Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood

by Cynthia Russett

One scarcely knows whether to laugh or cry. The spectacle presented, in Cynthia Russett's splendid book, of nineteenth-century white male scientists and thinkers earnestly trying to prove women inferior to men--thereby providing, along with "savages" and "idiots," an evolutionary buffer between men and animals--is by turns appalling, amusing, and saddening. Surveying the work of real scientists as well as the products of more dubious minds, Russett has produced a learned yet immensely enjoyable chapter in the annals of human folly. At the turn of the century science was successfully challenging the social authority of religion; scientists wielded a power no other group commanded. Unfortunately, as Russett demonstrates, in Victorian sexual science, empiricism tangled with prior belief, and scientists' delineation of the mental and physical differences between men and women was directed to show how and why women were inferior to men. These men were not necessarily misogynists. This was an unsettling time, when the social order was threatened by wars, fierce economic competition, racial and industrial conflict, and the failure of society to ameliorate poverty, vice, crime, illnesses. Just when men needed the psychic lift an adoring dependent woman could give, she was demanding the vote, higher education, and the opportunity to become a wage earner! No other work has treated this provocative topic so completely, nor have the various scientific theories used to marshal evidence of women's inferiority been so thoroughly delineated and debunked. Erudite enough for scholars in the history of science, intellectual history, and the history of women, this book with its stylish presentation will also attract a large nonspecialist audience.

Genres: History, Feminism, Nonfiction, Science, Gender, Womens, American

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 10, 1989

Reviews

[Alok Vaid-Menon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Often times people — including trans exclusionary feminists — refuse to accept trans women as women by weaponizing the idea of “biological sex.” They argue that trans women are not women because they are incapable of giving birth like “biological females.” They conveniently forget how “biological sex” is a framework that was created by white male scientists in the 19th century specifically to justify discrimination against white women and people of color.

Yale historian Dr. Russett argues that when white women organized for rights in the 19th century, European scientists responded with a “detailed examination of the differences between men and women that justified their differing social roles” (10). For these scientists, issues of race and sex were one in the same. They focused specifically on white women because they thought the “lesser peoples of Asia and Africa…were dispensable,” whereas white women bore “the future of the race” (77).

After Darwin’s theory of evolution, white male scientists doubled-down on their efforts to deny white women an equal role in society, inserting white women and people of color between themselves and apes in a fabricated racial evolutionary continuum. They argued that women were “inherently different from men in their anatomy, physiology, temperament, and intellect,” and that white women “lagged behind men, much as primitive people lagged behind Europeans” in the civilizational hierarchy (11). German scientist Carl Vogt argued that white women’s skulls resembled Black people’s skulls more than those of white men. While white men were seen as unique and distinct from one another, white women were seen as “more generic and less specific” (35).

Scientists defined womanhood as the ability to reproduce, arguing that women’s pelvises were proof of “the promise of capable maternity” (29) and describing women as naturally having less sexual desire (if any) than men. White women’s fundamentall essence was defined as being a reproductive “racial conduit” (61). Canadian scientist Grant Allen argued that white women were “the sex sacrificed for reproductive necessities” (43). If white women deviated from this role as reproducing agents, they were apathologized as criminal, unsexed, ugly, and abnormal.

Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer argued that confining women to the domestic sphere and preventing them from working was the “touchstone of high civilization,” unlike Indigenous and Black communities where women worked. Scientists believed that white women could’t receive an education or work, because they would lose vital energy that was reserved for reproduction. Ely Van de Warker called this the “penalty of sex” and Herbert Spencer called it “the physical tax which reproduction necessitates.” European male scientists concluded that the primary role of white women was to mother, that she had no other “gift to offer but her healthy — and numerous — offspring” (125).

European scientists leveraged the rhetoric of “biology” to naturalize discrimination against white women. This wasn’t legitimate science based on “reliable data;” instead it was often discussed in their research as “common knowledge” (11). By defining women’s whole being and purpose as reproductive, they were able to justify denying women’s suffrage and women’s mobility as a law of nature, not the result of political choices. Unfortunately, centuries later people continue to deploy the rhetoric of science — not the reality of science — to justify oppression against trans and intersex people.

It’s not science to define womanhood by genitalia and reproduction, it’s sexism. Womanhood is far more complex and expansive than the ability to give birth.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

For some inexplicable reason, the description on Goodreads for this book states that the scientists during the Victorian era that worked very hard to show that women were inferior to men were not necessarily misogynists. No, they absolutely were misogynists. If you think that women are inferior to men, and you manipulate your scientific data to fit that model, you are practicing misogyny. You are, in fact, defining it. It doesn't matter if your world seems turned upside down by the new scientific fields of thermodynamics, genetics, and evolution. That doesn't give you a pass to make your data fit your model. That is the capital sin of science. I'm a scientist; I'm quite sure about this.

I found this to be a fascinating view of how not to do science, and the dangers inherent in preconceived ideas not based upon data but upon what you want to be true, using the science of sexual differences as an example. A similar study could be made (and is used as an example here) of how male, white scientists also "figured out" why white men were superior to black men.

[Kari]

The true value of Russett's book is the volume of insightful connections she makes. Even a scholar already familiar with some of the concepts in this book will find her work invaluable. For instance, having already read Emily Martin's Woman in the Body, I was familiar with the concept presented in this book of the human body as a machine comprised of its input and output balance (Victorians thought one had to be careful of not over-spending resources from their body's stores). However, even though Martin brings up this issue in an explicitly feminist work, Russett details even further the implications of this system than Martin. For example, she discusses the implications of this intake-outgo system when women's menstrual cycles are factored in. She also brings up the ways in which this Victorian conceptualization of womanhood contradicted their simultaneous anxieties regarding the laws of thermodynamics. For example, though it seems to be common-sense that the body is not a closed-system as this intake-outgo logic would imply. Russett postulates that perhaps this odd reasoning is the result of Victorian anxiety catalyzed by their fear in the ultimate state of chaos threatened by increased entropy in the universe. Such connections--bringing simple popular science to its ultimate logical implications for women and bringing into conversation multiple strands of popular scientific thought of the day--make this book a must-read for anyone studying Victorian women's issues or Victorian science. Russett is also careful to name the most popular/important thinkers of the time, leading the interested scholar down many further avenues of study.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another highly specialized one, so YMMV depending on your interest. Russett looks at how 19th century scientists took standard assumptions about women — more timid, less intelligent, less mature, more emotional — and applied the era's scientific breakthroughs to "prove" that women could only be subordinate to men. Did you know, for example, that women don't have beards because they're immature children compared to mature, hairy-faced men? That women have smaller heads so they can't possibly be as smart? That too much brain-work will drain the energy away from the reproductive system (that chapter also explained why Victorians obsessed over depleting the human life force with too much sex or masturbation)? As Russett shows, the scientists were doing piss-poor research shaped by their pre-existing views of women. A very good job.

[Anthony Zupancic · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's short (only 200 pages), deeply descriptive and analytic, and has important implications for the place of science in the discussion of gender and gender roles today. Russett does a fantastic job tracing the gender implications of ground breaking science during the 19th century and covers many of the responses from the proto-feminist movement. It's particularly interesting, if nothing else, as an examination of the two Victorian gender stereotypes and of the the place of science in 19th century society.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

15 libraries in OR have this

Subtitle is The Victorian Construction of Womanhood

from phrenology came the science of brain volume and shape of face which proved that women were always going to be inferior. From Physics came conservation of energy which proved that if women spent energy on working in an intellectual manner she wouldn't be able to put that energy into the offspring she would bear thus making the next generation sickly.

[Joanna Herat · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting look at the influence of science and victorian perspectives on women's lives and the broader view of sex and sexuality.

Didn't quite manage to finish it though...

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for anyone going into a scientific field. Insightful and dejecting.

[Edward Champion · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really an academic paper stretched desperately into a book. There's some valuable information here on how Darwin, Havelock Ellis, and Spencer were belittling of women, even as they were "driven by science." But the curious thing about this book is that Russett hasn't done a great deal of research into what the women had to say about how they were perceived -- other than a few pages devoted to Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

[Kati Ber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting history of sexuality and how it was perceived over the years
also, (having english as my second language only) most definitely the hardest to understand english book i ever read

[Elsa Mallard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly underrated, really interesting and good perspective on feminist theory and history.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given to me by John Elwood!!!