One Sex Two Sex Theory

One Sex Two Sex Theory

The one-sex and two-sex theory are two models of human anatomy or fetal development discussed in Thomas Laqueur's book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. He theorizes that a fundamental change in attitudes toward human sexual anatomy occurred in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Prior to the eighteenth century, it was a common belief that women and men represented two different forms of one essential sex: that is, women were seen to possess the same fundamental reproductive structure as men, the only difference being that female genitalia was inside the body, not outside of it. Anatomists saw the vagina as an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles. However, around the 18th century, the dominant view became that of two sexes directly opposite to each other. There was an abundance of literature written in the 18th century supporting the two sex model. Jacques-Louis Moreau wrote that "not only are the sexes different, but they are different in every conceivable aspect of body and soul, in every physical and moral aspect. To the physician or the naturalist, the relation of woman to man is a series of opposites and contrasts". Women and men began to be seen as polar opposites and each sex was compared in relation to the other. Gender, prior to the eighteenth century, was not prescribed upon individual; a man could be physically male, but he could have a feminine gender identity. This was seen as being normal and even acceptable. With the switch to the two sex model, differences that had been expressed with reference to gender now came to be expressed with reference to sex and to biology.