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

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

Sally Hines: "Before the Enlightenment the female skeleton didn't exist"

The pure joy of the riposte to this (tweeter reportedly suspended, I don't know for what):

twitter.com/shirleysascot/status/1403949421663039489

via twitter.com/shirleysascot/status/1403949421663039489?s=20

That is a great image.

"And as if by magic the caveman woman appeared."

That would have made for a fine Mr Benn episode.

That is outstanding 😂

🤣

Also, as someone who does actual gender studies, as in critical readings of gender in its historical contexts, she is a moron who doesn't understand Thomas Laqueur.

@JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff

Also, as someone who does actual gender studies, as in critical readings of gender in its historical contexts, she is a moron who doesn't understand Thomas Laqueur.

Yes! I know as much as would go on a postcard leaving plenty of room for the address and a stamp when it comes to gender studies but even I've heard of Laqueur and Schiebinger.

I envy people who can draw - and the creativity of that is bliss.

So, before the Enlightenment the THEORY about sex was that there was only one biological sex and women were just shit, malformed males. It was only during the Enlightenment (with autopsies etc) that scientists realised they'd made a mistake and there are two separate biological sexes. They were wrong about the theory. But in reality of course there were female skeletons. This is such a simplistic point I can't believe that people confuse the two. In reality, women always existed. In theory, the scientists mistakenly used to think they were just deformed males but changed that theory to reflect reality when science got better!

It's like saying germs didn't exist in the 16th century and were only invented in the victorian age. No, germs always existed. but the theory of germs wasn't developed until the mid 19th century.

Sally Hines, mistress of bone idle thinking.

I think she's just an elaborate troll. She's found a rich seam of funding to mine and she's going for it.

@TedImgoingmad

Sally Hines, mistress of bone idle thinking.

You've cut through to the heart of it there - and laid bare the skeleton argument.

I mean, I used to teach this stuff to second year undergrads, who got it. It's not bloody rocket science.

I used to work with Sally. If she is on one side of an argument, I am probably going to be on the other. Almost as a point of principle.

She was appointed to a professorship when I worked with her, which kind of solidified my complete disillusionment with academia. She’s very good at using buzzwords to apply for funding.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions her ability to stab women in the back chills me to the marrow

Even when they did begin to recognise women's skeletons, they didn't get it right and would depict women as having smaller skulls and too wide pelvises to support their views that women are too stupid to be educated and should be kept at home for child rearing. The men's skeleton was still seen as superior of course.

So, before the Enlightenment the THEORY about sex was that there was only one biological sex and women were just shit, malformed males. It was only during the Enlightenment (with autopsies etc) that scientists realised they'd made a mistake and there are two separate biological sexes.

Um, I'm assuming/hoping you can explain that better than Hines. I'm not getting it. What's the definition of "sex" there to make that make sense?

Do you just mean they discovered there are internal differences as well as external differences? Between the two sexes?

I'm not quite sure how the number of sexes is changing...

Or was it that they discovered that there really were two fundamentally different body types, rather than a "spectrum"?

Oh, do you just mean they hadn't spotted the fundamental differences in the female skeleton? So just traditional limited knowledge of female anatomy, and usual male = default?

Is she quite well, that professor?

Yes, before the Scientific Revolution (which led to the Enlightenment) the experimental method wasn’t really a thing. They based a lot of their knowledge on ancient Greek and Roman texts and the bible. So limited knowledge all round and then male bodies prioritised because sexism and all the philosophers were male.

In the same way that America didn't exist before a European "discovered" it?

You'd think with all the stuff about post-colonial guilt etc at the mo they'd twig. But no.

Does she think that before Newton there was no gravity?

She means I assume that no one had bothered studying female skeletons?

Which wouldn't surprise me. Similar to...

Viking warrior was buried with lots of weapons. Obviously a man of great fighting skill etc.
Years later. Erm. Actually that's a female skeleton. Ok. Female Viking warrior? Lots of historian types rethink. The weapons etc were probably ceremonial, a mark of respect etc.

Internal clitoris images for first time about what. 5 years ago?

Etc etc.

@bigkidsdidit

Does she think that before Newton there was no gravity?

Totally a white male construct. Before Newton and colonisation, non-European peoples used to float in the air. Fact.

@NecessaryScene

Oh, do you just mean they hadn't spotted the fundamental differences in the female skeleton? So just traditional limited knowledge of female anatomy, and usual male = default?

Yes. They thought there was man. And then there was a defective sort of man (i.e. woman).

The defective sort of man was inferior in every way. Smaller, weaker, slower. And obviously not as intelligent. How could women be equals to men when they were just a defective sort of man?

That thinking was very useful to men for thousands of years.

The understanding that women were not an incomplete version of man, no kind of man at all in fact, but in a category of their own, meaning there were two distinct and mutually exclusive sexes took some time to emerge. But thanks to the curiosity of the scientifically minded, we got there in the end.

I mean Sally Hines maybe hasn't...

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. So ovaries were undescended testicles, the vagina was an inverted penis, women's skeletons were 'deformed male skeletons' etc. Now, this theory was completely wrong and it goes to show that the theory itself didn't matter - everyone knew who the women were, everyone knew women got pregnant and had babies, everyone treated women like shit. The fact they were thought to be lesser males didn't lead to them being treated any better.

How did sexual reproduction work? They thought men's sperm contained a little human being inside it, and when it was placed inside the woman's body (which was just an empty cavity) this was like planting a seed. And the little human expanded and grew. Women contributed nothing to the process except being a vessel.

In the Enlightenment they managed to see gametes under the microscope and got to chop up some bodies (autopsies of women had been very rare before that point) and they realised that women weren't just mutated males, a subset of males, but were actually a different kind of thing - another biological sex. And they realised that women produced their own gametes which contributed to sexual reproduction, and that ovaries weren't just atrophied testes, and the vagina wasn't just an inverted penis. So the theory switched from the one sex model to the two sex model - females were their own biological category.

The two sexes always existed in reality, it's just that the Ancient Greeks didn't have the scientific knowledge to appreciate this. To say there was no such thing as a female skeleton in pre historic times is like saying there was no such thing as radiation, or bacteria, and that witches and magic existed. The theory changed, but reality was always the same.

I have to emphasise that this was just a change in the scientific theory. This didn't change how women were treated socially or in reality one bit. Women didn't get more respect when they were regarded to be a subset of males. What is interesting is that the scientific theories of the sexes didn't impact very much at all on how women were treated. Whether women were seen as males, or females, their social roles stayed the same and they were still oppressed.

This all seems very Eurocentric, which is a Bad Thing.

Tut, tut, Sally.