Article ID: CBB001253065

An “Elusive” Phenomenon: Feminism, Sexology and the Female Sex Drive in Germany at the Turn of the 20th Century (2013)

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Leng, Kirsten (Author)


Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 55, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 131-152


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Part of a special issue “Beyond the Academy: Histories of Gender and Knowledge”
Language: English

This article examines how four feminists belonging to the broadly defined left-wing of the Wilhelmine-era German women's movement -- Henriette Fürth, Johanna Elberskirchen, Ruth Bré and Grete Meisel-Hess -- engaged with scientific knowledge to redefine early 20th century understandings of the female sex drive. It contextualizes these authors' efforts to redefine the sex drive within contemporary sex reform politics and changing scientific understandings of human sexuality. The article illuminates how these four feminists used scientific knowledge to redefine the female sex drive as a simultaneously physiological and psychological phenomenon that was active, desiring and naturally in need of satisfaction. It further shows how these feminists mobilized this definition to assert women's `biological right' to sexual emancipation and self-determination. However, this article also examines the conflicts this particular representation of the female sex drive provoked within the broader German women's movement, as well as the political restrictions it imposed upon feminist demands as a result of the biopolitical, racialist and heterosexist valences of fin-de-siècle sexual science. This article points up both feminists' contributions to scientific knowledge about sexuality and the difficulties of using science to advance feminist causes.

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Description On the efforts of Henriette Fürth, Johanna Elberskirchen, Ruth Bré, and Grete Meisel-Hess to get people to acknowledge the naturalness of the female sex drive.


Reviewed By

Essay Review Maria Elvira Callapez; Vanessa Silva (2014) 'Beyond the Academy – Histories of Gender and Knowledge'. Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (pp. 166-172). unapi

Included in

Article Oertzen, Christine von; Rentetzi, Maria; Watkins, Elizabeth S. (2013) Finding Science in Surprising Places: Gender and the Geography of Scientific Knowledge. Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 73-80). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001253065/

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Authors & Contributors
Sharman Levinson
Alain Giami
Leng, Kirsten
Pinto, Sarah Ann
Tonn, Jenna
Ash Kayte Stokoe
Concepts
Sexuality
Sexology
Feminism
Science and gender
Sex differences
Psychology
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
Places
United States
Germany
India
Levant and Near East
England
Palestine
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