Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology
Author(s): Thomas Laqueur
Source: Representations, No. 14, The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in
the Nineteenth Century (Spring, 1986), pp. 1-41
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928434 .
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THOMAS
LAQUEUR
Orgasm, Generation,and the Politics
of ReproductiveBiology
CENTURY human sexual
SOMETIME IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTH
nature changed, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf. This essay gives an account of
of female,and moregenerallyhuman,
reconstitution
theradicaleighteenth-century
sexualityin relationto the equally radical Enlightenmentpoliticalreconstitution
of "Man"-the universalisticclaim,statedwithstarkestclarityby Condorcet,that
the "rightsof men result simply from the fact that they are sentientbeings,
capable of acquiring moral ideas and of reasoning concerningthese ideas. [And
that]women,havingthese same qualities,mustnecessarilypossess equal rights."'
Condorcet moves immediatelyto biology and specificallyto reproductive
biology.Exposure to pregnancy,he says,is no more relevantto women'spolitical
to gout. But of course the factsor supposed facts
rightsthanis male susceptibility
to Condorcet, to Mill, to feministsas well as
were
central
of female physiology
to liberalismin itsvarious formsand also to itsenemies. Even the
antifeminists,
politicalpornographyof Sade is grounded in a theoryof generation.The body
generally,but especiallythe female body in its reproductivecapacityand in distinctionfromthatof the male, came to occupy a criticalplace in a whole range
of politicaldiscourses.It is the connectionbetweenpoliticsand a new disposition
of male and female thatconcerns me here.2
Near the end of the centuryof Enlightenment,medical science and those
who relied upon itceased to regard the femaleorgasm as relevantto generation.
withno tell-taleshiversor signs
Conception,itwas held, could take place secretly,
of arousal. For women the ancientwisdom that"apart frompleasure nothingin
mortalkind comes into existence"was uprooted. We ceased to regard ourselves
as beings "compactedin blood, of the seed of man, and the pleasure that[comes]
withsleep."We no longer linkedthe loci of pleasure withthe mysteriousinfusing
of lifeintomatter.Routineaccounts,likethatin a popular Renaissance midwifery
textof the clitorisas thatorgan "whichmakes women lustfuland take delightin
copulation,"withoutwhich they"would have no desire, nor delight,nor would
ifnot manifestly
stupid.3
theyever conceive;'came to be regardedas controversial
Sexual orgasm moved to the peripheryof human physiology.Previouslya
deeply embedded sign of the generativeprocess-whose existencewas no more
open to debate than was the warm,pleasurable glow thatusuallyaccompanies a
good meal-orgasm became simplya feeling,albeitan enormouslycharged one,
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
whose existencewas a matterforempiricalinquiryor armchairphilosophizing.
Jacques Lacan's provocativecharacterizationof femaleorgasm,"lajouissance, ce
qui ne sert a rien,"is a distinctlymodern possibility.4
The new conceptualizationof the femaleorgasm,however,was but one forreinterpretationof the female
mulation of a more radical eighteenth-century
body in relation to that of the male. For several thousand years it had been a
commonplace thatwomen have the same genitalsas men, except that,as Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in the sixth century,put it: "Theirs are inside the body
and not outside it."Galen, who in the second centuryA.D. developed the most
powerful and resilientmodel of the homologous nature of male and female
reproductiveorgans,could already cite the anatomistHerophilus (thirdcentury
B.C.) in support of his claim thata woman has testeswithaccompanyingseminal
ductsverymuchliketheman's,one on each side of the uterus,theonlydifference
being thatthe male's are contained in the scrotumand the female'sare not.5
For twomillenniathe organ thatbythe earlynineteenthcenturyhad become
virtuallya synecdochefor woman had no name of its own. Galen refersto it by
the same word he uses for the male testes,orchis,allowingcontextto make clear
with which sex he is concerned. Regnier de Graaf, whose discoveriesin 1672
would eventuallymake the old homologies less plausible, continues to call the
A centurylaterthe Montovaries he is studyingby theirold Latin name, testiculi.
pelierian physiologistPierre Roussel, a man obsessed withthe biological distinctivenessof women, notes that the two oval bodies on either side of the uterus
"are alternativelycalled ovaries or testicles,depending on the systemwhichone
is stillsomewhatmuddled
adopts."As late as 1819, theLondonMedicalDictionary
but now supposed
called
female
testicles;
in itsnomenclature:"Ovaria: formerly
to be the recepticlesof ova or the female seed." Indeed, doggerel verse of the
nineteenthcenturystillsings of these hoary homologies aftertheyhave disappeared fromlearned texts:
... though theyof differentsexes be,
Yeton thewholetheyare thesameas we,
seachersbeen,
Forthosethathavethestrictest
Findwomenare butmenturnedoutsidein.
By 1800 thisview,like that linkingorgasm to conception,had come under
devastatingattack.Writersof all sortsweredeterminedto base whattheyinsisted
and thusbetween
betweenmale and femalesexuality,
werefundamentaldifferences
man and woman, on discoverablebiological distinctions.In 1803, for example,
argued
Jacques Moreau de la Sarthe,one of the foundersof "moralanthropology,'
passionatelyagainst the nonsense writtenby Aristotle,Galen, and theirmodern
followerson the subject of women in relation to men.6 Not only are the sexes
different,theyare differentin every conceivable respect of body and soul, in
every physicaland moral aspect. To the physicianor the naturalistthe relation
2
THOMAS LAQUEUR
of woman to man is "a series of oppositionsand contrasts."Thus the old model,
in whichmen and womenwerearrayedaccordingto theirdegree of metaphysical
perfection,theirvitalheat, along an axis whose telos was male, gave wayby the
late eighteenthcenturyto a new model of difference,of biological divergence.
replaced a metaphysicsof
An anatomy and physiologyof incommensurability
hierarchyin the representationof women in relationto men.7
But neitherthe demotion of female orgasm nor the biologyof incommensurabilityof whichit was a part followsimplyfromscientificadvances. True, by
the 1840s it had become clear that,at leastin dogs, ovulationcould occur without
coitionand thus presumablywithoutorgasm. And it was immediatelypostulated
thatthe human female,like the canine bitch,was a "spontaneous ovulator,"producing an egg duringthe periodic heat thatin women was knownas the menses.
But the available evidence forthishalf truthwas at best slightand highlyambiginvestigatorsin reprouous. Ovulation, as one of the pioneer twentieth-century
ductivebiology put it, "is silentand occult: neitherself-observationby women
nor medical studythroughall the centuriespriorto our own era taughtmankind
to recognize it." Indeed until the 1930s standard medical advice books recommended that to avoid conception women should have intercourseduring the
middle of theirmenstrualcycles-i.e., during days twelvethroughsixteen,now
Until the 1930s even the outlines of
known as the period of maximumfertility.
our modern understandingof the hormonalcontrolof ovulationwereunknown.
Thus, while scientificadvances mightin principlehave caused a change in the
understandingof the femaleorgasm,in factthe reevaluationof pleasureoccurred
a centuryand a half before reproductivephysiologycame to its support.8
The shiftin the interpretationof the male and femalebody,however,cannot
have been due, even in principle,primarilyto scientificprogress. In the first
place the "oppositionsand contrasts"betweenthe femaleand the male have been
self-evidentsince the beginningof time: the one gives birthand the other does
not, to state the obvious. Set against such momentoustruths,the discovery,for
example, that the ovarian arteryis not, as Galen would have it, the homologue
of the vas deferensis of relativelyminor significance.Thus, the factthatat one
time male and female bodies were regarded as hierarchically,
that is vertically,
orderedand thatat anothertimetheycame to be regardedas horizontally
ordered,
as opposites, as incommensurable,must depend on somethingother than one
or even a set of real or supposed "discoveries."
In addition,nineteenth-century
advances in developmentalanatomy(germlayertheory)pointed to the common originsof both sexes in a morphologically
androgenous embryoand thus not to theirintrinsicdifference.Indeed the Galenic homologies were by the 1850s reproduced at the embryologicallevel: the
penis and the clitoris,the labia and the scrotum,the ovaryand the testesshared
commonoriginsin fetallife.Finally,and mosttellingly,
no one was veryinterested
in looking at the anatomical and concrete physiologicaldifferencesbetweenthe
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
3
sexes untilsuch differencesbecame politicallyimportant.It was not,forexample,
until 1797 that anyone bothered to reproduce a detailed female skeletonin an
anatomy book so as to illustrateits differencefrom the male. Up to this time
there had been one basic structurefor the human body,the typeof the male.9
Instead of being theconsequence of increasedscientificknowledge,new ways
of interpretingthe body were rather,I suggest,new ways of representingand
indeed of constitutingsocial realities.As Mary Douglas wrote,"The human body
is alwaystreated as an image of societyand ... there can be no natural way of
consideringthe body thatdoes not involveat the same timea social dimension."
Serious talkabout sexualityis inevitablyabout society.Ancientaccountsof reproductivebiology,stillpersuasivein the earlyeighteenthcentury,linkedthe experientialqualitiesof sexual delightto the social and indeed the cosmicorder. Biology and human sexual experience mirroredthe metaphysicalrealityon which,
it was thought,the social order too rested. The new biology,withits search for
fundamentaldifferencesbetween the sexes and its torturedquestioningof the
veryexistenceof women'ssexual pleasure, emerged at preciselythe time when
the foundationsof the old social order were irremediablyshaken,when the basis
fora new order of sex and gender became a criticalissue of politicaltheoryand
practice.10
The Anatomyand Physiology
of Hierarchy
The existenceof femalesexual pleasure, indeed the necessityof pleasure for the successfulreproductionof humankind,was an unquestioned commonplace well before the elaboration of ancient doctrines in the writingsof
Galen, Soranus, and the Hippocratic school. Poor Tiresias was blinded byJuno
foragreeing withJove thatwomen enjoyed sex morethan men. The gods, we are
told in the Timaeus,"contrivedthe love of sexual intercourseby constructingan
animate creatureof one kind in us men, and anotherin women"; onlywhen the
desire and love of the two sexes unite them are these creaturescalmed. Galen's
learned texts,On theSeed and the sectionson the reproductiveorgans in On the
Usefulness
ofthePartsoftheBody,are intended not to query but ratherto explain
the obvious: "whya verygreat pleasure is coupled withthe exercise of the generativeparts and a ragingdesire precedes theiruse."'1
Heat is of criticalimportancein the Galenic account. It is, to begin with,the
signof perfection,of one's place in the hierarchicalgreatchain of being. Humans
are the mostperfectof animals,and men are more perfectthanwomenbyreason
of their "excess of heat." Men and women are, in this model, not differentin
kind but in the configurationof theirorgans; the male is a hotterversionof the
female, or to use the teleologicallymore appropriate order, the female is the
cooler,less perfectversionof the male.'2
4
THOMAS LAQUEUR
Understandingthe machineryof sex thus becomes essentiallyan exercise in
topology:"Turn outwardthe woman's,turninward,so to speak, and folddouble
the man's,and you willfindthe same in both in everyrespect."Galen inviteshis
readers to practicementallythe admittedlydifficultinversions.
inwardbetween
turnedinand extending
genitalia]
please,oftheman's[external
Thinkfirst
take
therectumand thebladder.If thisshouldhappen,thescrotumwouldnecessarily
theplaceoftheuteruswiththetesteslyingoutside,nextto iton eitherside.
The penis in thisexercise becomes the cervixand vagina; the prepuce becomes
the female pudenda and so forth,continuingon throughthe various ducts and
blood vessels. Or, he suggests,tryit backwards:
Wouldnot
theuterusturnedoutwardand projecting.
Thinktoo,please,oftheconverse,
be insideit?Woulditnotcontainthemlikea scrotum?
thetestes[ovaries]thennecessarily
concealedinsidetheperineumbutnowpendant,
hitherto
Wouldnottheneck[thecervix],
be madeintothemalemember?'3
In fact,Galen argues, "You could not find a single male part leftover that
he
had not simplychanged its position."And, in a blaze of rhetoricalvirtuosity,
elaboratesa stunningand unsuspectedsimileto make all thismore plausible: the
reproductiveorgans of women are like the eyes of the mole. Like other animals'
eyes, the mole's have "vitreousand crystallinehumors and the tunicsthat surround [them]";yet,theydo not see. Their eyesdo not open, "nor do theyproject
but are leftthere imperfect."Likewise,the womb itselfis an imperfectversion
of whatit would be were it projectedoutward. But like the eyesof a mole, which
in turn "remainlike the eyes of other animals when these are stillin the uterus,"
the womb is foreveras if stillin the womb!14
If the femaleis a replica of the male, withthe same organs inside ratherthan
outside the body,whythen,one mightask, are women not men? Because they
have insufficientheat to extrude the organs of reproductionand, as alwaysfor
Galen, because form befitsfunction.Nature in her wisdom has made females
cooler,allowingtheirorgans to remaininsideand providingtherea safe,guarded
place for conception and gestation. Moreover, if women were as hot as men,
semen planted in the womb would shriveland die like seed cast upon the desert;
of course, the extra nutrimentneeded by the fetuswould likewiseburn off.The
factremains thatwomen, whatevertheirspecial adaptations,are but variations
of the male form,the same but lower on the scale of being and perfection.15
In thismodel, sexual excitementand the "verygreat pleasure" of climax in
both men and women are understoodas signsof a heat sufficientto concoctand
comingle the seed, the animate matter,and create new life. Frictionheats the
body as it would two objectsrubbingtogether.The chafingof the penis, or even
itsimaginedchafingin a nocturnalemission,warmsthemale organ and, through
itsconnectionsto veinsand nerves,everyotherpart of the body.As warmthand
Biology
The Politicsof Reproductive
5
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REPRESENTATIONS
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Body e. Chre
Lenadod Vic on theHua
FIGURE
1. Leonardodevelopshomologiesbetweenmaleand female
reproductiveorgans. The testiclesare clearlyhomologiesof the
ovaries. But the uterus is not depicted as homologue of the scrotum; instead,the loop of the vas deferensto the testesencloses
a space correspondingto the hollow mass of the uterus. From
Leonardoda Vincion theHumanBody,ed. CharlesD. O'Malley
and J. B. de C. M. Saunders (New York, 1952), plate 201.
6REPRESENTATIONS
pleasure build up and diffuse,the increasinglyviolentmovementof the whole
man causes the finestpart of the blood to be concocted into semen, a kind of
foam that finallybursts forthpowerfullyand uncontrollablylike an epileptic
seizure, to use the analogy Galen borrowed fromDemocritus.16
In women, the rubbing of the vagina and the neck of the womb performs
the same functionthough,some writerswould argue, witha somewhatdifferent
rhythmof delight.The authorof the HippocratictreatiseTheSeedmaintains,for
example, that heat in women builds up more gradually,resultingin a pleasure
at once more sustained and less intense than the male's. Though her orgasm
occurs whethershe emitsbefore or afterthe man, it is most intenseif it occurs
at the moment the sperm and its heat touches the womb. Then, like a flame
The
flaringwhen wine is sprinkledon it,the woman'sheat blazes mostbrilliantly.
nuances of the orgasm thus representthe inner workingsof the body as well as
the cosmicorder of perfection.Orgasm'screscendo bears witnessto the GalenicHippocratic two-seed model of conception in which women, contra Aristotle,
actually"seminate"at the peak of theirsexual raptures.Like men, women also
give forththeirsemen in response to imaginaryfrictionin the heat of youthor
in the quiet of the night.The limbsand back of a widow who had not been with
a man for some timeache, Galen reports,fromthe build-up of semen untilshe
discharges a viscous semen and feels the kind of physical pleasure she would
have experienced in intercourse.Others,similarlysituated,discharge a thinner,
more urine-likeliquid-one presumesthesecretionof the paraurethralglands.17
Galen elaborates metaphors linkingfriction,chafing,and itchingwith the
productionof the generativesubstancein considerabledetail. Semen, in addition
to being the product of genital heat, is also thought to produce specificlocal
effects.Its fluidpartsconstitutean acrid humor thataccumulatesunder the skin
and causes an itch that,he reminds his readers, is enormously pleasurable to
relieve. Avicenna, through whose widely influencialCanon Galen came to be
known in the medieval West,elaborates thisimage even further:an "itching:"a
"pruritus"in the mouth of the womb,accompanied by itsinflammationor erection, are taken to be the physicalsigns in women of the desire for intercourse.
The skinof the genitalarea, Galen argues, is more sensitivethan other skin,the
desire to scratch it more vehement,and the resultingpleasure more intense.
Finally,semen as a local irritantduring coition opens up and straightensthe
mouth of the womb,makingit receptiveto the male semen.18
Like a greatsteam generator,the whole body warmsup to produce the seed;
the sensations of intercourseand the orgasm itselfindicate that everythingis
workingas it should. But in thismodel sexual pleasure is not specificallygenital,
despite the factthatintercourseis viewed as the relievingof a localized itchand
the organs of copulation as sources,throughfriction,of heat. Orgasm'swarmth,
though more vehementand exciting,is in kind no differentfromotherwarmth
and can be producedin some measurebyfood,wine,or thepowerof imagination.
Biology
The Politicsof Reproductive
7
FIGURES 2 and 3. Andreas Vesalius,male and female
reproductiveorgans, TabulaeSex. From The
Anatomical
DrawingsofAndreasVesalius,ed.
Charles D. O'Malley and J. B. de C. M.
Saunders (New York, 1982).
Ancient medicine bequeathed to the Renaissance a physiologyof flux and
corporeal openness, one in whichblood, mother'smilk,and semen were fungible
fluids,products of the body's power to concoct its nutriment.Thus, not only
could women turn into men, as writersfrom Plinyto Montaigne testified(see
below),butbodilyfluidscould turneasilyintoone another.This notonlyexplained
whypregnantwomen,who, it was held, transformedfood into nourishmentfor
the fetus,and new mothers,who transformedthe catamenialelementsintomilk,
did not menstruate;italso accounted forthe observationthatobese women,who
transformedthe normal plethoraintofat,and dancers,who used up the plethora
in exercise, did not menstruateeither and were thus generallyinfertile.Menstrual blood and menstrualbleeding were, moreover,regarded as no different
than blood and bleeding generally.Thus Hippocrates views nosebleed and the
onset of menstruationas equivalent signs of the resolutionof fevers.A woman
vomitingblood willstop ifshe startsto menstruate,and itis a good signifepistaxis
occurs in a woman whose courses have stopped. Similarly,bleeding in men and
in women is regarded as physiologicallyequivalent.If melancholyappears "after
the suppression of the catamenial discharge in women,"argues Araeteus the
8
THOMAS LAQUEUR
Cappadocian, "or the hemorrhoidalfluxin men, we muststimulatethe parts to
throwofftheiraccustomed evacuation."'19
Indeed, the menses, until one hundred years before its phantasmagoric
interpretations
by Micheletand others,was stillregarded,as
nineteenth-century
it had been by Hippocrates, as but one form of bleeding by which women rid
themselvesof excess materials.Brazilian Indian women "never have theirflowEnglish compiler of ethnographic
ers;' writesan eccentricseventeenth-century
curiosities,because "maids of twelveyearsold have theirsides cut by theirmothers, fromthe armpitdown unto the knee. . . [and] some conjecturetheyprevent
their monthlyflux in this manner."Albrechtvon Haller, the great eighteenthcenturyphysiologist,argues thatin pubertythe plethora"in the male, ventsitself
frequentlythroughthe nose ... but in the femalethesameplethorafindsa more
easy vent downward." Herman Boerhaave, the major medical teacher of the
generation before Haller, cites a number of cases of men who bled regularly
throughthe hemorrhoidalarteries,the nose, or the fingersor who, if not bled
developed the clinicalsigns,the tensenessof the body,of amenprophylactically,
orrhea. Even the enlightenedFrederickthe Great had himselfbled beforebattle
to relievetensionand facilitatecalm command.20
of fluidsthusrepresentedin a differentregisterthe anatomThe fungibility
ical homologies described earlier. The higher concoction of male semen with
respectto thatof the female and the factthatmales generallyrid themselvesof
nutritionalexcesses withoutfrequentbleeding bore witnessboth to the essential
homology between the economies of nutrition,blood, and semen in men and
women,and to the superiorheat and greaterperfectionof the male. Sexual heat
was but an instanceof the heat of life itself,and orgasm in both sexes the sign
of warmthsufficientto transformone kind of bodilyfluidintoitsreproductively
potentformsand to assure a receptiveplace for the product of theirunion. In
thiscontext,it is not difficultto see whyGalen's clinicaljudgments on the relaor betweenthe absence of pleasure and
tionshipbetweenpleasure and fertility,
barrenness, should have become commonplace in both learned and popular
Renaissance medical literature.
Arab writerwho served as a conduit to the
Avicenna,the eleventh-century
Westformuch ancient medicine,writesin some detail of how a woman may not
"be pleased by" the smallnessof her mate's penis "whereforeshe does not emit
sperm; and when she does not emitsperm a child is not made." "Pleasure induces
a hastyemissionof sperm"; conversely,if women delay in emitting"and do not
fulfilltheir desire ... the result is no generation."The midwifeand physician
Trotulla in the twelfthcenturydescribes how barrenness can well be the sad
consequence of too littleor too much heat, though she does not distinguish
sexual heat fromits more mundane varieties.Of course, it is argued in a great
body of Renaissance literaturethatbarrenness mightwell be due to anatomical
defectsand arguably to witchcraft,
but either a lack of passion or an excess of
Biology
The Politicsof Reproductive
9
FIGURE4. Vesalius,uterus,vagina,and
externalpudenda froma
youngwoman,De humani
This illustrationwas
corporis.
not made to illustrate
homologieswiththe male
organ. From Anatomical
DrawingsofVesalilus.
FIGURES5 and 6 (opposite).Frontalcross
sectionof female genitals(left);
frontwall of the vagina (right);
fromJakob Henle, Handbuch
Anatomie
des
dersystematischen
Menschen,vol. 2 (Braunschweig,
1866). These illustrationsshow
thatthe geometricrelations
depicted in fig.4 are not
intrinsically
implausible.
lust had to be considered in any differentialdiagnosis. In men, insufficient
heat
manifestedby a lack of sexual desire could be remedied by rubbing the loins
withheat-producing
drugs.Stillotherdrugs-in additiontolascivioustalk,coquetry,
and the like-could cure "defectof spirit;'the inabilityto have an erectionwhen
desire was present. In women adversityand indisposition to the pleasures of
the lawfulsheets"or "no pleasure and delight"in intercourse,along witha slow
pulse, littlethirst,thin urine, scant pubic hair, and similarsigns, were almost
certainindicatorsof insufficient
heat of thetesticlesto concoctthe seed. As Jacob
Rueff puts it in discussingthe problem of cold, "The fruitfulnessof man and
wifemaybe hinderedverymuch forwantof desire to be acquainted withVenus."
Conversely,too muchdesire (prostituteswerethoughtseldom to conceive); curly,
warmwoman);
dark,and plentifulhair(marksof thevirago,thevirile,unnaturally
a shortor absent menses (the hot body burningoffthe excess materialsthatin
normalwomenwereeliminatedthroughthemonthlycourses)indicatedexcessive
heat, whichwillconsume or shrivelup the seed.2'
Thus, to ensure "generationin the timeof copulation,"the rightamount of
heat, made manifestby normal sexual pleasure and in the end by orgasm,must
be produced.Talk and teasing,severalbookssuggest,werethe firstresort.Women
10
REPRESENTATIONS
should be prepared withlasciviouswords,writesJohnSadler,havingpointedout
earlierthe importanceof mutualorgasm; sometimesthe problemis neitherthe
womb nor other impedimentsin eitherspouse,
exceptonlyinthemanneroftheactas whenintheemission
oftheseed,themanisquicke
andthewomantooslow,whereby
thereisnota concourse
ofbothseedsatthesameinstant
as therulesofconception
require.
He furtherrecommendswantonbehavior,"all kinde of dalliance" and "allurementto venery."Then, ifthe man stillfound his mate "to be slow,and more cold,
he much cherish,embrace,and tickleher."He must
handlehersecretpartsand dugs,thatshe maytakefireand be enflamedin venery,
for
so at lengththewombewillstriveand waxefervent
withdesireofcastingforthitsown
seed,and receiving
theman'sseed to be mixedtogether
therein.
The womb,as anotherwriternotes almosta centurylater,"by InjoymentNaturallyreceivesSeed for Generation... as Heat [attracts]Strawsor Feathers."Be
careful,warn Ambroise Pare and others,not to leave a woman too soon after
her orgasm, "lest aire strikethe open womb" and cool the seeds so recently
sown.22 If all thisfails,the Renaissance pharmacopoeia was fullof usefuldrugs
thatworkedeitherdirectlyor bysympatheticmagic.Pare recommends"fomenting her secret parts witha decoction of hot herbes made with muscadine, or
boiledin othergood wine,"and rubbingcivetor muskeintothevagina.Submerge
the privatesin a warm sitz bath of junipers and chamomile,advises another
authority.
The heartof a male quail around the neck of a man and the heart of
ig.
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The Politicsof ReproductiveBiology
11
a female around the neck of a woman were said to enhance love, presumably
because of the lecherous characterof birds generallyand perhaps of quails in
particular;a concoctionof ale hoof and pease strawwas also indicated.23
an unbreakablebond betweenorgasm
In the Renaissance,as in late antiquity,
and fulfillmentof the command to be fruitfuland multiplylinked personal
experience to a greatersocial and cosmicorder.On the one hand concupiscence
and the irresistibleattractionsof sexual rapture stood as marks in the fleshof
mankind'sfallfromgrace, of the essentialweaknessof the will.But on the other
hand pleasure was construed as preciselywhat compelled men and women to
reproduce themselves,despite what prudence or individual interestmightdictate. The importof the Timaeus'saccount of creationwas that in both men and
women brazenlyself-willed
genitalsassured the propagationof the speciesthrough
their love of intercourseeven if reason mighturge abstinence. This notion is
elaborated with an especial poignancy for women in the popular Renaissance
literature.Only "ardent appetite and lust" preventedthe "bitterdecay in short
timeof mankind";onlythe factthata mercifullyshortmemoryand an insatiable
desiremade womenforgetthedangerousagoniesof childbirthallowedthehuman
race to continue. Women,withclinched fists"in the great pain and intolerable
anguish" of the time of their travail,"forswearand bind themselvesnever to
company with a man again." Yet time after time, the "singular natural delight
between men and women" causes them to forget"both the sorrow passed and
thatwhichis to come." If the bearing of childrenwas God's offerof consolation
for the loss of eternal life,the lethean pleasures of sex were a counterweightto
itspain. The biological"invisiblehand" of delightmade themcooperate in assurof the species and the continuityof society.24
ing the immortality
Male and female bodies in these Renaissance accounts were, as is perhaps
obvious, stillvery much those of Galen. Consider Leonardo's drawings(fig. 1),
or the far more influentialengravingsin Andreas Vesalius' epoch-markingDe
humanicorporis
fabricaand his more popular Tabulaesex,all of which reinforce
the hoary model through strikingnew representations.When Vesalius is selfconsciouslytryingto emphasize the homologiesbetweenmale and femaleorgans
of generation(figs.2 and 3) and, even more telling,when he is not (fig.4), he is
firmlyin the camp of the "ancients,"however much he mightrail against the
authorityof Galen in othercontexts.But the anatomicalaccuracyof Galen is not
what is at issue here. The female reproductivesystemcan be, and indeed on
occasion was still in the late nineteenthcentury,"accurately"rendered in the
manner of Vesalius long afterthe old homologies had lost theircredibility(figs.
5 and 6). But afterthe late seventeenthcenturyand the collapse of the hierarchical model therewas, in general,no longer any reason to draw the vagina and
externalpudenda in the same framewiththe uterus and the ovaries. Bodies did
not change, but the meaningsof the relationshipbetweentheirparts did.25
audiences stillgave credence to a whole collectionof
Seventeenth-century
12
THOMAS LAQUEUR
tales, going back at least to Pliny,that illustratethe structuralsimilaritiesand
of male and femalebodies. Sir Thomas Browne,in hisEnquithusthe mutability
Errors(1646), devotesan entirechapterto the question
riesintoVulgarand Common
of whether"everyhare is both male and female."He concludes that"as for the
mutationof sexes, or transitionof one into another,we cannot deny it in Hares,
itbeing observable in Man." Some pages later,in an exegesis of Aristotleand the
schoolmen,he continueson thissubject: "As we mustacknowledge thisAndrogynal condition in Man, so can we not deny the like doth happen in beasts."
surgeon, recounts the case of one
Ambroise Pare, the great sixteenth-century
Germain Garnier,christenedMarie, who was servingin the retinueof the king.
Germain was a well-builtyoung man witha thick,red beard who until he was
But
fifteenhad lived and dressed as a girl,showing "no mark of masculinity."
then,in the heat of puberty,
chasinghisswine,whichweregoinginto
as he was in thefieldsand was ratherrobustly
a ditch,he wantedto crossoverit,and havingleaped,at that
a wheatfield,[and]finding
andthemalerodcametobe developedinhim,havingruptured
thegenitalia
verymoment
bywhichtheyhad been heldenclosed.
theligaments
Marie, soon to be renamed, hastened home to his/hermother,who consulted
physiciansand surgeons,all of whom assured her thather daughterhad become
her son. She took him to the bishop, who called an assemblythat decided that
indeed a transformationhad taken place. "The shepard received a man's name:
instead of Marie ... he was called Germain,and men's clothingwas given him."
(Some persistedin calling him Germain-Marieas a reminderthat he had once
been a girl.) Montaigne tells the same story,"attestedto by the most eminent
officialsof the town."There is still,he reports,in the area "a song commonlyin
the girls' mouths,in which theywarn one another not to stretchtheirlegs too
wide for fear of becoming males, like Marie Germaine."26
How were transformationslike Marie's possible? Pare offersthe following
account:
The reasonwhywomencan degenerateintomenis becausewomenhaveas muchhidden
withinthebodyas menhaveexposedoutside;leavingaside,only,thatwomendon'thave
is
so muchheat,nor theabilityto pushout whatbythecoldnessof theirtemperament
of childhoodwhich
Whereforeif withtime,the humidity
held bound to the interior.
preventedthe warmthfromdoingits fulldutybeingexhaled forthe mostpart,the
and active,thenit is notan unbelievable
warmthis renderedmorerobust,vehement,
shouldbe able to pushout
aided bysomeviolentmovement,
thingifthelatter,chiefly
whatwashiddenwithin.
The learned Caspar Bauhin explains more succinctlyhow "womenhave changed
into men,"namely,"The heat havingbeen rendered more vigorous,thruststhe
however,seem to workonlyup the great
testesoutward."Such transformations,
chain of being.
Biology
The Politicsof Reproductive
13
neverfindin anytrue-storythatanymaneverbecamea woman,because
We therefore
Naturetendsalwaystowardwhatis mostperfectand not,on thecontrary,
to performin
sucha waythatwhatis perfectshouldbecomeimperfect.27
Moreover,the Galenic structuresurvived the discoveryof a new, and one
would thinktotallyincompatible,homology:thatof the clitoristo the penis. This
organ firstwas described accuratelyby Readolus Colombus, Vesalius' successor
in the chair at Padua, and was called in various sixteenth-century
learned texts
the mentulamuliebris
(female penis or woman's yard, to use the English vernacular), columnella(column), crista(cock's comb), nympha(the term used by Galen
presumablyto referto thisorgan), dulcedoamorisor oestrum
veneris(taonde Venus
in French, referringto a frenzy,the oestrum
metaphoricallylinked to the taon,
i.e., "gadfly"or "oxfly").
Jane Sharp,whose 1671 midwifery
guide was lastreprinted
in 1728, could happilyargue at one point in her workthatthe vagina, "whichis
the passage forthe yard,resemblethit turned inward,'whilearguing two pages
later and withno apparent embarrassment,thatthe clitorisis the female penis.
"It willstand and fallas the yarddoth and makeswomen lustfuland takedelight
in copulation,"thus helping to assure the conditionsnecessaryfor conception.
The labia thus fitnicelyinto both systemsof analogies. They give women great
pleasure in copulationand, as the ancientssaid, defend the matrixfromoutward
violence,but theyare also, as John Pechey puts it, "thatwrinkledmembranous
production,whichclothesthe Clitorislikea foreskin."This leftopen thequestion
of whetherthe vagina or the clitoriswere to be thoughtof as the female penis,
thoughboth could be regarded as erectileorgans. One midwiferymanual notes
that "the action of the clitorisis like thatof the yard,whichis erection"and, on
the very same page, that "the action of the neck of the womb [the vagina and
cervix]is the same withthatof the yard; thatis to say,erection."Thus, untilthe
in holding that
veryend of the seventeenthcenturythere seemed no difficulty
women had an organ homologous, throughtopological inversion,to the penis
inside theirbodies, the vagina, and anotherone morphologicallyhomologous to
the penis, outside, the clitoris.28
Perhaps the continuedpower of the systemic,genitallyunfocusedaccount of
sex inheritedby Renaissance writersfrom antiquity-the view of the sexually
excitedbodyas a greatboilerheatingup to blowoffsteam-explains whymutually
of male and femalegenitalscaused so littleconsterincompatibleinterpretations
writersseem to have welcomed the idea that male
nation. Seventeenth-century
and female pleasure was located in essentiallythe same kind of organ. They
remain undisturbed by the clitoris'ssupposed dual function-licit pleasure in
heterosexual intercourseand illicitpleasure in "tribadism."They elaborate the
penis/clitoris
homologywithgreatprecision:the outwardend of the clitoris,one
physicianwrites,is like the glans of the penis, and like it "the seat of the greatest
pleasure in copulation in women."Accordingto another,the tip of the clitorisis,
14
THOMAS LAQUEUR
7. Jacobo
Pontormo,Alabardiere
(1529-30). The codpiece
in thispictureverymuch
resembles,contraryto
whatJacques Duval
suggests,"a largemouthedbottle... whose
mouthratherthan base
would be attachedto the
body."FrickMuseum,
New York.
FIGURE
therefore,also called the "amorisdulcedo."They would have found verycurious
Marie Bonaparte's contentionthat "clitoroidalwomen" sufferfromone of the
or protohomosexuality.
Rather,as Nicholas Culpepper writes
stagesof frigidity
withoutthe fanfareof controversy:"It is agreeable both to reason and authority,
thatthe biggerthe clitorisin a woman, the more lustfultheyare."29
The ancientaccountof bodies and sexual pleasureswas notultimatelydependentforitssupportsimplyon factsor supposed factsabout thebody,even though
it was articulatedin the concretelanguage of anatomyand physiology.Were it
otherwise,the systemof homologieswould have fallenwellbeforeitstimefrom
The recognitionof the clitoris
the sheer weightof readilyapparent difficulties.
is a case in point. The word clitoris
makes its firstknownEnglish appearance in
fromthe yard: "[It] is a small
1615 when Helkiah Crooke argues that it differs
body,not continuedat all withthe bladder,but placed in the heightof the lap.
The clitorishath no passage for the emissionof seed; but the virilememberis
long and hatha passage forseed." Yet,one can easilyset beside thisquite correct
listof factsequallyunexceptionalobservationssupportingthecontraryview.The
in Thomas Vicary'senormouslypopular
clitoris,forexample, is called the tentigo
The Anatomieof theBodyof Man (1586), a term borrowed from the eleventhThe Politicsof ReproductiveBiology
15
centuryArab medical writerAlbucasis meaning in Latin "a tensenessor lust; an
erection."It is,of course,erectileand erotogenous,and thusa "counterfeityard,"
if one chooses to emphasize these features.30
The homologicalviewsurvivednot onlythe potentialchallenge posed by the
anatomistColombus'sdiscoveryof theclitoris,but otherexpressionsof scepticism
as well.Crooke, in the textcitedabove, attacksthe Galenic homologiesin general,
pointingout that the scrotum of a man is thin-skinnedwhile the base of the
womb,itshomologue,is "a verythickeand tightmembrane."Again,thisis scarcely
a tellingpoint when compared withthe self-evidentfactthatthe womb carriesa
baby while the penis does not. Moreover,the topologicalinversionssuggestedby
Galen are, and were knownto be, manifestlyimplausibleif takenliterally.Recall
the mind-bendingmetaphorof the womb as a penis inside itself,like the eyes of
a mole, or perfectlyformedbut hidden within,like the eyes of other animals in
physician,proposes trying
utero.Jacques Duval, another seventeenth-century
Galen's "thoughtexperiment"and concludes quite rightlythatit does not work:
"If you imagine the vulva completelyturned inside out ... you will have to
envisage a large-mouthedbottlehanging froma woman, a bottlewhose mouth
ratherthan base would be attachedto the body and whichwould bear no resemblance to what you had set out to imagine."But in fact,a bottleshaped like the
vagina and womb hanging by its mouth does resemble a penis; indeed it is the
precise formof the codpiece (fig.7).31
The fact that criticismsof the Galenic model are not only self-evidentbut
were also sprinkled throughoutthe literatureis a reminder that the cultural
constructionof the female in relation to the male, while expressed in termsof
the body's concrete realities,was more deeply grounded in assumptionsabout
the nature of politicsand society.It was the abandonment of these assumptions
in the Enlightenmentthatmade the hierarchicallyordered systemof homologies
hopelesslyinappropriate.The new biology,withits search for fundamentaldifferencesbetween the sexes and betweentheirdesires, emerged at preciselythe
time when the foundationsof the old social order were irremediablyshaken.
Indeed, as Havelock Ellis discovered, "It seems to have been reserved for the
nineteenthcenturyto state that women are apt to be congenitallyincapable of
experiencing complete sexual satisfactionand are peculiarly liable to sexual
anaesthesia."But what happened to the old biology,to itscomplex of metaphors
and relations?In some respectsnothinghappened to it; or, in any case, nothing
happened veryfast.32
Politics and the Biology
of Sexual Difference
When in the 1740s the young Princess Maria Theresa was worried
because she did not immediatelybecome pregnant after her marriage to the
16
THOMAS LAQUEUR
futureHapsburg emperor,she asked her physicianwhat she ought to do. He is
said to have replied:
antecoitumesse titillandum
CeterumcenseovulvamSanctissimae
Majestatis
[Moreover
beforeintercourse].
I thinkthevulvaof Her MostHolyMajestyis to be titillated
The advise seems to have workedas she bore more than a dozen children.Similarly,Albrechtvon Haller, one of the giants of eighteenth-century
biological
science,stillpostulatedan erectionof both the externaland the internalfemale
reproductiveorgans duringintercourseand regarded woman'sorgasm as a sign
thatthe ovum has been ejaculated fromthe ovary.Althoughhe is well aware of
the existence of the sperm and the egg and of their respectiveorigins in the
testesand ovaries, and has no interestin the Galenic homologies, the sexually
aroused femalein his account bears a remarkableresemblanceto the male under
similarcircumstances.
Whena woman,invitedeitherbymorallove,or a lustfuldesireof pleasure,admitsthe
constriction
and attrition
oftheverysensible
embracesofthemale,itexcitesa convulsive
of theexternalopeningof thevagina,
and tenderparts;whichlie withinthecontiguity
afterthesamemanneras we observedbeforeof themale.
The clitorisgrows erect, the nymphae swell,venous blood flow is constricted,
and the whole externalgenitaliabecome turgidas the systemworks"to raise the
pleasure to the highestpitch."A smallquantityof lubricatingmucous is expelled
in thisprocess,but
theheightsof pleasure,causesa greaterconfluxof
thesameactionwhich,byincreasing
of thefemale,occasionsa muchmoreimportant
alterbloodto thewholegenitalsystem
ationin theinterior
parts.
The uterus becomes turgid with inflowingblood; likewisethe fallopian tubes
become erect "so as to apply the ruffleor fingeredopening of the tube to the
ovary."Then, at the momentof mutualorgasm,the "hot male semen" actingon
thisalready excited systemcauses the extremityof the tube to reach stillfurther
until,"surroundingand compressingtheovariumin ferventcongress,[it]presses
out and swallowsa mature ovum." The extrusionof the egg, Haller points out
finallyto his learned readers,who would probablyhave read thistorridaccount
in the originalLatin,
is notperformed
without
greatpleasureto themother,
norwithout
an exquisiteunrelatable sensationoftheinternalpartsofthetube,threatening
a swoonor fainting
fitto the
futuremother.33
The problemwithwhichthisessaybegan thus remains.Neitheradvances in
reproductivebiology nor anatomical discoveriesseem sufficientto explain the
dramaticrevaluationof the female orgasm thatoccurred in the late eighteenth
centuryand the even more dramatic reinterpretationof the female body in
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
17
triumphed
relationto thatof the male. Rather,a new model of incommensurability
over the old hierarchicalmodel in the wake of new politicalagendas. Writers
fromthe eighteenthcenturyonward soughtin the factsof biologya justification
for culturaland politicaldifferencesbetweenthe sexes thatwere crucial to the
arguments.Politicaltheoristsbeginarticulationof bothfeministand antifeminist
ning with Hobbes had argued that there is no basis in nature for any specific
sort of authority-of a king over his people, of slaveholder over slave, nor, it
followed,of man over woman. There seemed no reason why the universalistic
claims made for human libertyand equalityduring the Enlightenmentshould
exclude half of humanity.And, of course, revolution,the argument made in
blood thatmankindin all itssocial and culturalrelationscould be remade, engendered both a new feminismand a new fear of women. But feminismitself,and
indeed the more general claimsmade byand forwomen to public life-to write,
to vote,to legislate,to influence,to reform-was also predicatedon difference.
accessible concreteThus, women's bodies in their corporeal, scientifically
ness,in theverynatureof theirbones,nerves,and, mostimportant,reproductive
organs came to bear an enormous new weightof culturalmeaningin the Enlightenment. Argumentsabout the very existence of female sexual passion, about
women'sspecial capacityto controlwhat desires theydid have, and about their
moral nature generallywere all part of a new enterpriseseekingto discoverthe
thatdistinguishedmen fromwomen.
anatomicaland physiologicalcharacteristics
As the naturalbodyitselfbecame thegold standardof social discourse,thebodies
of women became the battlegroundfor redefiningthe most ancient,the most
intimate,the most fundamentalof human relations:thatof woman to man.
It is relativelyeasy to make thiscase in the contextof explicitresistanceto
the political,economic,or social claimsof women. Prominentmale leaders in the
French Revolution,for example, strenuouslyopposed increased female participation in public lifeon the grounds thatwomen'sphysicalnature,radicallydistinguishedfromthatof men and representedmost powerfullyin the organs of
reproduction,made them unfitfor public life and bettersuited to the private
sphere. Susanna Barrows maintainsthatfearsborn of the Paris Commune and
of the new politicalpossibilitiesopened up by the Third Republic generated an
extraordinarilyelaborate physicalanthropologyof sexual differenceto justify
resistanceto change. In the Britishcontext the rise of the women's suffrage
movementin the 1870s eliciteda similarresponse. Tocqueville argues thatin the
United States democracy had destroyedthe old basis for patriarchalauthority
and that consequentlyit was necessaryto trace anew and with great precision
"twoclearlydistinctlines of action forthe two sexes."In short,whereverboundaries were threatenedargumentsforfundamentalsexual differenceswere shoved
into the breach.34
of the body were more than simplyways of reestabBut reinterpretations
an
lishinghierarchyin age when itsmetaphysicalfoundationswerebeing rapidly
18
THOMAS LAQUEUR
effaced. Liberalismpostulatesa body that,if not sexless, is neverthelessundifferentiatedin its desires,interests,or capacityto reason. In strikingcontrastto
the old teleologyof the body as male, liberal theorybegins witha neuter body,
sexed butwithoutgender,and of no consequence to culturaldiscourse.The body
is regarded simplyas the bearer of the rationalsubject,which itselfconstitutes
the person. The problem forthistheorythen is how to derive the real world of
male dominion of women, of sexual passion and jealousy, of the sexual division
of labor and cultural practices generally from an original state of genderless
bodies. The dilemma, at least for theoristsinterestedin the subordinationof
of the
women, is resolved by grounding the social and culturaldifferentiation
that liberal theoryitselfhelped bring
sexes in a biologyof incommensurability
into being. A novel construal of nature comes to serve as the foundation of
otherwiseindefensiblesocial practices.
For women, of course, the problem is even more pressing.The neuter language of liberalismleaves them,as Jean Elshtain recentlyargues, withouttheir
own voice. But more generallytheclaimof equalityof rightsbased on an essential
identityof the male and female,body and spirit,robs women both of the reality
of theirsocialexperienceand of theground on whichto takepoliticaland cultural
stands. If women are indeed simplya version of men, as the old model would
have had it, then whatjustifieswomen writing,or acting in public, or making
any other claims for themselvesas women? Thus feminism,too-or at least
historicalversions of feminisms-depends upon and generates a biology of
in place of the teleologicallymale interpretationof bodies
incommensurability
on the basis of whicha feministstance is impossible.35
Rousseau's essentiallyantifeminist
account is perhaps the most theoretically
elaborated of the liberal theoriesof bodies and pleasures, but it is onlyone of a
greatmanyexamples of how deeply a new biologyis implicatedin culturalreconstruction.In the stateof nature,as he imagined it in the firstpart of A Discourse
onInequality,
thereis no social intercoursebetweenthe sexes, no divisionof labor
in the rearing of young, and, in a strictsense, no desire. There is, of course,
brute physicalattractionbetweensexes, but it is devoid of what he calls "moral
love,"which"shapes thisdesire and fixesit exclusivelyon one particularobject,
or at least gives the desire for thischosen object a greaterdegree of energy."In
this world of innocence there is no jealousy or rivalry,no marriage, no taste
for this or that woman; to men in the state of nature "every woman is good."
Rousseau is remarkablyconcrete in specifyingthe reproductivephysiologyof
women thatmust,in his view,underlie thiscondition.Hobbes, he argues, erred
in using the struggleof male animals for access to females as evidence for the
naturalcombativenessof the primitivehuman state.True, he concedes, there is
bittercompetitionamong beasts forthe opportunityto mate,but thisis because
for much of the year females refuse the male advance. Suppose theywere to
make themselvesavailable only two monthsout of every twelve:"It is as if the
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
19
But women, he points
population of females had been reduced by five-sixth."
out, have no such periods of abstinenceand are thus not in shortsupply:
No-onehad everobserved,evenamongsavages,femaleshavinglikethoseofotherspecies
amongseveralofsuchanimals,thewhole
fixedperiodsofheatand exclusion.Moreover,
momentofuniversal
speciesgoesin heatat thesametime,so thattherecomesa terrible
passion,a momentthatdoesnotoccurinthehumanspecies,whereloveisneverseasonal.
Reproductivephysiologyand thenatureof themenstrualcyclebear an enormous
weighthere; the stateof nature is in large measure conceptualizedas dependent
on the supposed biologicaldifferencesbetweenwomen and beasts.36
stateof desire?Rousseau givesan account
But whathappened to thisprimitive
of the geographicalspread of the human race, of the riseof the divisionof labor,
of how in developing a dominion over animals man "asserted the priorityof his
species, and so prepared himselffromafar to claim priorityfor himselfas an
individual."But theindividuationof desire,thecreationof whathe calls the moral
part of love ("an artificialsentiment"),and the birth of imagination ("which
causes such havoc amongst us") are construed as the creation of women and,
as theproductof femalemodesty.The Discoursepresentsthismodesty
specifically,
as volitional,as instrumental:"[It is] cultivatedbywomen withsuch skilland care
in order to establishtheirempire over men, and so make dominantthe sex that
ought to obey."But in Emilemodestyis naturalized: "While abandoning women
to unlimiteddesires, He [the Supreme Being] joins modestyto these desires in
order to constrainthem."And somewhatlater in a note Rousseau adds: "The
timidityof women is another instinctof nature against the double risktheyrun
during their pregnancy."Indeed, throughoutEmile he argues that natural differencesbetweenthe sexes are representedand amplifiedin the formof moral
differencesthatsocietyerases only at its peril.37
Book 5 begins withthe famous account of sexual differenceand sameness.
"In everythingnot connected with sex, woman is man.... In everythingconnectedwithsex, woman and man are in everyrespectrelatedbut in everyrespect
different."
But, of course, a greatdeal about women is connectedwithsex: "The
male is male only at certain moments.The female is female her whole life....
it turnsout, is everyEverythingconstantlyrecallsher sex to her.""Everything,"
thingabout reproductivebiology:bearingyoung,suckling,nurturing,and so on.
Indeed the chapter becomes a catalogue of physical and consequentlymoral
differencesbetweenthe sexes; the former,as Rousseau says,"lead us unawares
to the latter."Thus, "a perfectwoman and a perfectman ought not to resemble
each other in mind any more than in looks." From the differencesin each sex's
contributionto theirunion it followsthat"one ought to be activeand strong,the
other passive and weak.""One mustnecessarilywill and be able; it sufficesthat
the other put up littleresistance."The problem withPlato, Rousseau argues, is
that he excludes "familiesfromhis regime and no longer knowingwhat to do
20
THOMAS LAQUEUR
men."It is preciselythissameness
tomakethem
withwomen,he foundhimselfforced
of "the exercises" Plato gives men and women, this "civil promiscuitywhich
throughoutconfounded the two sexes in the same employmentsand the same
labors and whichcannot fail to engender the most intolerableabuses,"to which
Rousseau objects. But what are these objectionableabuses?
to an artificial
of nature,sacrificed
sentiments
of thesweetest
I speakof thatsubversion
whichcan onlybe maintained
bythem-as thoughtherewereno need fora
sentiment
ties;as thoughtheloveofone'snearestwere
naturalbaseon whichto formconventional
nottheprincipleof theloveone owesthestate;as thoughitwerenotbymeansof the
whichis the familythatthe heartattachesitselfto the largeone; as
smallfatherland
thoughit werenotthegood son,thegood husband,and thegood father[all malesof
course]whomakethegood citizen.
Finally,returningto the ostensiblesubjectof the book, Rousseau concludes that
"once it is demonstratedthat man and woman are not and ought not to be
constitutedin the same way in eithertheircharacteror temperament,it follows
thattheyought not to have the same education."38
For Rousseau a great deal depends, it turnsout, on the natural modestyof
women and on theirrole, distinctfromthe male's, in reproducingthe species.
Indeed, all of civilizationseems to have arisen in consequence of the secular fall
frominnocence when the firstwoman made herselftemporarilyunavailable to
the firstman. But Rousseau is simplypushing harder on a set of connections
thatare commonplace in the Enlightenment-although by no means alwaysso
in theirinterpretation.In his articleon "jouissance,"Diderot locates
antifeminist
the creation of desire, of marriage and the familyif not of love itself,at the
momentwomenfirstcame to withholdthemselvesfromjust any man and chose
instead one man in particular,
whensheappearedtotakecareinchoosingbetween
whenwomenbeganto discriminate,
severalmenupon whompassioncastherglances... . Then,whentheveilsthatmodesty
thepowerto disposeof
castoverthecharmsofwomenallowedan inflamedimagination
themat will,the mostdelicateillusionscompetedwiththe mostexquisiteof sensesto
to
exaggeratethehappinessof themoment... twoheartslostin lovevowedthemselves
oaths.39
and heavenheardthefirstindiscreet
eachotherforever,
Most prominentlyamong the figuresof the ScottishEnlightenment,John
Millar argues for the criticalrole of women and theirvirtuesin the progressof
civilization.Far frombeing lesser men, theyare treated in his OriginoftheDistinctions
ofRanksas botha moral barometerand as an activeagent in theimprovement of society.Millar's case begins with the claim that sexual relations,being
most susceptible"to the peculiar circumstancesin which they are placed and
most liable to be influencedby the power of habit and education,"are the most
reliable guide to the characterof a society.In barbarous societies,for example,
women accompanied men to war and were scarcelydifferentfrom them; in
peaceful societiesthathad progressed in the arts,a woman's "rank and station"
Biology
The Politicsof Reproductive
21
were dictatedby her special talentsforrearingand maintainingchildrenand by
her "peculiar delicacyand sensibility,"
whetherthese derived fromher "original
constitution"or her role in life. Thus civilizationin Millar'saccount leads to an
increasingdifferentiation
of male and female social roles; thisgreaterdifferentiationof roles-and specificallywhat he takesto be improvementsin the lot of
women-are signs of moral progress. But women themselvesin more civilized
societiesare also the engines of furtheradvance. "In such a state,the pleasures
whichnature has graftedupon love betweenthe sexes, become the source of an
elegant correspondence, and are likelyto have a general influence upon the
commerce of society."In this,the higheststate-he is thinkingof French salon
societyand of thefemmesavant[womenare] led to cultivatethosetalentswhichare adaptedto the intercourse
of the
world,and to distinguish
themselves
by politeaccomplishments
thattendto heighten
theirpersonalattractions,
and to excitethosepeculiarsentiments
and passionsof which
theyare thenaturalobjects.
Thus, desire among civilizedmen,and indeed modern civilization,is inextricably
bound up in Millar'smoral historywithfeminineaccomplishment.40
It is hardlysurprisingin thecontextof Enlightenmentthoughtthatthemoral
and physicaldifferentiation
of women frommen is also criticalto the political
discourseof women writers-fromAnna Wheeler and earlysocialistsat one end
of the politicalspectrumthroughthe radical liberalismof Mary Wollstonecraft
to the domestic ideology of Hannah More and Sarah Ellis. For Wheeler and
others,as Barbara Taylorargues, the denial or devaluation of female passion is
to some degree part of a more general devaluationof passion. Reason, theydare
to hope, would be triumphantover the flesh.Wheelerand earlyutopian socialists
are, afterall, writingout of the traditionthatproduced WilliamGodwin'sargument that civilizationwould ultimatelyeliminatedestructivepassions, that the
body finallywould be curbed by Enlightenmentand be subsumed under the
captaincyof the mind. It is againstthisview,as CatherineGallagher argues, that
Thomas Malthus rehabilitatesthe body and insistsupon the absolute irreducibilityof itsdemands, especiallyits sexual demands.4'
But the nature of female passion and of the female body is unresolved in
Wheeler'swork.Her book,An AppealofOne-HalftheHumanRace, Women,
Against
thePretensions
oftheOtherHalf, Men, To RetainThemin Politicaland Thencein Civil
and Domestic
Slavery,
jointlywrittenwithWilliamThompson, is a sustainedattack
on James Mill's argument that the interestsof women and children are subsumed-i.e., are virtuallyrepresentedby-the interestsof husbands and fathers.
This "moral miracle,"as theycall it,would be crediblewere Mill rightin holding
that women are protected against abuse because men "will act in a kind way
towardwomenin order to procurefromher thosegratifications,
thezestof which
depends on the kindlyinclinationsof one partyyieldingthem."Since women are
22
THOMAS LAQUEUR
themselvesfree fromsexual desire, theyare in an excellentbargainingposition
vis 'a vis men, who are decidedly not liberatedfromtheirbodies. Nonsense, say
Wheeler and Thompson. If women are "likethe Greek Asphasia,"cold and sexless, the argumentmighthave force. But not only are they,like men, sexed and
desirousbut,in the currentstateof affairs,"Womanis more the slave of man for
gratificationof her desires than man is to woman."The double standard allows
men to seek gratificationoutside of marriagebut forbidsit to women.42
Both Wheeler and Thompson's analysisof the sorryshape of the male world
and theirneed to claim some politicalground forwomen lead themdramatically
to change theiremphasis and make almostthe opposite case as well. In a chapter
entitled"Moral Aptitude for Legislation More Probable in Women than Men,"
woman is representednot as equally passionateas man but as more moral,more
empathetic,and generallybetterable to act in accord withthe common interest
Whether women had these traitsin some
and not merelyout of self-interest.
hypotheticalstateof natureor acquired themthrougha kind of moral Lamarckianism is unclear,but in the modern world theydemonstratea greatersusceptibilityto pain and pleasure, a more powerfuldesire to promote the happiness
of others,and a more developed "moral aptitude" than men. These, Wheeler
and Thompson argue, are the mostimportantqualitiesin a legislator.It is, moreto oppressothersthrough
and her inability
over,preciselywomen'sinferiorstrength
superior force as men are wont to do thatwill ensure that theyrule fairlyand
justly.Moreover,women as mothersand as the weakersex need a worldat peace
more likelyto legfar more than men, and theywould thus be constitutionally
islatewaysto obtainit.Wheelerand Thompson's argumentsare more poignantly
put than thissummarysuggests,but theycontributeto a constructionof woman
not verydifferentfromthatof the domesticideologists.Whetherthroughinheras manyeighteenthentnature-because theyhave moresensitivenervoussystems,
women
doctorsheld-or throughcenturiesof suffering,
and nineteenth-century
are construedas less passionate and hence morallymore adept than men.43
is caughtin muchthesame dilemma.
As a radical liberal,MaryWollstonecraft
On the one hand, liberal theorypushes her to declare thatthe neutral,rational
subject has in essence no sex. On the other hand, she was in her own life only
too aware of the power,indeed the destructiveviolence,of sexual passion. Moreover she seems to have held, withRousseau, thatcivilizationincreasesdesire and
that "people of sense and reflectionare most apt to have violentand constant
passions and to be preyed on by them."Finally,as Zillah Eisensteinargues, for
to subscribeto the notion of the subject as genderless would be
Wollstonecraft
to deny what to her were manifestlypresent,the particularqualitiesof women's
experiences.44
Her solutionwas to take for women the moral high ground. Blessed witha
unique susceptibility"of the attached affections,"women's special role in the
world is to civilize men and raise up children to virtue. In the FemaleReader,
Biology
The Politicsof Reproductive
23
Wollstonecraft
layson a heavydose of religion,whichshe sayswillbe "the solace
and support"of her readerswhen theyfindthemselves,as theyoftenwill,"amidst
thescenes of silentunobserveddistress.""If you wishto be loved byyourrelations
and friends,"she counsels withoutdetectableirony,"prove thatyou can love them
by governingyour temper."Good humor,cheerfulgaity,and the like are not to
shareswith
be learned in a day.Indeed, as Barbara Taylorargues, Wollstonecraft
earlysocialistfeministsa commitmentto "passionlessness,"whetherout of some
sense of its political possibilities,an acute awareness of passion's dangers, or a
beliefin the special undesiringqualities of the female body.45
argumentsforthe differencesbetweenthe sexes
In any case, Wollstonecraft's
begin to sound verymuchlikeSarah Ellis's,howeverprofoundthepoliticalchasm
thatdivided the two women. In WivesofEngland,one of the canonical worksof
domestic ideology,Ellis argues that from the wife and mother,"as head of a
familyand mistressof a household,branchoffin everydirectiontrainsof thought,
and tones of feeling,operating upon those more immediatelyaround her,but
by no means ceasing there ... extendingoutwards in the same manner,to the
end of all things."This influenceis born of the heightened moral sensibilities
withwhich the female organismseems blessed. Though women are to have no
role in the world of mundane politics,theyare to confrontissues
theabolitionof warin general,crueltyto animals,thepunof slavery,
suchas extinction
and manymore,on which,neitherto know,norto feel,is
ofdeath,temperance,
ishment
almostequallydisgraceful.
In short,women'spoliticsmustbe the politicsof morality.46
All of thisis not intendedas an argumentthatwritersfromHobbes, through
Sade and Rousseau, and on to Ellis were all engaged in preciselythe same theoreticalor politicalundertaking.Rather,I have soughtto displaythe wide range
of the
of apparentlyunrelated politicalagendas in which a new differentiation
sexes occupied a criticalplace. Desire was given a history,and the female body
of European society
distinguishedfromthemale's,as theseismictransformations
betweenthe seventeenthand the nineteenthcenturiesput unbearable pressure
on old viewsof the body and its pleasures. A biologyof hierarchygrounded in
a metaphysicallyprior "great chain of being" gave way to a biology of incommensurabilityin which the relationshipof men to women, like thatof apples to
oranges, was not given as one of equalityor inequalitybut ratheras a difference
whose meaning required interpretationand struggle.
Reproductive Biology and
the Cultural Reconstructionof Women
I want now to turn frompoliticaland moral theoryto the sciencesof
reproductivebiology,to the seeminglyunpromisingdomain of ovarian and uter24
THOMAS LAQUEUR
Aldous
ine histologyand the clinicalobservationof menstruationand fertility.
Huxley'sremarkthat"the sciencesof lifecan confirmthe intuitionsof the artist,
can deepen his insightsand extend the range of his vision"could as well be said
of thosewho produced whathe takesto be a priorand culturallypure knowledge.
The dryand seeminglyobjectivefindingsof thelaboratoryand theclinicbecome,
withinthe disciplinespracticedthere,the stuffof art,of new representationsof
the female as a creature profoundlydifferentfrom the male. And this "art,"
clothed in the prestigeof natural science,becomes in turn the specie, the hard
currencyof social discourse.47
But I do not wantto give the impressionthatreproductivebiologyor clinical
gynecologyare simplyexercisesin ideology.I willthereforebegin by describing
a criticallyimportantdiscoveryof the earlynineteenthcentury:thatsome mammals-nineteenth-centuryresearchersbelieved all mammals-ovulate spontaneously during regularlyrecurring periods of heat, independentlyof intercourse,conception,pleasure, or any othersubjectivephenomena. Untilthe early
1840s the question of when and under whatconditionsovulationtook place was
as obscure as it had been in 1672 when de Graaf argued thatwhat he called the
female testicleactuallyproduced eggs. In the firstplace no one had observed a
mammalian egg until 1827, when Karl Ernst von Baer, in a brilliantpiece of
demonstratedits existence,firstin the ovarian follicleand
research,definitively
subsequentlyin the fallopian tubes of a dog. Until then, direct evidence for
ovulationwas lacking.At the timeof his great discovery,von Baer stillbelieved
thatan animal ovulated onlywhen sexuallystimulated;he thereforeused a bitch
that he knew to have quite recentlymated. This was only reasonable, since the
researchesof the EnglishmenWilliamCruickshankand
late eighteenth-century
von Baer relied,had shownthatrabbitsdo notgenerally
which
Haighton,
on
John
ovulatewithoutintercourse;indeed theyhad claimed thatovulationis dependent
on conception.48
In humans, the evidence for spontaneous ovulation was, in the early nineteenthcentury,highlyambiguous. Numerous anecdotal clinical reports,based
on increasinglyavailable autopsymaterial,claimed thatcicatrices-scars remaining aftera wound, sore, or ulcer has healed-can be demonstratedon ovaries
of virginsand that these are leftthere by the release of an ovum and, more to
the point,by the release of numerousova correspondingto the numberof menstrualcyclesthatthe woman had had. But what,ifanything,did thisprove? Very
little.Johann FriederichBlumenbach, professorof medicine at Gottingenand
one of the mostdistinguishedphysiciansof Europe, forexample,had been among
the firstto noticeby the late eighteenthcenturythatovarian folliclesburstwithout the presence of semen or even "withoutany commerce withthe male." But
he concluded fromthesecases onlythat,on occasion, "venerealardour alone ...
could produce, among the othergreatchanges in the sexual organs,the enlargementof the vesicles"and even theirrupture.
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
25
in thepresentstateof knowledgeto makeup mymind;
On thispointI findit difficult
theovarium,
evidentthat,althoughsemenhas no sharein bursting
butI thinkitpretty
statesof the
the
lascivious
and
brutes
of
heat
the
during
occurs
that
thehighexcitement
to effectthe dischargeof the ova. It is perhaps
frequently
humanvirginis sufficient
impossibleotherwiseto explainthe factthatova are so commonlyexpelledfromthe
or casuallybroughtabout.
is arbitrarily
a connection
whenever
ovaria,and impregnated
Johannes Muller,professorof physiologyat Berlin,a leading proponent of biological reductionism,concludes thatscars on the ovaries of virginsmark anomalous ovulations.Thus, while the exact forcescausing the egg to be thrustinto
the fallopian tube remained unknown,the evidence until the 1840s was by no
means sufficientto establishthe normal occurrenceof ovulationindependentof
coition,venereal arousal, or even conception.49
The criticalexperimentestablishingspontaneous ovulation in dogs and by
extensionother mammalswas elegantlysimple. In the novelisticstylethatcharscientificreporting,Theodor L. W
acterizesso much early nineteenth-century
Bischofftellshis reader thaton 18 and 19 December 1843 he noted thata large
bitch in his possession had begun to go into heat. On the 19th he allowed her
contact with a male dog, but she refused its attentions.He kept her securely
imprisonedfortwomore days and thenbroughton the male dog again; thistime
she was interestedbut theanimalswereseparated beforecoitioncould takeplace.
At ten o'clock twodays later,i.e., on the morningof the 23rd, he cut out her left
ovaryand fallopiantubes and carefullyclosed the wound. The Graafian follicles
in the excised ovarywere swollenbut had not yetburst.Five days later he killed
the dog and found in the remainingovary four developing corpus lutei filled
withserum; carefulopening of the tubes revealed four eggs. He concludes:
thewholeprocess
withanymorethoroughness
I do notthinkitis possibletodemonstrate
of coition,than
of the ripeningand expulsionof theeggs duringheat,independently
on one and thesameanimal.
throughthisdual observation
And of course if ovulation occurs independentlyof coition it must also occur
independentlyof fecundation. Indeed, F. A. Pouchet considered the later discovery in itselfso major that he formulatedit as his "fifth"and criticallaw of
reproductivebiology,"le point capital" of his 476-page magnumopus.The historian Michelet was enraptured and hailed Pouchet for having formulatedthe
entirescienceof reproductivebiologyin a definitiveworkof genius,a monument
of daring grandeur.50
Granted that dogs and pigs go into heat and during this period ovulate
whethertheymate or not, what evidence was there thatwomen'sbodies behave
in a similarmanner?No one prior to the early twentiethcenturyhad claimed to
have seen a human egg outside the ovary.Bischoffadmittedthat,in the absence
of such a discovery,therewas no directproof for the extensionof his theoryto
women, but he was sure thatan egg would be found soon enough. In 1881, V.
26
THOMAS LAQUEUR
Hensen, professorof physiologyat Kiel, notes in L. Hermann's standardHandthat except for two probablyspurious reports,human eggs
buchderPhysiologie
thoughhe adds, in a curiouslyoptimisticfootnote,that
stilleluded investigators,
"itcan not be so difficultto finda [human] egg in the [fallopian]tubes."In fact,
an unfertilizedegg was not reported until 1930, and then in the contextof an
view relating heat to menstruation.
argument against the nineteenth-century
Thus, the crucial experimentallink-the discoveryof the egg-between menstruationon the one hand and the morphologyof the ovary on the other was
lackingin humans. Investigatorscould onlynote in thecases thatcame theirway
thatwomen were menstruatingor that theywere at some known point in their
menstrualcyclesand thenattemptto correlatetheseobservationswiththe structuralcharacteristicsof the ovaryremoved in surgeryor autopsy.They lacked as
a biological triangulationpoint the actuai product of the ovary,and the results
Evidence for the timingof ovuof theirstudies were manifestlyunsatisfactory.
lation based on pregnancyfroma single coition whose occurrence in the menstrualcyclewas supposedlyknownwas likewiseincreasinglyambiguous. The role
underof the ovaries in the reproductivecycleof mammalswas veryimperfectly
stood until the publicationof a series of papers beginning in 1900, while the
hormonalcontrolof ovulationbytheovaryand the pituitaryremained unknown
untilthe 1930s.51
But despite the paucityof evidence in humans,the discoveryof spontaneous
ovulationin dogs and othermammalswas of enormous importancein thehistory
of representatingwomen's bodies. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth
century,the ovaries came to be regarded as largelyautonomous controlcenters
of reproductionin the female animal, and in humans theywere thoughtto be
itself."Proptersolum ovarium mulierest id quod est,.
the essence of femininity
as the French physicianAchillesChereau puts it; it is only because of the ovary
thatwoman is what she is. Moreover,menstruationin women came to be interpreted as the precise equivalentof the heat in animals,markingthe only period
during whichwomen are normallyfertile.Widelycited as Pouchet'seighthlaw,
the view was that"the menstrualflowin women corresponds to the phenomena
desamours]in a variety
of excitementwhichmanifestsitselfduringtherut[l'gpoque
of creatures and especially in mammals."The American physician Augustus
analogy less deliGardner drew out the implicationsof the menstruation/rut
cately:"The bitchin heat has the genitalstumifiedand reddened, and a bloody
discharge. The human female has nearly the same." "The menstrualperiod in
women,"announces theLancetin 1843, "bears a strictphysiologicalresemblance"
to the heat of "brutes."52
With these interpretationsof spontaneous ovulation the old physiologyof
dead. The
pleasure and the old anatomyof sexual homologies were definitively
ovary,whose distinctionfromthe male testeshad onlybeen recognizeda century
earlier,became thedrivingforceof thewhole femaleeconomy,withmenstruation
Biology
The Politicsof Reproductive
27
the outwardsign of itsawesome power.As the distinguishedBritishgynecologist
Mathews Duncan put it, in an image too rich to be fullyteased apart here:
"Menstruationis likethe red flagoutside an auctionsale; itshows thatsomething
is going on inside." And that something,as will become clear, was not a pretty sight; the social characteristicsof women seemed writ in blood and gore.
The silentworkingsof a tinyorgan weighingon the average seven grams in humans, some two to four centimeterslong, and the swellingand subsequent ruptureof the follicleswithinit,came to representsynecdochicallywhat it was to be
a woman.53
But whywould anyone believe that menstruationwas in women what heat
was in the dog? The answer lies outside the bounds of science in a wide range
of culturaldemands on the enterpriseof interpretation.Consider,forexample,
the answer Bischoffhimselfoffers:the equivalence of menstruationand heat is
simplycommon sense. If one accepts spontaneous ovulation during periods of
heat in mammalsgenerally,it "suggestsitself."In any case thereis much indirect
evidence for the equation of heat and menstruation,in addition to the authority
of the "mostinsightfulphysiciansand naturalists"fromthe earliesttimeson.
In factthe analogy was far fromevident,and most of those fromantiquity
to Bischoff'sday who gave theirviewson the subjectrepudiated it. Haller's Physiologyis quite expliciton the point that,while there are "some animals, who, at
the timeof theirvenal copulation,distilblood fromtheirgenitals,"menstruation
is peculiar "to the fair sex [of] the human species." Moreover, in contrast to
bleeding in animals, menstruationfor Haller is quite independent of the periodicityof sexual desire. Intercourse neither increases nor decreases the menstrual flux; women deny a heightened "desire of venery"during theirperiods
and report ratherbeing "affectedby pain and languor."Finally,sexual pleasure
is localized "in the entranceof the pudendum" and not in the uterus,fromwhich
the menses flow.Blumenbach, among the mostwidelyreprintedand translated
textsof the next generation,joins Plinyin arguing thatonlywomen menstruate,
thoughcautioninghis readers thatthe investigationof the "periodical nature of
this hemorrhage is so difficultthat we can obtain nothingbeyond probability"
and should thus be careful not to offermere conjectureas fact.54
What scant factsthere were seemed more anthropologicalthan biological,
and these came under severe attack. In a masterfulreviewof the literatureup
to 1843, Robert Remak, professorof neurologyat Posen, argues thateven ifone
grantsthat,as do healthywomen,all or some mammalshave regularlyrecurring
periods of bleedings and that the bleeding in animals originatesin the uterus
and not fromthe turgescentexternal genitalia-neither concession being warranted by the evidence-there remains "one furthercircumstanceon which to
ground the most radical differencebetween menstruationand the periodical
flowof blood fromthe genitalsof animals":
28
THOMAS LAQUEUR
theperiodofthemostheightIn femaleanimalsthebleedingaccompaniesheat[brunst],
ened sexualdrive,theonlytimethefemalewillallowthemaleaccess,and theonlytime
at all
in womenthemenstrual
periodis scarcely
she willconceive.Quiteto thecontrary,
limitedtoitsduration;indeeda kind
connectedtoincreasedsexualdesirenoris fecundity
keepsmenawayfromwomenduringthe menses-some savagepeople like
of instinct
womenin specialquarterscertainAfricanand Americantribesisolatemenstruating
periodwhen
and experienceshowsthatthereis no timeduringthe inter-menstrual
thattheanimalheatis totallymissingin
womencan notconceive.It followstherefore
in animalsis one of the featuresthat
women.... Indeed theabsenceof menstruation
manfromthebeasts.
distinguish
JohannesMuller,in his 1843 textbook,comes to similarconclusions.He modestly
points out that neitherthe purposes nor the causes of the periodical returnof
in the human
themensesare known.Quite probably,however,itexiststo "prevent
thatoccurs in animals.
femalethe periodical returnof sexual excitation[brunst]"
investigators
Common sense, in short,does not explain whynineteenth-century
would want to view the reproductivecycle of women as preciselyequivalent to
thatof other animals.55
Professionalpoliticsand theimperativesof a particularphilosophyof science
offerperhaps part of an answer.As Jean Borie points out, Pouchet's is "une
gynaecologiemilitante";the same can be said of thatof many of his colleagues,
especiallyhis French ones. Their missionwas to free women's bodies fromthe
stigma of clerical prejudice and centuries of popular superstitionand, in the
process,to substitutethephysicianforthepriestas themoralpreceptorof society.
Sexualitywould shiftfromthe realmsof religionto those of science triumphant.
At the heart of the matterlay the faiththat reproduction,like nature's other
mysteries,was in essence susceptibleto rationalanalysis.Thus, in the absence of
specific evidence of human ovulation, "logic" for Pouchet would dictate that
fromthe bitch,sow,or female rabbit,who in
women functionedno differently
turnfollowedthe same fundamentallaws as mollusks,insects,fishes,or reptiles.
experimentally
He explicitlycalls his readers' attentionto the pristinelyscientific,
grounded, characterof his work and its avoidance of metaphysical,social, and
religiousconcerns.Thus, therewereconsiderableprofessionaland philosophical
attractionsto the position that menstruationwas like heat and thata sovereign
organ, the ovary,ruled over the reproductiveprocesses thatmade women what
theywere.56
But this radical naturalization,this reduction of women to the organ that
themfrommen, was not in itselfa claim fortheirassociationwith
differentiates
natureas againstcultureand civilization.The argumentforthe equation of heat
and menstruationcould be just as easilyused to prove women'smoral elevation
as to prove the opposite. Indeed the veryfactthatwomen, on account of their
recurrentcycles of rut, were more bound to theirbodies than were men was
evidence on some accounts for theirsuperior capacityto transcendthe brutish
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
29
state.Arguingagainst those who held thatthe lack of animal-likelust or behavioral disturbancesin women belied the new theoryof spontaneous ovulation,
one noted authoritydrawsattentionto "theinfluenceexercisedby moral culture
Observe "the marvellouspower exeron the feelingsand passions of humanity."
cised bycivilizationon the mind of her who, fromher social position,is rendered
the charm of man'sexistence:'Is ita wonder thatthecreaturewho can subjugate
her own feelings,simulategood cheer when her heart is rent in agony,and in
general give herselfup to the good of the communitycan exercise control"the
more energetically,
at a time[menstruation]
whenshe is taughtthata straythought
of desire would be impurity,and its fruitionpollution."But then, as if to back
offfromthismodel of woman as being simultaneouslya periodicallyexcitedtime
bomb of sexualityand a model for the power of civilizationto keep it from
exploding, G. F Girdwood concludes that "to aid her in her duty,nature has
wiselyprovided her withthe sexual appetite slightlydeveloped."57
The interpretiveindigestionof this passage, its sheer turningin on itself,
bears witnessto the extraordinarycultural burden that the physicalnature of
women-the menstrualcycleand the functionsof the ovaries-came to bear in
the nineteenthcentury.Whateverone thoughtabout women and theirrightful
place in the world could, it seemed, be mapped onto theirbodies, whichin turn
came to be interpretedanew in thelightof theseculturaldemands. The construal
of the menstrualcycle dominant fromthe 1840s to the early twentiethcentury
rather neatlyintegratesa particularset of discoveriesinto a biology of incomMenstruation,withits attendantaberrations,became a uniquely
mensurability.
femaleprocess.Moreover,the analogynow assumed between
and distinguishingly
heat and menstruationallowed evidence hithertoforeused against the equivalence of the reproductivecycles of women and brutes to be reinterpretedto
mean the opposite. Behavior hidden in women, just as ovulation is hidden,
could be made manifestby associating it with the more transparentbehavior
of animals.
Thus, for example, the author of one of the most massive compilationsof
in thenineteenthcenturycould argue thatthequite mad behavior
moralphysiology
of dogs and cats duringheat, theirflyingto satisfythe "instinctwhichdominates
all else,"leaping around an apartmentand lungingat windows,repeated "so to
ifthe venereal urge were not satisfied,is but a more manifest
speak indefinitely"
versionof whatthehuman femaletoo experiences.Since bothwomen and brutes
are thoughtto be subject to the same "orgasme de l'ovulation,"and since the
burstingof theovarian folliclewas markedby the same deluge of nervousexcitement and bleeding in both, whateverdiscomfortadolescent girlsmightfeel at
or tension a woman might
the onset of menstruationand whateverirritability
experience during her menses could be magnifiedthrough the metaphors of
this account and reinterpretedas but the tip of a physiologicalvolcano. Menstruation,in short,was a minimallydisguised heat. Women would behave like
30
THOMAS LAQUEUR
Language, moreover,adjusted
bruteswereit not forthe thinveneerof civilization.
rut,heat-words hithto the new science. The whole culturalbaggage of brunst,
derived fromthe
ertoforeapplied only to animals-and the neologism estrous,
"gadfly,"meaning a kind of frenzyand introducedto describe a
Latin oestrum,
process common to all mammals,was subtlyor not so subtlyladen on the bodies
of women.58
Menstrualbleeding thus become the sign of a periodicallyswellingand ultimatelyexploding ovarian folliclewhose behavioralmanifestationis an "estrous,"
"brunst,"or "rut."But what one saw on the outside was only part of the story;
of theuterinemucosaand of theovaryrevealedmuchmore.Described
thehistology
in seeminglyneutralscientificlanguage, the cells of the endometriumor corpus
luteum became re-presentations,rediscriptionsof the social theory of sexual
and reader in zoolWalterHeape, the militantantisuffragist
incommensurability.
forexample, is absolutelyclear on what he thinks
ogy at Cambridge University,
of the female in relation to the male body. Though some of the differences
subtle,hidden" and others"glaringand
betweenmen and women are "infinitely
is that
he
of
the
truth
argues,
matter,
forceful,"the
different
butfunctionally
fundamentally
is notonlystructurally
system
thereproductive
oforgansare affected
intheMaleand theFemale;and sinceall otherorgansand systems
different
throughout.
itis certainthattheMaleand Femaleare essentially
bythissystem,
in no sense the same, in no sense equal
They are, he continues,"complementary,
to one another; the accurate adjustmentof societydepends on proper observation of this fact."A major set of these factswere evident,for Heape and many
others,in the uterus. It should be noted, however,that the basic histologyof
menstruation-let alone its causes-was not established until the classic 1908
paper of L. Adler and F Hitschmann.Previousdescriptions,as these twoyoung
Viennese gynecologistsnoted, were demonstrablyinadequate. The point here is
less that so littlewas known about menstruationthan that it was described in a
waythatcreated,throughan extraordinaryleap of the synecdochicimagination,
a cellularcorrelativeto the sociallydistinguishingcharacteristicsof women. Histologymirroredwithuncannyclaritywhat it meant to be female.59
Today, the uterus is described as passing throughtwo stages, rathercolorduringeach menstrualcycle.In
lesslydesignated"secretory"and "proliferative,"
the nineteenthand early twentiethcenturiesit was said to proceed through a
series of at least four and as many as eight stages. Its "normal" stage was construed as "quiescence,"followedby "constructive"and "destructive"stages and a
stage of "repair."Menstruation,as one mightsurmise,was defined as occurring
at the destructivestage,when the uterus gave up its lining.As Heape puts it,in
an account redolent of war reportage, the uterus during the formationof the
menstrualclot is subject to "a severe, devastating,periodic action."The entire
ephitheliumis torn awayat each period,
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
31
jagged edgesof
leavingbehinda raggedwreckof tissue,tornglands,rupturedvessels,
stroma,and massesof blood corpuscles,whichit wouldseem hardlypossibleto heal
theaid of surgicaltreatment.
satisfactorily
without
Mercifully,this is followedby the recuperativestage and a returnto normalcy.
Littlewonder that Havelock Ellis, steeped in thisrhetoric,would conclude that
women live on somethingof a biological roller coaster. They are, "as it were,
periodicallywounded in the most sensitivespot in theirorganismand subjected
to a monthlyloss of blood." The cells of the uterus are in constant,dramaticflux
and subject to soul-wrenchingtrauma. Ellis concludes, after ten pages of still
more data on the physiologicaland psychologicalperiodicityin women,thatthe
establishment
theyemphasizethefactthateven
ofthesefactsofmorbidpsychology,
areverysignificant;
gnawsperiodically
in thehealthiest
womana wormhoweverharmlessand unperceived,
at therootsof life.60
A gnawing worm is by no means the only metaphor of pain and disease
employed to interpretuterine or ovarian histology.The burstingof the follicle
is likened by Rudolph Virchow,the fatherof modern pathology,to teething,
"accompanied with the liveliestdisturbanceof nutritionand nerve force."For
the historianMichelet,woman is a creature"wounded each month,"who suffers
almostconstantlyfromthe traumaof ovulation,whichin turnis at the center,as
Therese Moreau has shown,of a physiologicaland psychologicalphantasmagoria
a French encyclopedia likens follicular
dominatingher life. Less imaginatively,
rupture to "what happens at the rupture of an acute abscess." The German
physiologistE. F W Pfluger likens menstruationto surgical debridement,the
creation of a clean surface in a wound, or alternatively,to the notch used in
Imperativesof culture
graftinga branchonto a tree,to the "innoculationschnitt."
or the unconscious, not positive science, informed the interpretationsof the
female body more or less explicitlyin these accounts.61
While all of the evidence presentedso faris by men and produced in a more
or less antifeminist
context,image making,the constructionof the body through
science, occurs in feministwritersas well. Mary PutnamJacobi'sThe Questionof
Restfor WomenDuringMenstruation
(1886), for example, is a sustained counterattackagainst the view that "the peculiar changes supposed to take place in the
Graafian vesicles at each period ... involve a peculiar expenditure of nervous
force,whichwas so much dead loss to the individuallifeof the woman."Women
were thereforeunfitfor higher education, a varietyofjobs, and other activities
that demand large expenditures of the mental and physical energy that was
thought to be in such short supply. Since the "nervous force" was commonly
associated in higher animals and in women with sexual arousal, Jacobi's task
becomes one of severing the sexual from the reproductivelife of women, of
32
THOMAS LAQUEUR
breakingthe ties between the two postulated in the ovarian theoryof Bischoff,
Pouchet,Adam Raciborski,and others.62
Much of her book is taken up with a compilationof the real or supposed
empiricalfailingsof thisview.Neither menstruationnor pregnancy,she argues
for example, are tied to the time of ovulation; indeed as several hundred cases
of vicariousmenstruationin women suggest,menstruationitselfis only statistically,not in any more fundamentalway,bound to ovulation and thus to reproduction. The amount of blood thatflowsto the uterus even in women who feel
particularpelvic heaviness is but a tinyproportionof the body'sblood and far
less than the proportion transferredto the stomach and intestinesduring the
obviouslynormal daily processes of digestion.There is no evidence,Jacobi continues,that the uterus, ovaries, or theirappendages become turgidduring the
menstrualperiod, and thus the effortto linka sortof histologicaltensionof the
reproductiveorgans to sexual tension,to the excitementof heat, mustcome to
naught. But though many of her criticismsare well taken,she neitheroffersa
more compelling new theoryof the physiologyof ovulation nor gives a clearer
pictureof cellularchanges in the uterinemucosa duringthe menstrualcyclethan
do those she is arguing against.63
Jacobi does, however,offera new metaphor: "All the processes concerned
in menstruationconverge,not towardthe sexual sphere,but the nutritive,
or one
departmentof it-the reproductive."The accelerationof blood flowto theuterus
"in obedience to a nutritive
demand" is preciselyanalogous to the "affluxof blood
to the muscularlayerof the stomachand intestinesaftera meal."Jacobi,like her
opponents, tended to reduce woman's nature to woman's reproductivebiology.
But forher,the essence of femalesexual differencelaynot in periodicallyrecurring nervous excitementnor in episodes of engorgement,rupture,and release
of tension but rather in the quiet processes of nutrition.Far frombeing periodical, ovulationinJacobi'saccountis essentiallyrandom: "The successivegrowth
of the Graafian vesicles strictlyresembles the successive growthof buds on a
bough." Buds, slowlyopening into delicate cherry or apple blossoms and, if
fertilized,into fruit,are a farcryfromthe wrenchingand sexuallyintenseswellings of the ovary imagined by the opposing theory.64
Indeed, Jacobi'swoman is in many respectsthe inverseof thatof Pouchet,
Raciborski,or Bischoff. For these men the theory of spontaneous ovulation
demanded a woman shackled to her body,woman as nature, as physicalbeing,
even if the tamed quality of her modern European avatar spoke eloquentlyof
the power of civilization.For Jacobi, on the other hand, spontaneous ovulation
impliedjust the opposite. Biology provides the basis for a radical splitbetween
woman's mind and body,betweensexualityand reproduction.The female body
carrieson itsreproductivefunctionswithno mentalinvolvement;conversely,the
mind can remain placidlyabove the body,free fromitsconstraints.Jacobi'sfirst
effortat a metaphoricalconstructionof this position uses fish whose ova are
The Politicsof Reproductive
Biology
33
extruded without"sexual congress,and in a manner analogous to the process of
defecationand micturation."In higher animals sexual congress is necessaryfor
conception,but ovulationremainsspontaneous and independentof excitement.
ofthenutricontribution
From this,it follows,accordingtoJacobi,that"thesuperior
upon
dependence
madebythefemaleis balancedbyan inferior
ofreproduction
tiveelement
in otherwords,sheis sexuallyinferior."65
theanimalorsexualelement:
Of course,Jacobi cannot deny thatin loweranimals female sexual instinctis
tied exclusivelyto reproductionand thata rupturedfollicleor folliclesare invariablyfound during the rut. She neverthelessmaintainsthatthere is no proof of
anythingbut a coincidentalrelationshipbetweenthe stateof the ovaries and the
congested stateof the externaland internalgenitaliathatseems to signal sexual
readiness. But in women, she adamantly maintains,"the sexual instinctand
reproductivecapacityremain distinct;there is no longer any necessaryassociation betweensexual impulse,menstruation,and the dehiscence of ova." Indeed,
her entireresearchprogramis devoted to showingthatthe menstrualcyclemay
that
be read as the ebb and flowof female nutritiveratherthan sexual activity,
its metaboliccontoursare preciselyanalogous to those of nutritionand growth.
And this brings one back to the metaphor of the ovary as fruitblossom. The
woman buds as surelyand as incessantlyas the "plant, continuallygenerating
notonlythe reproductivecell,but thenutritivematerialwithoutwhichthiswould
be useless."But how,giventhatwomen generallyeat less thanmen,do theyobtain
a nutritivesurplus? Because "it is the possibilityof making this reserve which
of the female sex."66
peculiarity
constitutesthe essential
The point here is not to belittleJacobi'sscientificworkbut ratherto emphasize the power of culturalimperatives,of metaphor,in the productionand interpretationof the rather limited body of data available to reproductivebiology
during the late nineteenthcentury.At issue is not whetherJacobi was rightin
pointing out the lack of coincidence between ovulation and menstruationin
women and wrongin concludingthatthereis thereforeno systematicconnection
betweenthe two.Rather,both she and her opponents emphasized some findings
considerations.In the absence of
and rejected others on largelyextrascientific
an accepted research paradigm, their criteriawere largelyideological-seeing
woman eitheras civilizedanimal or as mind presidingover a passive, nutritive
body.
But perhaps even the accumulationof fact,even the coherentand powerful
modern paradigm of reproductivephysiologyin contemporarymedical texts,
offersbut slightrestrainton the poeticsof sexual difference.Indeed, the subject
itselfseems to inflamethe imagination.Thus, when W F Ganong's 1977 Review
a standard referencework for physiciansand medical stuofMedicalPhysiology,
dents, allows itselfone momentof fancyit is on the subject of women and the
menstrualcycle. Amidst a reviewof reproductivehormones, of the process of
ovulation and menstruationdescribed in the cold language of science, one is
34
THOMAS LAQUEUR
quite unexpectedlyhitbya rhetoricalbombshell,the onlylyricalmomentlinking
the reductionismof modern biologicalscience to the experiencesof humanityin
599 pages of compact,emotionallysubdued prose:
is theuteruscryingforlackofa baby."
Thus,to quotean old saying,"Menstruation
Culturalconcernshave freelicense here, howeverembedded theymaybe in the
texts,synecdochicleaps of the
language of science. As in nineteenth-century
in turnis endowed,through
which
imaginationseem to viewwomanas the uterus,
the by now familiarturn of the patheticfallacy,withfeelings,withthe capacity
to cry.The body remainsan arena for the constructionof gender even though
modern researchparadigmsdo, of course,isolatetheexperimentaland interprepressures far more than
tivework of reproductivebiology fromextrascientific
researchof thenineteenthcentury.67
preparadigmatic
was possiblein theessentially
Scientificadvances, I have argued, did not destroythe hierarchicalmodel
that construed the female body as a lesser,turned-inwardversionof the male,
nor did itbanish femaleorgasm to the physiologicalperiphery.Rather,the politof the eighteenthcenturycreated
ical, economic, and cultural transformations
the context in which the-articulationof radical differencesbetween the sexes
became culturallyimperative.In a worldin whichsciencewas increasinglyviewed
as providinginsightinto the fundamentaltruthsof creation,in whichnature as
manifestedin the unassailable realityof bones and organs was taken to be the
became the
onlyfoundationof the moral order,a biologyof incommensurability
represented.New claims
could be authoritatively
means by whichsuch differences
and counterclaimsregardingthe public and privateroles of women were thus
contested throughquestions about the nature of theirbodies as distinguished
fromthoseof men. In thesenew discursivewarsfeministsas wellas antifeminists
sacrificedthe idea of women as inherentlypassionate; sexual pleasure as a sign
in the fleshof reproductivecapacityfellvictimto politicalexigencies.
Notes
1. Condorcet, "On the Admission of Women to the Rightsof Citizenship"(1791), in
ed. Keith Michael Baker (Indianapolis, 1976), 98.
SelectedWritings,
trans.Richard Seaver and
in theBedroom,
2. Ibid., 98; see, forexample, Sade's Philosophy
AustrynWainhouse (New York, 1965), 206 and passim.
3. Wisdom of Solomon 7.2 and Philo Legumallegoriae2.7, cited in Peter Brown, "Sexualityand Societyin the FifthCentury A.D.: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum,"in
Triacorda:Scrittiin onoredi ArnaldoMomigliano,ed. E. Gabba (Como, 1983), 56; Mrs.
Jane Sharp, TheMidwivesBook(1671), 43 - 44.
4. "There is a jouissanceproper to her, to this 'her' which does not exist and which
of The Woman,"in Feminine
signifiesnothing";Jacques Lacan, "God and theJouissance
Sexuality,
ed. JulietMitchelland Jacqueline Rose (New York, 1982), 145.
The Politicsof ReproductiveBiology
35
5. Nemesius of Emesa, On theNatureofMan (Philadelphia, 1955), 369; Galen De semine
2.1, in Operaomnia,ed. C. G. Kuhn, 20 vols. (1821-33), 4:596.
translation
OrgansofWomen,
theGenerative
Concerning
6. Regnierde Graaf,A New Treatise
novus(1672) by H. D. Jocelyn
tractatus
inservientibus
of De mulierum
organisgenerationi
suppl. no. 17 (1972), 131-35;
and Fertility,
and B. P. Setchell,JournalofReproduction
physiqueet moralde la femme(1775; Paris, 1813), 79-80. On
Pierre Roussel, Systeme
the
Cabinis,was to influencesignificantly
Roussel who, throughPierre-Jean-Georges
discourse on sexual politicsduring the French Revolution,see Paul Hoffmann,La
Femmedans la penseedes Lumieres(Paris, n.d.), 142-52; Bartholomew Parr,ed., The
Masterpiece
LondonMedical Dictionary,vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1819), 88-89; Aristotles
(1803; reprinted., New York, 1974), 3.
7. Jacques Moreau de la Sarthe, Histoirenaturellede la femme,vol. 1 (Paris, 1803), 15,
whichsounds the theme of the entirevolume.
MedicalJournal,
8. George W. Corner,"The Eventsof the PrimateOvarian Cycle,"British
no. 4781 (23 August 1952): 403. On older viewsof the fertileperiod of the menstrual
cycle see, for example, the Roman Catholic authorityCarl Capellmann, Fakultativ
derSittengesetze
(Aachen, 1882), who taughtthatdays fourteen
ohneVerletzung
Sterilitdt
risesjustbeforethe mensesand continuesuntil
are "safe"whilefertility
to twenty-five
day fourteen.Marie Stopes, in her immenselypopular manuals MarriedLove (10th
(London, 1924), 85, advised thatmaximum
ed., London, 1922), 191, and Contraception
occursjust aftercessation of the menses. For the popularityof these views
fertility
(Baltimore,1936),
wellintothe 1930s see Carl G. Hartman,TimeofOvulationin Women
149 and passim.
9. For an early and clearly presented table of embryologicalhomologies, see Rudolf
vol. 4 (Braunschweig, 1853), s.v. "ZeuderPhysiologie,
Wagner,ed., Handwbrterbuch
gung," 763. Regarding skeletons,see Londa Schiebinger,"Skeletons in the Closet:
Anatomy,"in
The First Illustrationsof the Female Skeleton in Eighteenth-Century
the currentissue. 1759 is an alternativedate forthe firstrepresentationof the female
skeleton;see ibid.
(New York, 1982), 70.
10. Mary Douglas, NaturalSymbols
11. Plato Timaeus9 1A-C, Loeb Classical Library,ed. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, Mass.,
ofthePartsoftheBody,ed. and trans.Margaret
1929), 248 -50; Galen, On theUsefulness
May,2 vols. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), 2:640.
13. Ibid., 2:628-29.
12. Ibid., 1:382 and n. 78; 2:628, 630.
15. Ibid., 2:630-31 and, more generally,636-38.
14. Ibid., 2:629.
16. Ibid., 2:640-43. The allusion to Democritusis probablythe following:"Coition is a
slightattackof apoplexy: man gushes forthfromman, and is separated bybeing torn
ed. Diels-Kranz
derVorsokratiker,
apart witha kind of blow"; 68B.22, in Die Fragmente
(Berlin, 1956). Galen is clearlyin sympathyhere with the Hippocratic treatiseThe
ed. G. E. R. Lloyd (London, 1978), 317-21. Aristotle
Seed, in HippocraticWritings,
argues that the emission of semen in men is due "to the penis being heated by its
movement";in addition,"maturation"or a finalconcoctionof the semen takesplace
ofAnimals717b24 and
through the heating of copulation. See AristotleGeneration
ed. JonathanBarnes, 2 vols. (Princeton,N.J.,
Works
ofAristotle,
717a5, in The Complete
1984).
17. Hippocrates, The Seed,319; for Galen on wet dreams in women see De semine2.1, in
Operaomnia,4:599. There is no space in thispaper to argue forthe basic compatibility
of Aristotle'sviewswithwhatbecame the dominantGalenic model. Despite Aristotle's
denial of female semen, he neverthelessconstrued the catamenia, i.e., the female
36
THOMAS LAQUEUR
contributionto generation,as a less highlyconcoctedversionof semen and conversely
argued that men who had copulated too frequently,and thus had spent theirvital
heat,ejaculated blood, of whichsemen was a higherconcoction;bothblood and semen
are interpretedas residues of the concoctionof food. Aristotle'shierarchyof fluids
based on vitalheat is thus congruentwithGalen's, and theirdifferencesconcern the
ofAnimals726bl-15, 35; 737a27-29.
efficacyof the female contribution;Generation
Though Aristotleargues thatneitherfemale orgasm nor the emissionsof women in
dreams are proof of female semination,he neverthelessholds that female pleasure
normallyis a sign of heat sufficientfor generation; women can conceive without
pleasure if "the part chance to be in heat and the uterus to have descended." These
lucid account
are not normalcircumstances;ibid.,739a20-35. For an extraordinarily
of these matterssee Michael Boylan, "The Galenic and Hippocratic Challenges to
oftheHistoryofBiology17, no. 1 (Spring 1984):
Aristotle'sConception Theory,"Journal
83-112.
ofParts,2:640-44; Avicenna,Libriin re medicaomnes... id
18. Galen, On theUsefulness
1564),
3.21.1.25.
(Venice,
canonis
libri
est,
19. This is all quite commonplace in classicalmedicine. See, forexamples, AristotleGenofAnimals581 b30 - 583b2
727a3 -15, 776a 15- 33 on milkand History
eration
ofAnimals
on semen and menstrualblood as plethora and on menstrualblood findingits way
trans.James V. Ricci
to the breastsand becoming milk;Aetius of Amida, Tetrabiblion,
32 and 33 and Epidemics1.16, in The
(Philadelphia, 1950); Hippocrates Aphorisms
ed. and trans.John Chadwick and W N. Mann (Oxford,
MedicalWorks
ofHippocrates,
1950). Renaissance texts,both popular and learned, repeated much of thislore; see,
forexample, PatriciaCrawford,"Attitudesto Menstruationin Seventeenth-Century
England,"Past and Present,no. 91 (1981): 48 - 73.
equivalency I have
20. The earliestversionof the hemorrhoidalbleeding/menstruation
ofAnimals27a10, where he notes thatwomen
encountered is in AristotleGeneration
in whom the menstrual discharge is normal are not troubled with hemorrhoidal
Man Transbleeding or nosebleeds. See J. B. John Bulwer],Anthropometamorphosis:
Being
Changling(1653), 390; and Albrechtvon Haller,Physiology:
formedoftheArtificial
a CourseofLectures,vol. 2 (1754), paragraph 816, p. 293, my emphasis. For further
clinical notes on the connection between menstrual and other bleeding see John
Locke, Physicianand Philosopher... withan Editionof theMedical Notes,Wellcombe
Historyof Medicine Library,n.s., vol. 2 (London, 1963), 106, 200. Herman Boerhaave, AcademicalLectureson theTheoryofPhysic(1757), paragraph 665, p. 114, cites
the case of "a certain merchanthere at Leyden, a Man of Probity,who dischargesa
larger Quantity of Blood every Month by the haemorrhoidal arteries than is discharged fromthe Uterus of the mosthealthywoman";John Keegan, TheFace ofBattle
(London, 1976), 337.
21. Avicenna Canon 3.20.1.44; Trotulla of Salerno, The Diseasesof Women,ed. Elizabeth
and barrennesssee Nicholas
Mason-Huhl (Los Angeles, 1940), 16-19; on witchcraft
Fontanus,TheWomansDoctour(1652), 128-37, fora discussionof barrennessgenerally and the signs of too much or too littleheat; Jacob Rueff,The ExpertMidwife
(1637), book 6, p. 16 (on witchcraft)and p. 55 (quote). Leonard Sowerby,TheLadies
(1652), 139-40, gives a listof materialsto "cause standingof the yard";
Dispensatory
see Lazarus Riverius,ThePracticeofPhysick(1672), 503 (on lack of lust being sign of
cold and unreceptive womb) and 502-9 (generally on the diagnosis and cure of
barrenness).
22. John Sadler, The Sicke WomansPrivateLookingGlass (1636), 118 and 110-18 more
The Politicsof ReproductiveBiology
37
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
38
(1727, froma late seventeenthofMidwifery
generally;Pierre Dionis,A GeneralTreatise
centuryFrenchtext),57 (on the importanceof the imagination);AmbroisePare, "Of
trans. Thomas
...,
of theFamousChirurgion
the Generatioinof Man," in The Workes
for Midwives
Johnson (1634), book 24, pp. 889-90; Robert Barrett,A Companion
(1699), 62.
Pare, "Of the Generation of Man," 889; Trotulla,DiseasesofWomen,16; WilliamSermon, The Ladies Companionor theEnglishMidwife(1671), 13; Sadler, LookingGlass,
118ff.
Euchar Roesslin,TheByrthofMankynde(1545), fol. 28. This text,or thinlydisguised
versionsof it,was widelyreprintedin large numbersof vernacularand Latin editions;
the tropeof a successionof childrenas a mercifulGod's comfortforthe stingof death
was oftenattributedto St. John Chrysostom,presumablyto Homily XVIII on Gen.
4.1, "And Adam Knew Eve as His Wife."
DrawingsofAndreas
J. B. de C. M.,iunders and Charles D. O'Malley, TheAnatomical
Vesalius(New York, 1982), point out that figs. 2 and 3 were drawn to illustratethe
Galenic homologieswhilethe penis-likevagina in fig.4 is simplyan artifactof having
to remove the organs in a great hurry.A useful table of the homologies Vesalius
sought to illustrateare given in L. R. Lind, ed., TheEpitomeofAndreasVesalius(New
York,1949), 87. These representationsbecame the standardsformore thana century
of
in both popular and learned tracts;see forexample Alexander Read, A Description
der
theBodyofMan (1634), 128, foran English version;and FritzWeindler,Geschichte
Abbildung(Dresden, 1908).
gyndkologische-anatomischen
ManyReceivedTenents
Sir Thomas Browne,PseudodoxiaEpidemicaorEnquiriesintoVery
PresumedTruths,vol. 2 of The WorksofSir ThomasBrowne,ed. Geoffrey
and Commonly
Keynes(London, 1928), book 3, chap. 17, pp. 212-13, 216; Browne denies the vulgar
andMarvels,
beliefin the annual alterationof sex in hares; AmbroisePare, On Monsters
(San
ed. and trans.byJanisL. Pallister(Chicago, 1982), 32; Montaigne6TravelJournal
Francisco, 1983), 6.
(Basel, 1605), as cited
Anatomicum
32- 33; Caspar Bauhin, Theatrum
Pare, On Monsters,
(1616), ed. and trans.C. D. O'Malley,
in WilliamHarvey,Lectureson theWholeAnatomy
E N. L. Poynter,and K. F Russell (Berkeley,1961), 132 and 467n.
On the discoveryof the clitorissee Renaldo Colombo, De reanatomica(1572), book 2,
anatomica(Vienna,
chap. 16, pp. 447-48; forsynonymssee Joseph Hyrtl,Onomatologia
Midwives
1880), s.v. "clitoris";Sharp, MidwivesBook,44-45; John Pechey,Complete
Practice(London, 1698), 49.
(4th ed., 1694), 99; Marie
Thomas Gibson, The Anatomy
ofHumaneBodiesEpitomized
(New York, 1953), 3, 113-15; formore recentpsychoanBonaparte, FemaleSexuality
Institute14
alyticthought on this subject see Journalof theAmericanPsychoanalytic
forMid(1966): 28-128 and 16 (1968): 405-612; Nicholas Culpepper, A Dictionary
(1675), part 1, p. 22. The "spermaticalvessels,"or as Philip
wives;or,A GuideforWomen
Moore, TheHope ofHealth(1565), called them,the "handmaidensto the stones,"were
thoughtto carrythe excitationfromthe externalorgans, i.e., the penis and clitoris/
labia, to the male and female testesrespectively.
oftheBodyofMan (1615), 250; Thomas Vicary'swork
Helkiah Crooke, A Description
is also knownas TheEnglishmansTreasure(1585), 53.
desfemmes
aCcouchemens
250; Jacques Duval, Des Hermaphrodites,
Crooke, Description,
(1612), 375, cited in Stephen Greenblatt,"Fictionand Friction;'an unpublished
paper he has generouslylet me read.
THOMAS LAQUEUR
of Sex, vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1923), 194; the
32. Havelock Ellis, Studiesin thePsychology
origins.
phenomenon Ellis observes is, I suggest,of eighteenth-century
(Boston, 1982), 357; Haller,Physiology,
33. Cited in V. C. Medvei,A HistoryofEndocrinology
paragraphs 823-26, pp. 301-3. Haller, at the time he wrote these passages, was an
ovist; that is, he believed that the egg contained the new life and that the sperm
merelyactivateditsdevelopment.But the same sortsof accountswere also writtenby
spermaticists.
Historical
34. See forexamplesJane Abray,"Feminismin the FrenchRevolution,"American
Mirrors(New
Review80, no. 1 (February 1975): 43 -62; Susanna Barrows,Distorting
Haven, 1981), chap. 2; Susan Sleeth Mosedale, "Science Corrupted: VictorianBiologists Consider 'The Woman Question,'" Journalof theHistoryof Biology11, no. 1
Craniology:The Studyof
(Spring 1978): 1-55; Elizabeth Fee, "Nineteenth-Century
the Female Skull;"Bulletinof theHistoryof Medicine53, no. 3 (Fall 1979): 915-33;
Lorna Duffin,"Prisonersof Progress:Women and Evolution,"in Sara Delamont and
Lorna Duffin,eds., Woman:Her Culturaland PhysicalWorld(New York,1978), 56-9 1.
For two contemporaryEnglish articulationsof these themes see Grant Allen, "Plain
Review,n.s., 46 (October 1889): 274; and
Wordson the Woman Question,' Fortnightly
W L. Distant, "On the Mental DifferencesBetween the Sexes,"Journalof theRoyal
in America,
4 (1875): 78- 87. Alexis de Tocqueville,Democracy
Institute
Anthropological
ed. PhillipsBradley,vol. 2 (New York, 1945), 223.
35. Jean Elshtain,PublicMan, PrivateWoman(Princeton,N.J., 1981), chap. 3.
trans.Maurice Cranston (Harmond36. Jean-JacquesRousseau, A DiscourseonInequality,
sworth,1984), 104.
37. Ibid., 102-3, 110; Emile;or,On Education,trans.Allan Bloom (New York,1979), book
5, pp. 359 and 362n.
38. Ibid., 357-58, 362-63; myemphasis.
s.v. 'jouissance"; I have taken the translationwithsome
39. Denis Diderot, Encyclopedie,
ed. and trans. Stephen J. Gendzier (New York,
modificationsfromTheEncyclopedia,
1967), 96; jouissanceis translatedhere as "enjoyment;"but it is perfectlyclear that
Diderot means by it sexual pleasure and passion.
ofRanks (Basel, 1793), 14, 32, 86, 95-96.
40. John Millar,OriginoftheDistinctions
41. Barbara Taylor,Eve and theNew Jerusalem:Socialismand Feminismin theNineteenth
Century
(New York, 1983), esp. chap. 2 and passim; Catherine Gallagher,"The Body
Versusthe Social Body in the Worksof Thomas Maithus and Henry Mayhew,"in this
issue.
42. Anna Wheeler and WilliamThompson, An AppealofOne-HalftheHumanRace, Women,
of theOtherHalf, Men, toRetain Themin Politicaland Thencein
AgainstthePretensions
Civiland DomesticSlavery(London, 1825), 60-61, emphasis in text.
43. Ibid., 145 and part 2, question 2, generally.
(New York, 1981), chap. 5, pp.
44. Zillah Eisenstein,TheRadical FutureofLiberalFeminism
Thoughts
on theEducationofDaughters... (1787), 82.
89-112; Mary Wollstonecraft,
and
45. Ibid., FemaleReader(1789), vii; Taylor,Eve, 47-48. I take the termpassionlessness
an understandingof itspoliticalmeaningin the earlynineteenthcenturyfromNancy
Cott'spioneeringarticle"Passionlessness:An Interpretationof VictorianSexual Ideology,1790 -1850;' Signs4, no. 21 (1978): 219 - 36.
46. Sarah Ellis, The WivesofEngland (London, n.d.), 345; and TheDaughtersofEngland,
(London, 1842), 85. Mitzi Myers,
TheirPositionin Society,Character& Responsibilities
Century
"Reformor Ruin: A Revolutionin Female Manners;' Studiesin theEighteenth
11 (1982): 199-217, makes a persuasive case for considering writersas far apart
The Politicsof ReproductiveBiology
39
politicallyas the domesticideologistsand MaryWollstonecraft
as engaged in the same
moral enterprise.
47. Aldous Huxley,Literature
and Science(New York, 1963), 67; quoted in Peter Morton,
The VitalScience:Biologyand theLiterary
Imagination,
1860-1900 (London, 1984), 212.
48. Karl Ernst von Baer, "On the Genesis of the Ovum of Mammals and of Man," trans.
C. D. O'Malley,Isis 47 (1956): 117-53, esp. 119; John Haighton, "An Experimental
Inquiry Concerning Animal Impregnation,"reported by Maxwell Garthshore,PhilosophicalTransactions
of theRoyal Societyof London 87, part 1 (1797): 159-96; and
WilliamCruickshank,"Experimentsin Which,on the Third Day AfterImpregnation,
the Ova of Rabbits Were Found in the Fallopian Tubes ...," reported by Everard
Home, ibid., 197-214, esp. 210-11; on the difficulties
of discoveringthe mammalian
ovum see A. W. Meyer,TheRise ofEmbryology
(Stanford,Calif., 1939), chap. 8.
49. For referencesto some of the English and French clinical reportssee WilliamBaly,
RecentAdvancesin thePhysiology
and Development
ofMotion,theSenses,Generation,
(London, 1848), 46n.; Johann FriedrichBlumenbach,TheElements
ofPhysiology,
trans.John
Elliotson(1828), 483 - 84; JohannesMuller,HandbuchderPhysiologie
desMenschen,
vol.
2 (Coblenz, 1840), 644-45 and 643-49 generallyon the release of the ovum.
50. Theodor L. W. Bischoff,BeweisdervonderBegattungunabhingigen
periodischen
Reifung
und LosllsungderEier der Sdugethiere
und desMenschen(Giesen, 1844), 28-31; F A.
etde la ficondationdesMammiferes
Pouchet, Thgorie
positivede l'ovulationspontan&e
et de
l'espkcehumaine(Paris, 1847), 104-67 (for the evidence supportingthisclaim), 452;
Jules Michelet,L'Amour(Paris, 1859), xv.
51. Bischoff,
Beweis,43; V. Hensen, in L. Hermann,HandbuchderPhysiologie,
vol. 6 (Leipzig,
1881), part 2, p. 69; Q. U. Newell, et al., "The Time of Ovulation in the Menstrual
Journal
Cycle as Checked by Recoveryof the Ova fromthe Fallopian Tubes,"American
and Gynaecology
19 (February 1930): 180-85; on the discoveryof the
of Obstetrics
reproductivehormones see A. S. Parkes,"The Rise of ReproductiveEndocrinology,
34 (1966): xx-xxii; Medvei, History,396-411;
1926-1940," JournalofEndocrinology
and George W. Corner, "Our Knowledge of the Menstrual Cycle, 1910-1950," The
Lancet240, no. 6661 (28 April 1951): 919-23.
52. AchillesChereau, Memoires
pourservira l'9tudedesmaladiesdesovaires(Paris, 1844), 91;
Pouchet,Theoriepositive,227; Augustus Gardner,The Causesand CurativeTreatment
of
Statement
witha Preliminary
Sterility,
ofthePhysiology
ofGeneration
(New York,1856), 17;
Lancet,28 January 1843, 644.
53. Duncan is cited as the epigraph of chapter 3, "The Changes That Take Place in the
Non-PregnantUterus During the Oestrous Cycle,"in E H. A. Marshall,ThePhysiology
ofReproduction
(New York, 1910), 75.
54. Bischoff,Beweis,40 and 40-48 generallyon thispoint; Haller,Physiology,
paragraph
812, p. 290 (p. 419 of the 1803 English edition); Blumenbach,Elements,
461-62; the
oft-repeatedallusion to Plinyis fromhis NaturalHistory7.15.63.
3
55. Robert Remak, "Uber Menstruationund Brunst,"Neue Zeitschrift
fir Geburtskunde
(1843): 175-233, esp. 176; Muller,Handbuch,640.
56. Jean Borie, "Une Gynecologiepassionee,"inJean-PaulAron,ed., Miserableetglorieuse:
La Femmedu XIX sikcle(Paris, 1980), 164ff.;Angus McLaren, "Doctor in the House:
Studies2, no.3 (1974-75):
Medicineand PrivateMoralityin France,1800-1850,"Feminist
39-54; Pouchet, Theoriepositive,introduction,12-26 (on the use of "logic" in the
absence of hard evidence see hisdiscussionof the firstlaw,esp. 15),444 - 46 (summary
of his programmaticstatement).
57. G. E Girdwood, "On the Theory of Menstruation,"Lancet,7 October 1844, 315-16.
40
THOMAS LAQUEUR
de la menstruation
(Paris, 1868), 46-47 and 43-47 generally;
58. Adam Raciborski,Traite'
chezlafemme(Paris, 1844) was oftencited,along with
hisDe la puberteetde l'ge critique
Bischoff,as having established the existence of spontaneous ovulation in humans;
orgasmewas primarilya medical termin the nineteenthcenturymeaning an increase
of vitalenergyto a part oftenassociated withturgescence(see Littre,s.v."orgasme");
the firstuse I have found of the term estrousto refer to the reproductivecycle of
humans as well as other mammalsis in WalterHeape, "The 'Sexual Season' of MamJournalof the
mals and the Relation of the 'Proestrum' to Menstruation;"Quarterly
Society,
2nd ser.,44, no. 1 (November 1900): 1-70 and esp. 29-40.
Microscopical
(London, 1913), 23; E Hitschmannand L. Adler,"Der
59. WalterHeape, SexAntagonism
Bau der Uterusschleimhautdes geschlechtsreifenWeibes mitbesonderer Berucksi27, no. 1
und Gyndkologie
fur Geburtshulfe
chtigungder Menstruation,"Monatsschrift
(1908): 1-82, esp. 1-8, 48-59.
60. WalterHeape's account of the stages of menstruationis in his "The Menstruationof
of theRoyal SocietyofLondon,ser. B,
entellus,"PhilosophicalTransactions
Semnopithecus
185, part 1 (1894): 411-66 plus plates,esp. 421-40; the quotationis fromMarshall's
92; Havelock Ellis,Man and Woman:A StudyofHuman Secondary
summaryPhysiology,
(London, 1904), 284, 293.
Sexual Characteristics
61. Rudolph Virchow,Der puerperaleZustand:Das Weibund die Zelle (1848), 751, as cited
(New York, 1886),
DuringMenstruation
in MaryJacobi,The QuestionofRestfor Women
393), the ovarywas of course not theonlysource
110. Accordingto Michelet(L'Amour,
of woman's fundamentalsickness: "Ce sikcle sera nomme celui des maladies de la
matrice;"he argues, having identifiedthe fourteenthcenturyas that of the plague
and the sixteenthas that of syphilis(iv). See Therese Moreau, Le Sang de l'histoire
trans.Egbert H. Granand Gynaecology,
ofObstetrics
(1982); A. Charpentier,Cyclopedia
din (New York,1887), part 2, p. 84; forPflugersee Hans H. Simmer,"Pfluger'sNerve
Reflex Theory of Menstruation: The Product of Analogy,Teleology and NeuroClioMedica 12, no. 1 (1977): 57-90, esp. 59.
physiology,"
62. Jacobi,QuestionofRest,1-25, 81, and 223 - 32 passim.
63. Ibid., section 3, pp. 64-115, is devoted to laying out and criticizingthe so-called
ovarian theoryof menstruation.
65. Ibid., 83, 165; emphasis is in the text.
64. Ibid., 98-100.
66. Ibid., 99, 167-68.
8th ed. (Los Altos,Calif., 1977), 332 and
67. W. E Ganong, ReviewofMedicalPhysiology,
330-44 passim.
The Politicsof ReproductiveBiology
41