Blackwell Reference Online

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Western thought is underpinned by hierarchical binaries or dualisms, for example, mind/body, culture/nature, masculine/feminine, active/passive, to name but a few. Within this framework, “woman” is associated with terms such as passive, responsive, and inferior. These are constructed in opposition to “man,” described as active, aggressive/predatory, and superior. The cultural investment in binarization, particularly between the two sexes, also produces heterosexuality as the only normative form of desire and privileges so-called masculine values and experiences over so-called feminine. With respect to sexuality, Luce Irigaray, in This Sex Which is Not One (1985), argues that western culture has persistently negated or repressed those modes of sexual experience that may be specific to women and which do not fit with masculinist assumptions about women's sexuality. Western knowledge about human sexuality prior to the nineteenth century has been largely attributed to the Greeks. The framing of women's sexuality as inferior to men's sexuality can be found in the works of early philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, as well as Galen, the influential second-century physician and theorist. Plato, for example, popularized the idea that a “wandering (inactive) uterus” causes female hysteria in women who do not bear children. While Galen accepted the Aristotelian thesis that woman is ... log in or subscribe to read full text