In den Leib geschnitten Produktionsformen des biologischen Geschlechts

Abstract

The article investigates the origin and development of the concepts of ‘sex’ in the sense used in the sex-gender debate. It analyses medical and surgical texts from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The main thesis is that the biological meaning of ‘sex’ was an effect of surgical interventions on herm-aphroditical bodies. In this context it becomes clear that until the end of the 18th century a phenotypical concept of ‘sex’ predominated. After the invention of hermaphroditical bodies the meaning of ‘sex’ changed into an organical, gonadic system.