Theorizing Female Inversion: Sexology, Discipline, and Gender at the Fin de Siècle

Abstract

Th e q u e s t i o n o f h o w t o t h e o r i z e historical discourses of sex has received much critical attention since Foucault first developed his influential model of sexuality as the product of historical and socioeconomic contingency. Foucault’s approach has rightly been criticized for marginalizing issues of gender, as queer and feminist critics have turned attention to the complex intersections between concepts of sexual behavior and ideas of gender. Investigations of female sexuality in particular, ranging from the reconstructive lesbian histories of Martha Vicinus and others to the queer cultural histories of female gender advanced by Judith Halberstam, have complicated our understanding of how to theorize the experiential realities of historical sexual subjects whose words and thoughts have not always been preserved. These distinct, frequently opposing studies typically approach the theorization of sexological taxonomies in relation to ideas of modern sexual identity formation, importantly scrutinizing the impact and validity of identity labels and identifying gaps in existing histories of sexuality. but how can we understand the meanings of sexual concepts at the point