One-sex and two-sex theories

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The one-sex and two-sex theories 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. Laqueur theorizes that a fundamental change in attitudes toward human sexual anatomy occurred in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. He draws from scholars such as Aristotle and Galen to argue that prior to the eighteenth century, women and men were viewed as 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.^[1] Anatomists saw the vagina as an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles.^[2] Laqueur uses the theory of interconvertible bodily fluids as evidence for the one-sex model.^[3] However, he claims that around the 18th century, the dominant view became that of two sexes directly opposite to each other.^[4] In his view, the departure from a one-sex model is largely because of political shifts which challenged the way women's sexuality came to be seen.^[5] One result of this was the emerging view of the female orgasm as nonessential to conception after the eighteenth century.^[6] Women and men began to be seen as opposites and each sex was compared in relation to the other.^[4] Freud's work further perpetuated the sexual socialization of women by dictating how they should feel pleasure.^[7]

Laqueur's theories have been subject to criticism by scholars including Katharine Park, Robert Nye, Helen King, Joan Cadden, and Michael Stolberg for misrepresenting and omitting evidence by earlier scholars, as well as for drawing an overly concrete portrayal of the shift from one-sex to two-sex models.