Biology and the body - Essay Example

Biology and the body The inclusion of the body in discussing of gender has to a large extent made the understanding of the gender more elaborate, Laqueur’s idea of the body in which he viewed gender as being staged, some of the reasons that his theory helped in understanding the gender better is that one.Thomas Laqueur sex models helped understand gender more clearly where he theorised in the one sex model that the in the ancient times there existed only one gender which was the male, the female gender was just an imperfect male gender.

He went ahead in the one sex model to explain that the female anatomy has been made to support this model where the Vagina is an interior penis, the uterus is the scrotum and the ovaries are the testicles (Laqueur 28). However, this theory of one sex is criticised especially on the womb, which in the ancient times was thought to be the belly, which was common to both men and women. Another theory that Thomas Laqueur put forward and that followed the one sex model is the two sex theory says that the body determines the gender disparities and the female has a completely different anatomy from a male with dissimilar parts of the anatomy functions and feelings.

He explained that there is no sex is a monopoly, Laqueur further went ahead and argued that science would only invent new ways of speaking and not to liberate one gender from another, he put out that destiny is anatomy.The film is it a boy or a girl that Phyllis Ward of the intersex society of North America advocates for intersex people goes into deeper analysis on what biologically determines the gender of an individual. The biological differences between the genders help us further understand how the sex of an individual, which is biologically determined before birth, enables one to play his gender role.

For instance, what causes a woman to be a woman biologically and how she is wired to perform the activities that involve the gender and her role in sexual intercourse due her having a vagina.The body is at the centre of any understanding regarding gender as the various anatomical processes in the body determine the gender and the anatomical role the gender plays. However according to the one sex model that there exists a monopoly of gender and that the woman was an imperfect man, then it would be accepted that for a man the larger or bigger the penis is the manlier he is presumed to be.

However, that idea is fallacious since even in those times of philosopher Aristotle they preferred a small penis, which was thought of as having a higher possibility of making a woman pregnant since the semen from a male, would only lead to conception in those times if it was not cold. In my own understanding using the two-way sex theory where the two genders are viewed as independent and distinct from each other through their body anatomy would be the best approach towards understanding gender.

Works citedLaqueur, Thomas W. Destiny Is Anatomy. , 2000. Print.