- ISBN13: 9780674543553
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
This is a book about the making an unmaking of sex over the centuries. It tells the astonishing story of sex in West from the ancients to the moderns in a precise account of the history of reproductive anatomy and physio… More >>
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This book is covered with many glowing reviews. What none of them mention is that the author cannot write an intelligible sentence. Sometime in the 80′s, perhaps due to the influence of that patent charlatan Derrida, it became fashionable to write lengthy, tortuous sentences using strings of polysyllabic undefined non-words. This book is firmly in that tradition. There may actually be valuable content here, but it’s impossible to get at without subjecting yourself to a hideous reading experience. The author, like others in this prose tradition, seems unaware that his style invalidates his content. If he can’t be bothered to write a clear sentence, why should we assume that his thoughts are clear? This book is a great opportunity wasted.
Rating: 2 / 5
This book is absolutely fascinating. I recently wrote a paper on gender anatomy in the 18th and 19th century, and this book was my main resource. Laqueur has a clear and well written style as he describes the different theories on gender and sex throughout the ages and the rammifications of these theories in terms of culture and interpersonal relationships.
Rating: 5 / 5
An excellent book laying and discussing the basics of gender creation in western culture. This book borrows heavily from “The History of Sexuality” by Michel Foucault. This book very explictly forms a general hypothesis of gender and doesn’t fail to back it up with extreme detail, sometimes “ad nauseum”. Overall a good read, though dense.
Rating: 5 / 5
Laqueur argues that like sex much like gender, which is now recognised to change with the times, has reinvented by people throughout time. Societies and communities tend to construct categories by which they organise things, people and their societies; whilst, these categorical tools appear legitimate and obvious to the historical actors who employ them, historical hindsight effectively demolishes their innateness. Laqueur argues that sex is not something that exists outside of us but within us, something that is transformed and made by communities and not by nature. Lauquer suggests that ideas of sex can be separated into two groups: the single sex model which precedes the 18th century and the two sex model which follows the invention of sex (which he claims occurs in the 18th century). Further, Lauqueur claims that these changes in the conception and implications of sex changed as a function of society and were independent of scientific advances. Despite presenting a number of interesting case studies and examples Lauquer’s evidence does not adequately support his thesis because historical knowledge challenges the one sex model; the lack of categories does not imply the lack of separate entities; the analysis of the implications of the language utilised by historical actors is problematic.
Reading Aristotle also suggests that at least him considered sexes to be separate. He compares slaves to women and implies that there are separate. The historical record challenges Laqueur’s assertions because societies have frequently divided roles, and sexual mores according to sex.
Much of Laqueur assertions lay on the apparent absence of separate categories for men and women. He argues that throughout history women were seen as imperfect men, or inverted men (if we look at some of the dissection drawings made – it is clear from the similarities between vaginas and penises that they thought women were inverted males). Thus, Lauquer argues that women were considered to lack the heat required to be male. From this and the lack of different terminology (to which I’ll get on later) he extrapolates that there was but one gender. However, he recognises that people were able to distinguish between man and women but the basis of this distinction was not there genitalia. Women were supposed to perform certain roles and also lacked heat; whereas men, who were seen as more rational and superior were expected to fulfil a different set of roles ergo men and women were separated and perceived to be different. While, the basis on which the distinction was made may not have focused on their genitalia the distinction existed and separated society into two groups; coincidentally (or not) once genitalia is used to separate the sexes along with their respective traits and roles the membership of groups does not change. Ergo, there is functionally no change; whereas prior to the 18th century (assuming Lauquer is correct) women were perceived to have certain characteristics and amongst those was their inverted penises; now, these same characteristics were perceived to result from the presence of said genitalia. We are left with a perfect correlation and a distinction that does not affect the interactions between said groups nor their composition but only their name.
Laqueur also explores the language used by historical actors and whilst language can be very important to understand how and what people thought its significance must be properly analysed. Laqueur argues that the fact that people used similar terms to refer to male and female reproductive organs means that these were not differentiated in the minds of those that utilise them. The fact that ovaries were referred as testes according to Laqueur means that these people did not separate the sexes. Alas, they (and may I add we still) refer to other organisms penises as penises; are we to extrapolate from this; that there is or that historical actors thought there was only one species? The fact we call these organs by the same name does not imply we consider them to be the same. Further, we still refer to some of these structures using the same names: gonads, gametes, secondary sexual characteristics; despite the fact we recognise that whilst these structures differ they are functionally homologous.
Rating: 3 / 5
Baffling as it is, my book doesn’t feature any imprint whatsoever. The bibliography clocks out with books of 1990 and amazon says it was published on February 1, 1992. Of the some 330 pages, 56 are reserved for the bibliography and far too many footnotes. Also integrated are 63 smaller black and white images, some of them too dark.
The book has many interesting historic concepts to offer. For example that the Greeks used tricks to make their penises appear SMALLER. That for two millennia the same name for homologous organs for “both sexes” was used, e.g. for what today is called ovaries/testes. That in Latin “vagina” wasn’t used for what it means today, but additionally in good humor for “anus”. That anatomic drawings were made in a way to make them appear the same for women and men (just inside and outside the body). And that at one point the mind was considered the self, which is bodiless, hence no sex difference of mind. However, as other reviewers have pointed out in more detail already, Thomas Laqueur presents the one-sex-concept historically too monolithic. Indeed, The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) is much more complex and should be considered obligatory reading, if “Making Sex” is read. Also of interest may be Nature’s Body: Gender In The Making Of Modern Science and Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex.
I find “Making Sex” a bit difficult to read. It isn’t the vocabulary. Compared to other books, I did not have to grab the dictionary for more than a dozen times. (Which didn’t help me with “micturation”, though. I had to browse the internet and stump even some dictionaries there to finally find the euphemism for “urination”, whyever we need one…). Let’s say, the writing style is rather dry and feels repetitive, even though it isn’t REALLY. The author “just” repeats the same issues in the light of many epochs again and again. Which comes with the subject matter I guess, but that doesn’t change the fact, that it isn’t exactly a pleasurable reading experience.
Also, the book seems to be even more devoted to the connection (or not) of orgasm and conception than on the construction of sexes. The reader may get the impression at several points (including in the footnotes) that males do not lactate, even if mentioned that historic sources thought so. Well, the author is wrong on this one: Men are very much able to lactate and that in numerous circumstances, but in the early 1990s, this wasn’t really accepted yet (again) in the West. Laqueur doesn’t seem to agree as well with historic sources that the prepuce enhances lubrication. Which makes me wonder how to think otherwise. Putting aside the flawed continued chain of historic reasoning that this would be necessary for conception, clearly the prepuce distributes equally any lubrication such as preejaculate. Last not least there are no “races” among humans, and the N word should be avoided accordingly…
Rating: 3 / 5