struggle. And the private sphere was considered preserved for the feminine as it was the space of hearth and home, nurture, sympathy, childrearing and simple piety.
It goes without saying that in this "commensurate" system, women had minimal access to the public sphere.
The claim of the middle class to cultural authority...
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