"Before the Enlightenment the female skeleton didn't exist"

you encounter lots of these myths around Darwin 'discovering' evolution.

His breakthrough was the mechanism of evolution by natural selection - that no guiding hand of man or god was required, and that it could explain the origin of species not merely variants on defined types.

Normal people are forever being told what to think by articulate weirdos. I base this opinion on my Catholic upbringing, blighted as it was with original sin, the notion of the virgin birth, categories of sinful behaviour, the corrupt nature of the physical body, the power of prayer and the prospect of eternal torture in Hell for not believing in any of this tosh.

Normal people presumably were perfectly aware that children, and the young of other species, inherit characteristics from their mothers as well as their fathers.

Indeed. But you can imagine the ivory tower misogynists waffling on about the "seeds growing differently in different types of soil" or something. Trying to diminish the clearly-obvious-to-breeders equal contribution to heredity from mothers by philosophical flim-flam.

Normal people presumably were perfectly aware that children, and the young of other species, inherit characteristics from their mothers as well as their fathers.

Indeed, you encounter lots of these myths around Darwin 'discovering' evolution. Humans bred horses and dogs for millennia. We have had a pretty good working knowledge of heredity and evolution- what developed was understanding of the scope and mechanisms.

It did fit the observations they were able to make.

It didn’t though. I’m sure only the medieval/classical equivalent of Sally Hines would have believed this. Ivory tower misogynists.

Normal people presumably were perfectly aware that children, and the young of other species, inherit characteristics from their mothers as well as their fathers.

The idea that prehistoric people didn't think men had anything to do with reproductive
The idea that anyone thought anything in any particular way in the past is all speculation anyway, unless there is direct, explicit, unambiguous evidence, and even then it’s not representative of society as a whole.
I expect archaeologists of the future will excavate shopping malls and conclude that they were places of religious pilgrimage and that deviant sexual practices were part of the rites involved (based on Ann Summers outlets) (I suppose this is true to a certain extent).

The idea that prehistoric people didn't think men had anything to do with reproductive is really pretty speculative. There isn't really any evidence to that effect, it depends on a guess that pre-historic people didn't connect copulation with pregnancy which seems far-fetched.

As a hypothesis it also doesn't offer an explanation of why we would even have two sexes if one was superfluous for reproduction. The idea that women were a vessel at least has the merit of explaining why there would be men and women, and although we are now in a position to know it's incorrect, it did fit the observations they were able to make. There was no real way for them to know what went on during conception.

I remember keef, the twitter account who I think drew the cartoon. He was suspended from twitter but when I was just reading and not yet discussing I read threads by keef. He had interesting convos with TRAs and was trying to work things out himself, having generally been a lefty and feeling like he was parting company from his usual tribe over this one thing. Never spoke to him because I was in reading only mode, but his was one of the accounts that informed my thinking then. Lots of people have made a difference to ending #nodebate in lots of small ways.

For so many of us, the “trans rights” issue is what woke us up to the real scale of misogyny in the world, still today. And from there sparked an interest in and greater understanding of the huge history behind women’s oppression at the hands of men.

That sense of the backstory which tbh I’d never really thought about before getting involved via all this. I knew about the Suffragettes and Mary Wolstencroft(sp?),, but I’d never really thought about the sort of global, millennia-long history of patriarchy: the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the patriarchs of the Old Testament, and all the rest, how that all weaves together and created the foundations of the world we live in today. How deep those foundations go.

You can’t separate all this out. That history, that story of women’s oppression and subjugation, that absolutely definitively was predicated on the reality of our biological sex and how that differentiates us from and makes us vulnerable to the male of the species, is inextricably linked to the whole saga that is playing out now. It’s the backdrop, the foundation, the very bones of the issue.

I’ve learnt so much on this board firstly from the women who have studied this in more depth, and also from my own explorations prompted by discussions on here. It all ties in together. It will be a shame to have to adhere to some kind of separation of the supposedly distinct strands of the discussion. If it can even be done.

See, with the new rules, where would a discussion like this fit in? It was triggered by that ludicrous quote from Hines so is part of the Sex/Gender debate, and obviously there’s a link to that running through the thread.

But at the same time, it’s really relevant to Feminism quite apart form the “Sex/Gender debate”, there’s hugely educational and interesting stuff in there and lots of ideas to stimulate thought and discussion about the history of patriarchy in general, the evolution of misogyny and a feminist take on that.

How could you separate all this out? It would be (will be) such a loss.

Judith Butler-inspired idea that language creates reality rather than the other way around.

Actually, that was (sort of) Kant; though he'd be fucking horrified with what Butler et al have done with his ideas.

In the pre-Enlightenment era they thought there was one biological sex, male, with different degrees of perfection. Men were perfect males, and women were literally deformed, mutated males.

It's worth pointing out that this is what one Sociologist reckons. It's far from accepted that this is the case. There is evidence to show an anatomical understanding of two sexes in Western Science from the middle ages. There was certainly a good practical understanding of the differences between the sexes even while anatomical knowlege was poor.

It's more reasonable to say that some people put forward a theory that there was only one sex and the variations between men and women were a spectrum of sexual development. This theory was disproved by the medical advances of the enlightenment.

Skipped a few but just want to say that in some non-human animals males will collect and control a group of females. How conscious they are of their reproductive roles is hard to say but surely there's an instinctive, non-verbal understanding of it that pre-dates humanity itself?

Fascinating thread, thanks WeeBisom and Charley, I am loving reading all this weird history.

and at the cartoon in the OP.

Yes. And yet so many people had very useful awareness of general anatomical landmarks and what to expect.

Yes, many women who were midwives and doulas and healers had huge knowledge. But weren't involved in medical research.

Also painted as witches for a time.

Yes, excellent thread. Thank you so much.

I knew smatterings of this, but have learned so much.

Hines really is quite special. Next-level trolling.

It does all make me breathe sigh of relief that I never actually took up my place on a postmodern literature MA that I toyed with 25 years ago...I can't imagine what kind of an intellectual quagmire I'd be in now!

Brilliant thread. Loving the erudite, informative posts. Thanks WeeBisom, CharlieParley, and all.

The history of anatomical illustration is extremely revealing.

The history of anatomy was inherently sexist.

Possibly till a few years ago when the full size of the clitoris was worked out. Many text books across the world still don't include it.

We are however starting to regress and again deny the female skeleton is anything different to the male, as shown in this year's Olympics.

It is quite an old tweet - we had a discussion about it at the time.

I think Hines is simply using the rather daft postmodernist, Judith Butler-inspired idea that language creates reality rather than the other way around.

Sally Hines is such an asset to our cause. I'd love to have the money to fund a billboard campaign - we could get her best quotes up in huge letters for as many people as possible to be exposed to.

It's all so clever and metaphysical isn't it? I say she's got trolling down to a fine art. Say the most ludicrous thing you can think of, make it so outrageous that people question themselves and have to pretend you're right so they don't get publicly exposed as the stupid, ignorant ones. You then get lots of funding to go away and think of more upside down ideas.

Honestly, what a brilliant mind she has. And that cartoon response has made my day.