One Sex Two Sex Theory - Sex Socialized

Sex Socialized

The change from the one sex model to the two sex model helped to create a new understanding of gender in the meaning of human history. There is an "increasing differentiation of male and female social roles; conversely, a greater differentiation of roles and a greater female 'delicacy and sensibility' are signs of moral progress." If men and women are seen as being physically different, then they must be treated differently as well.

In the two sex model, since there are physical differences between men and women, there must be differences in how they receive pleasure. Sigmund Freud tries to explain the functions of the clitoris by challenging the preconceived notions about it. Freud feels that "if we are to understand how a little girl turns into a woman, we must further follow the vicissitudes of excitability of the clitoris." He sees the clitoris as being "the organ through which excitement is transmitted to the 'adjacent female sexual parts' to its permanent home, the true locus of a woman's erotic life, the vagina." For Freud he uses the analogy of the clitoris as "pine shavings set a log of harder wood on fire". For Freud, there is no real female interior if pleasure can transfer from the clitoris to the vagina. Freud tries to provide evidence for a vaginal orgasm and he makes it so a clitoral orgasm is seen to be adolescence. By downplaying the role of the clitoris, he makes women's sexual needs seen as being inferior and secondary to those of men. He says that "whenever a woman is incapable of achieving an orgasm via coitus, provided the husband is an adequate partner, and prefers clitoral stimulation to any other form of sexual activity, she can be regarded as suffering from frigidity and requires psychiatric assistance." In the two sex model, it is seen that Freud "must be regarded as a narrative of culture in anatomical disguise. The tale of the clitoris is a parable of culture, of how the body is forged into a shape valuable to civilization despite, not because of itself". Freud changed the meaning of the clitoris and contributes to the notion of the passionless woman.

Laqueur says that there was obvious evidence around in Freud's time that the clitoris was in fact the source of pleasure in women. François Mauriceau notes that the clitoris is "where the author of Nature has placed the seat of voluptuousness – as he has in the glans of the penis – where the most exquisite sensibility is located, and where he placed the origins of lasciviousness in women." The vagina on the other hand was seen as "a far duller organ" and "only the glands near its outer end are relevant to sexual pleasure because they pour out great quantities of a saline liquor during coitus, which increases the heat and enjoyment of women". By changing the meaning of the clitoral orgasm, Freud seems to be putting women in opposition to men and further assigning women to socially assigned roles. To say that a woman is supposed to orgasm through her vagina as opposed to her clitoris "works against the organic structures of the body." In Laqueur's "One Sex Two Sex Theory", he sees Freud as being instrumental in the sexual socialization of women. He feels that "the cultural myth of vaginal orgasm is told in the language of science. And thus, not thanks to but in spite of neurology, a girl becomes the Viennese bourgeois ideal of a woman." Sexual differences in "One Sex Two Sex Theory" become reasons for social differences among men and women.