One-sex and two-sex theories

The one-sex and two-sex models are historiographical concepts introduced by historian Thomas Laqueur in his 1990 book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud . Laqueur proposed that Western medical and philosophical thought underwent a fundamental shift in the 18th century: from a "one-sex model" in which female anatomy was understood as an inverted, inferior version of male anatomy, to a "two-sex model" treating men and women as anatomically distinct and opposite. While Making Sex has been highly influential across academic disciplines, Laqueur's thesis has attracted substantial criticism from historians of medicine and science who argue that it oversimplifies the historical record, misreads primary sources, and imposes an artificial chronological divide.

Laqueur's thesis

The one-sex model

According to Laqueur, Western medicine from antiquity through the early modern period operated under a "one-sex model" in which women were understood as imperfect or inverted versions of men rather than as a fundamentally different sex. In this framework, anatomists purportedly viewed female genitalia as homologous to but interior versions of male anatomy: the vagina as an internal penis, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles. ^[1]

Laqueur draws primarily on Galen, the 2nd-century Greek physician, who asked readers to imagine male genitalia "turned in and extending inward between the rectum and the bladder." ^[2] Laqueur interprets such passages as evidence that ancient and medieval physicians literally believed female and male reproductive organs to be structurally identical, differing only in placement due to women's supposed lack of bodily heat. ^[3]

Laqueur also argues that under the one-sex model, bodily fluids were considered interconvertible between the sexes, and that female orgasm was considered necessary for conception—a view he claims declined with the shift to the two-sex model. ^[4]

The two-sex model

Laqueur argues that around the 18th century, European thought shifted to a "two-sex model" in which male and female bodies were reconceptualized as fundamentally different and opposite rather than as variations on a single type. ^[5] In this new framework, anatomical differences between the sexes became the biological foundation for gender roles, rather than gender roles being primary and anatomy secondary.

Laqueur attributes this shift primarily to political rather than scientific factors, particularly the upheavals surrounding the French Revolution and emerging debates about women's place in public life. ^[6] He argues that the new emphasis on biological difference served to justify women's exclusion from the public sphere by grounding gender hierarchy in nature rather than custom. ^[7]

Criticism

Laqueur's thesis has been subject to extensive criticism from historians of medicine and science. Critics have challenged both his reading of primary sources and the accuracy of his proposed chronology.

Coexistence of multiple models

Multiple scholars have argued that one-sex and two-sex understandings of the body coexisted throughout Western history, rather than succeeding one another in distinct eras. Helen King's book The One-Sex Body on Trial (2013) provides a detailed critique, arguing that "two-sex and one-sex ways of thinking about the body have existed alongside one another since antiquity, and the choice about which model to privilege depended on the rhetorical needs of individual authors." ^[8]

Joan Cadden's Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (1993) demonstrates that medieval medical writers held diverse and often contradictory views about sex difference that cannot be reduced to a single "one-sex" framework. ^[9] Medieval texts emphasized differences between the sexes in ways Laqueur's model does not accommodate, including differences in bodily flesh, humoral composition, and the uniquely female functions of menstruation and lactation.

Earlier emergence of sexual dimorphism

Michael Stolberg's 2003 article "A Woman Down to Her Bones" challenges Laqueur's chronology directly, providing evidence that explicit sexual dimorphism in anatomical thinking emerged by the early 17th century—at least 200 years before Laqueur claims. ^[10] Stolberg demonstrates that leading physicians around 1600 "insisted on the unique and purposeful features of the female skeleton and the female genital organs and illustrated them visually," contradicting the notion of a dominant one-sex model persisting until the Enlightenment. ^[11]

Stolberg also contests Laqueur's claim that sexual dimorphism arose merely as a political response to Enlightenment ideals of equality. He cites multiple contributing factors including renewed emphasis on empirical observation during the 16th and 17th centuries and the declining influence of humorism. ^[12]

Misreading of sources

Katharine Park and Robert Nye's early review of Making Sex argued that Laqueur misinterprets ancient and Renaissance anatomists' comparisons between male and female genitalia. ^[13] When Galen and other writers compared the vagina to a penis or the uterus to a scrotum, they were drawing analogies to aid understanding, not asserting literal identity. Park and Nye suggest Laqueur's reading "the vagina really is a penis, and the uterus is a scrotum" is anachronistic. ^[14]

King further demonstrates that Laqueur selectively quoted and decontextualized his sources. For example, his interpretation of anatomical illustrations by Andreas Vesalius as evidence for the one-sex model ignores the illustrations' accompanying captions and labels, which identify specifically female structures. ^[15] King also notes that Laqueur relied heavily on Galen's On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body while ignoring Hippocratic texts that emphasized fundamental differences between male and female flesh and physiology. ^[16]

Simplification and appeal

Critics have noted that Making Sex achieved widespread influence partly because its binary framework—one era, one model, replaced by another era, another model—offered a conveniently simple narrative for scholars across disciplines. ^[8] As one historiographical survey noted, "The greatest challenge in disrupting the hegemony of Laqueur's story is that it is so neat and, as a result, so exportable across academic disciplines." ^[17]

The "Eugesta" journal published an article in 2018 titled "Let Go of Laqueur: Towards New Histories of the Sexed Body," calling for scholars to move beyond the one-sex/two-sex framework entirely and develop more nuanced histories of how bodies have been understood as sexed across different times and cultures. ^[17]

Laqueur's response

In a 2003 response to Stolberg, Laqueur argued that "occasional piece[s] of evidence for sexual dimorphism in Renaissance anatomy" do not undermine his thesis, since isolated observations do not discredit prevailing worldviews. ^[18] He maintained that the fundamental epistemological shift he described—from sex as reflecting metaphysical truths to sex as biological foundation for gender—remained valid regardless of when specific anatomical differences were first noted.

Influence and legacy

Despite scholarly criticisms, Making Sex has remained highly influential, particularly in gender studies, literary criticism, and cultural history. The book helped establish the broader argument that sex, like gender, is historically and culturally constructed rather than a timeless biological given. This insight has proven productive for scholars even when they reject Laqueur's specific historical claims.

The ongoing debate over Making Sex also illustrates broader methodological questions in the history of science: how to interpret historical texts without imposing modern categories, how to balance sweeping narratives against the complexity of historical evidence, and how disciplinary popularity can sustain a thesis despite sustained criticism from specialists.

See also

• History of biology
• History of medicine
• History of sexuality
• Sex and gender distinction
• Social construction of gender
• Thomas Laqueur

References

Citations

1. Laqueur 1990, pp. 25–26.
2. Laqueur 1990, p. 25.
3. Laqueur 1990, pp. 26–28.
4. Laqueur 1990, pp. 42–47.
5. Laqueur 1990, pp. 149–154.
6. Laqueur 1990, pp. 193–194.
7. Laqueur 1990, pp. 151–152.
8. King 2013, pp. ix–xi.
9. Cadden 1993.
10. Stolberg 2003, pp. 274–299.
11. Stolberg 2003, p. 274.
12. Stolberg 2003, pp. 290–298.
13. Park & Nye 1991, pp. 53–57.
14. Park & Nye 1991, p. 54.
15. King 2013, pp. 34–38.
16. King 2013, pp. 42–44.
17. Green 2018.
18. Laqueur 2003, pp. 300–306.

Works cited

• Cadden, Joan (1993). Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-48378-0.
• Green, Monica H. (2018). "Let Go of Laqueur: Towards New Histories of the Sexed Body". Eugesta. 8: 1–45.
• King, Helen (2013). The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence. The History of Medicine in Context. Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN   978-1-4094-6335-1.
• Laqueur, Thomas (1990). Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN   978-0-674-54349-2.
• Laqueur, Thomas (2003). "Sex in the Flesh". Isis . 94 (2): 300–306. doi:10.1086/379388.
• Park, Katharine; Nye, Robert A. (February 18, 1991). "Destiny is Anatomy". The New Republic : 53–57.
• Stolberg, Michael (2003). "A Woman Down to Her Bones: The Anatomy of Sexual Difference in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries". Isis . 94 (2): 274–299. doi:10.1086/379387.

Further reading

• Fletcher, Anthony (1995). Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN   978-0-300-06531-2.
• Harvey, Karen (2002). "The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century". The Historical Journal . 45 (4): 899–916. doi:10.1017/S0018246X02002728.
• Schiebinger, Londa (1993). Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN   978-0813535319.