Vivre libre ou mourir

Hi! I just found your blog via your post about lord Hervey and I love all your insights about 1700s gender and sexuality!

I'd be curious to know if you've ever came across Diderot's d'Alambert's Dream trilogy? It's not often discussed but I feel like there are some really interesting things going on in regards to 18th century gender and sexuality – in the second and especially in the third dialogue.

I can't fully wrap my head around it but I thought it was fascinating (and also really odd at times). I'd love to hear your thoughts!

anyway, have a great day ~

I hadn’t read it but I have now and I do have thoughts.

The Second Dialogue: d'Alembert's Dream and the One-Sex Model

The second dialogue includes a discussion about the nature of biological sex. Bordeu says to Mlle de Lespinasse:

Here Diderot is referring to the theory of preformation. Proponents of preformation believed that organisms developed from miniature versions of themselves. There was two competing theories of preformation; Ovism in which the fetus was thought to come fully formed from the egg and Animalculism in which the fetus was thought to come fully formed from the sperm.

(for an overview on preformation theory see The Weaker Seed. The Sexist Bias of Reproductive Theory by Nancy Tuana)

[Illustration of a fetus fully formed in the sperm from Essai de Diotropique (1694) by Nicolaas Hartsoeker]

Bordeu dismisses the theory of preformation:

Mlle de Lespinasse didn't just think she was, in the ovaries of her mother, a fully formed person but a fully formed woman.

Historian and sexologist Thomas W. Laqueur argued that historically there were two models for understanding sex: the one-sex model and the two-sex model.

The two-sex model posits that sex is binary. That male and female are two distinct groups with no overlap. In this model intersex people are understood to be either disordered males or disordered females. In 1741 the physician James Parsons wrote that those who are reported to be "hermaphrodites" were "either perfect Men or Women, having only some Deformity or Disease in the Parts of Generation." (A Letter from James Parsons, M. D. F. R. S. to the Royal Society) Its important to note that the two-sex model has been, and still is, used to justify the medical abuse of intersex people.

Diderot seems to have believed in what Laqueur calls the one-sex model. The one-sex model posits that there was only really one sex: male. The female was seen as a "mutilated" or "less perfect" male.

Proponents of the one-sex model believed that male and female sexual characteristics were homogeneous. Ancient Greek physician Galen believed that the female sexual organs were an inversion of the male. He asks his readers to imagine the "uterus turned outward and projecting":

Galen concluded that “you could not find a single male part left over that had not simply changed its position.” (Making Sex by Thomas W. Laqueur, p26)

Galen believed that "the female is less perfect than the male for one, principle reason because she is colder". He theorised that sex determination was caused by heat and that woman's genitals "were formed within her when she was still a fetus, but could not because of the defect in the heat emerge and project on the outside".

The theory of heat causing sex determination dates back to Aristotle who believed that "the female is, as it were, a mutilated male". He theorised that the lack of heat prevents the embryo developing into it's "proper form" (i.e. male).

(for Galen and Aristotle's theories on sex determination see The Weaker Seed. The Sexist Bias of Reproductive Theory by Nancy Tuana)

Diderot interestingly has Mlle de Lespinasse flip the sexist assumptions of Galen and Aristotle suggesting that "Man is perhaps only the freak of a woman". (Dialogues p69)

Much like Galen, Diderot highlights the homogeneous nature of sex:

Diderot is not completely off the mark, modern science shows that sex is homogeneous. However modern scientists do not consider the uterus to be homogeneous to the scrotum. Whats interesting is that Diderot differs from Galen on the point of what is homogeneous to the penis. Galen believes that the vagina is the penis inverted while Diderot states that the clitoris is penis on a small scale.

[Anatomical illustrations of a vagina from De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) by Andreas Vesalius. Note that the vagina resembles a penis.]

Nathaniel Wanley in The Wonders of the Little World (1678) follows the Galenian model telling sex-change stories in which the vagina inverts and turns into a penis. In one story a woman changes sex on her wedding night. Wanley explains "those parts which were inverted on and conceal'd, began to appear, and she rose in in the Morning of a contrary Sex." In another story a girl is "wantoning in bed with a Maid" when "it fell out". When her parents were informed her name was changed to John "and from thenceforth she wore the habit of a man."

In contrast Giles Jacob in Tractus de Hermaphrodites (1718) writes that "the Clitoris in Women suffers erection and falling in the same manner as the Penis in Men" and that in cases of an enlarged clitoris women "may divert themselves with their Companions, to whom for the most part they can give as much Pleasure as Men do."

The 1725 edition of the popular 18th century anti-masturbation pamphlet Onania: or, the heinous sin of self-pollution claimed that in "Vigorous and Lustful" woman who had "given up themselves to the Practice of Self-Pollation" the clitoris could become "Inflated to the exact likeness and size of a human Penis erect".

In the one-sex model it's understood that there is a spectrum between male and female. Giles Jacob in Tractus de Hermaphrodites posits that there are five kinds of "Hermaphrodites". Diderot cites women with large clitorises and eunuchs as examples of sex being a spectrum:

Laqueur believed there was a shift from the one-sex model to the two-sex model during the early 18th century. Laqueur's theories have been subject to criticism by those who believe it to be over-simplified. Laqueur's critics point to evidence that suggests both models existed concurrently throughout history rather that one completely supplanting the other. (for an overview on the one-sex/two-sex theory see The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century by Karen Harvey)

The Third Dialogue: the Conversation Continued and Sexual Pleasure

The third dialogue deals with the topic of sexual pleasure. In this dialogue Diderot is argues that there is no benefit to chastity and that pleasure is both positive and natural.

Bordeu argues in favour of masturbation; "these actions are not so unprofitable. It is a need and, even if one were not driven on by the need, the thing is always agreeable." He also argues that masturbation is natural:

This is notable for a period when anti-masturbation rhetoric was prevalent. Onania: or, the heinous sin of self-pollution not only argued that masturbation was sinful but that it had adverse health effects including epilepsy, hysteria and impotence. Even Jeremy Bentham writing in defense of same-sex sexual acts repeats the notion that masturbation has averse health effects:

Bentham even argues that one of the benefits of same-sex sexual acts is they lessen masturbation:

(Of Sexual Irregularities - or, Irregularities of the Sexual Appetite)

Bordeu also defends same-sex sexual acts on the same basis of his defense of masturbation. Both acts give pleasure:

But Mlle de Lespinasse is stuck on "those combinations, which all seem to me contrary to nature."

Bordeu argues:

Diderot is arguing that the crime against nature (i.e. sodomy) isn't actually unnatural. He was not the only one to make this argument.

At his 1776 sodomy trial Gerrit van Amerongen stated that men who engaged in sodomy were "born with it and they can be as amorous to each other as man and wife can be." (The Chevalier d'Eon, Rousseau, and New Ideas of Gender, Sex and the Self in the Late Eighteenth Century by Anna Clark)

On the 13th of November 1816 Anne Lister records in her diary a conversation with one of her lovers where she defends her sexual interest in women:

In his 1749 defense of sodomy Thomas Cannon writes:

However the crime against nature also referred to bestiality which is the focus of the third dialogue. Diderot really only briefly touches on the topic of same-sex sexual acts seemingly more interested in discussing bestiality and the merits of breeding half-goat half-human slaves. I haven’t seen this topic mentioned anywhere else and have no particular insights into it.