This is a thread based on @alokvmenon 's instagram post.

(...)Book Report:
Making Sex: Body and Gender from Geeks to Freud - Thomas Laqueur (Harvard University Press, 1990)

People often deploy the category "sex" as unchangeable. This is historically not true. (1/11)

In the western world there was a distinct transition between a "unisex" model to our contemporary "binary sex model". What we can learn from history is that the parameters of "biological sex" shift to naturalize discrimination. (...) (2/11)

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" (3/11)

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 were considered masculine and things that were cold and moist, were considered femenine. (4/11)

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 female, was to hold a cultural role. (5/11)

After 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." (6/11)

With that advert 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. (7/11)

With changes in industrialization, religion, post-French revolution political structures and feminism, scientists were explicitly looking 4 a way to justify the sexual separation of shperes (the idea that men should have access 2 rights and woman should remain home as caretakers)

Both the unisex and binary sex models were developed exclusively by men to position men as superior. In the present day, people try to use the category sex as if it's outside politics and firmly rooted into "nature". (9/11)

We should always question: Who gets to speak for nature and why? As Dr. Laqueur concludes, there is no nature outside politics: almost everything 1 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).

Visit Alok's instagram for more info. Thank u for reading! (11/11)
https://instagram.com/alokvmenon?igshid=1msdinsz026sc