The anatomy of gender
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The anatomy of gender Delphine Gardey: Politique du clitoris. Paris: Textuel, 2019, 154pp, €15.90 PB Jonathan Simon1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Delphine Gardey, Professor at the University of Geneva and former director of its Institute for Gender Studies, has written a short, engaging text around the clitoris. Aimed at a wide but informed public, Gardey’s Politics of the Clitoris uses this his‑ torically marginalized if not neglected organ to pull together elements from the his‑ tory of anatomy, sexology and physiology and align them with an overview of the main currents in the American feminist movement. The book ends with a reflection on the controversial issue of female circumcision. Gardey opens the book with two university students being fined for drawing an image of a clitoris on the pavement of a Swiss public garden in 2018 and then walks the reader through the history of anatomy and the place of the clitoris in this his‑ tory. Here, she draws on classic contributions to the history of science such as those by Thomas Laqueur and Katharine Park. She relates this historical part to France’s vision of its colonies, illustrating the idea of the image of Africans as ‘primitive’ and ‘oversexualised’ in French eyes with the story of Saartjie Baartman—the ‘Hottentot Venus’—and her tragic destiny in Paris at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Mov‑ ing into the twentieth century, the history of the clitoris, particularly in the burgeon‑ ing science of sexology, is used to introduce the herstory of the feminist movement, with emphasis on the rise of the American Women’s Health Movement and the pub‑ lication of Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1971 by the Boston Women’s Health Book Col‑ lective. Broadening her scope well beyond the anatomical and the medical, Gardey proposes a review of feminist academic approaches to sex and gender, ending with the work of Judith Butler and a warning against placing too much emphasis on ana‑ tomical or physiological considerations when thinking about gender. The most recent controversial issue that Gardey raises is that of female circumci‑ sion, notably as it has played out in France in terms of both legislation and feminist activism. Gardey confronts the feminist arguments in favour of making the practice
* Jonathan Simon jonathan.simon@univ‑lorraine.fr 1
Archives Poincaré, Philosophy Department, University of Lorraine, Nancy, France
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illegal with those who argue for freedom of choice in the issue. The author refuses to take a position on the issue for reasons she explains quite clearly. Given the short, introductory nature of the book, none of these issues—coloni‑ alism, feminism, scientism, sexism, genital mutilation—are explored in any great detail, but the book has the value of drawing the reader’s attention to them in a con‑ cise, contextualized and intelligent fashion. Nevertheless, while there are a fair num‑ ber of footnotes providing important bibliographical references, it is a pity that there is no general bibliography at the end of the
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