ABSTRACT
Clitorises have a long history of disappearance and diminution in anatomical textbooks in the West. They are surrounded by fearful assumptions regarding the dangerousness of female lust and the threat female sexuality poses to social order. They are at the centre of a complicated web of constructed sexuality. While anatomy provides simplification, universalisation, and normalisation, other disciplines link clitorises with lesbianism, nymphomania, and prostitution. Class differences were defined using clitorises, and the disorderly woman became the Other. Tracing this history shows that sex, like gender, is socially and historically specific and therefore as much a product of social relations as biological materiality. In fact, biological materiality has been filtered through the straight and normative lens of medico-science. However, history also shows a wealth of knowledge that fell victim to the ignorance of interest-driven politics in its course. And it also records rebellious resistance, be it the feminists of the 1960s or contemporary queer movements: embodiment and lived experience prove to be disruptive forces that constantly challenge and renegotiate prevailing definitions of body and self.
