One-sex and two-sex theories

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The one-sex and two-sex theories (also referred to as 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 in gender studies, literary criticism, and cultural history, its thesis has attracted substantial criticism from historians of medicine and science. Critics including Helen King, Joan Cadden, Katharine Park, and Michael Stolberg have argued that Laqueur oversimplifies the historical record, misreads primary sources, and imposes an artificial chronological divide where one-sex and two-sex understandings in fact coexisted...

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