Almost all the humanists in this book so far had a severe limitation: they applied their ideas of humanity or humanitas almost exclusively to white, able-bodied, gender-conforming males—that is, to people who looked more or less like Leonardo’s Vitruvian figure. Only this subset of the species could aspire to be “universal man.” Any other type was treated as a deficiency and a falling-off, perhaps falling below the level of the human altogether.
