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Observations, Suppositions, and Airy Speculations on Fetal Sex Anatomy in British Scientific Literature, 1794-1871
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9089948 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ross Brooks (0000-0003-3472-8035, Granta Design (United Kingdom), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 34-73 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5045 • E-ISSN: 1468-4373 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jhmas/jrt039 |
| PMID | 24150887 |
| OpenAlex | W2089796602 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 11 |
The hegemony of the two-sex paradigm in the European scientific imagination and wider culture did not automatically equate to the hegemony of two discrete genders. In fact, two sexes facilitated a variety of gender choices: two singular and a number of double or otherwise intersexed (most commonly referred to as "hermaphrodite" or "bisexual" in its anatomical sense). This article explores some key British medical and allied scientific texts, with reference to associated Continental literature, as a means of illustrating the complexity of the two-sex paradigm and the unexpected transformation of gender possibilities that it helped produce through the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century. Discourses surrounding the first direct observations of the earliest development of fetal urinogenital anatomy were pivotal. The prevailing view that the incipient embryo was sexually undifferentiated (a paragon of the one-sex paradigm) was challenged by the Edinburgh anatomist Robert Knox, initially as he sought to bolster his professional reputation at the height of the Burke and Hare "body-snatching" scandal. Knox suggested that every embryo began life in an essentially dual-sexed state, an individual's sex anatomy depending on the greater or lesser development of component female and male structures. Greater clarification on the contested status of the homology-hermaphrodite distinction was achieved with the discovery of the early co-existence of the excretory duct of the Wolffian body (mesonephric duct) and the Müllerian duct (paramesonephric duct), an observation that made anatomical bisexuality difficult to ignore. The nineteenth-century's greatest champion of primordial hermaphroditism was Charles Darwin who was pivotal in phylogenizing the principle and establishing the premise that (in his own words) "Every man & woman is hermaphrodite," a foundation stone of late-nineteenth-century sexology.
Art · Humanities · Classics · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History of Science and Natural History · Medicine · Socioeconomics of Resources and Conservation
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Androgyne Becomes Bisexual in Sexological Theory
Otto Weininger
A. W. Bates, The Anatomy of Robert Knox
The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century
The Jesus Hermaphrodite
Generation and Degeneration
Science, Sexuality, and Gender in the FIN DE SIÈCLE
Privilege, Possibility, and Perversion
A Woman Down to Her Bones
Gender Ideology, Gender Change
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |