ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the predominant theories about sex and gender that have developed over the last three hundred years and which continue to shape our understanding. The focus is on the mid-twentieth-century shift away from biological determinism made possible by the feminist uptake of the distinction between biological and psycho-social aspects of sex. Some of the problematic implications of the surrender of biological sex and the body to the discursive construction of science, biology, and medicine are discussed. A key problem for feminist theory is the tendency of the sex/gender dualism to attach itself to and produce/replicate other problematic dualisms such as nature/culture, mind/body, and innate/voluntary.
Section 2 of the chapter tracks through significant moments in bioscience's search for the source and signifier of ‘true sex’ since the Victorian era, pausing to consider theories that proposed the gonads, the sex hormones, the sex chromosomes, and the genitals as candidates. The theory which has dominated intersex medical management since the mid-twentieth century is introduced. This discussion foreshadows the thesis that brain-sex binary theory is the latest candidate in that list.
