Constructing Sex

Abstract

This chapter examines how southern physicians constructed the meanings of male and female bodies. Believing that reproductive processes were inherently dangerous to women's health, doctors throughout the nation sought to extend their authority by proclaiming that menarche, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and menopause often required medical attention. In the South, these vulnerabilities had to be ascribed to white women's bodies at the same time that doctors rejected them for black women. However, doctors eager to expand their practice and willing to acknowledge black women's suffering could not reject them too vehemently. This chapter considers how physicians defined white women's bodies as well as the ways in which they addressed the contradictions in their explanations of racial and sexual differences. It shows that physicians utilized the familiar trope of the dangers of modern civilized life and sympathy theory to explain women's health, and especially white women's vulnerable bodies and reproductive suffering in contrast to the relative absence of such weakness in black women.