Leng, Kirsten (Author)
Cornell University Press
Physical Details: 392
Language: English
In Sexual Politics and Feminist Science, Kirsten Leng restores the work of female sexologists to the forefront of the history of sexology. While male researchers who led the practice of early-twentieth-century sexology viewed women and their sexuality as objects to be studied, not as collaborators in scientific investigation, Leng pinpoints nine German and Austrian "women sexologists" and "female sexual theorists" to reveal how sex, gender, and sexuality influenced the field of sexology itself. Leng’s book makes it plain that women not only played active roles in the creation of sexual scientific knowledge but also made significant and influential interventions in the field. Sexual Politics and Feminist Science provides readers with an opportunity to rediscover and engage with the work of these pioneers.Leng highlights sexology’s empowering potential for women, but also contends that in its intersection with eugenics, the narrative is not wholly celebratory. By detailing gendered efforts to understand and theorize sex through science, she reveals the cognitive biases and sociological prejudices that ultimately circumscribed the transformative potential of their ideas. Ultimately, Sexual Politics and Feminist Science helps readers to understand these women’s ideas in all their complexity in order to appreciate their unique place in the history of sexology.
...MoreReview Cornelie Usborne (2020) Review of "Sexual Politics and Feminist Science: Women Sexologists in Germany, 1900–1933". American Historical Review (pp. 1529-1531).
Review Harry Oosterhuis (2018) Review of "Sexual Politics and Feminist Science: Women Sexologists in Germany, 1900–1933". Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 131-133).
Similar Citations
Article
Leng, Kirsten;
(2013)
An “Elusive” Phenomenon: Feminism, Sexology and the Female Sex Drive in Germany at the Turn of the 20th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001253065/)
Article
Ha, Nathan Q.;
(2011)
The Riddle of Sex: Biological Theories of Sexual Difference in the Early Twentieth-Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001220951/)
Book
Jordan-Young, Rebecca M.;
(2010)
Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences
(/isis/citation/CBB001220966/)
Article
Crozier, Ivan;
(2008)
Havelock Ellis, Eugenicist
(/isis/citation/CBB000831698/)
Book
Bluhm, Agnes;
Bleker, Johanna;
Ludwig, Svenja;
(2007)
Emanzipation und Eugenik: Die Briefe der Frauenrechtlerin, Rassenhygienikerin und Genetikerin Agnes Bluhm an den Studienfreund Alfred Ploetz aus den Jahren 1901--1938
(/isis/citation/CBB001022122/)
Book
Freidenreich, Harriet Pass;
(2002)
Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women
(/isis/citation/CBB000202018/)
Article
Jenna Tonn;
(2019)
Gender
(/isis/citation/CBB637624794/)
Thesis
Rago, Jane V.;
(2009)
Heavenly Genes: Eugenics and the New Woman in fin de siècle England
(/isis/citation/CBB001562843/)
Book
Sheffield, Suzanne Le-May;
(2004)
Women and Science: Social Impact and Interaction
(/isis/citation/CBB000550412/)
Book
Jones, Jeannette Eileen;
Sharp, Patrick B.;
(2010)
Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality
(/isis/citation/CBB001033825/)
Article
Wanhalla, Angela;
(2007)
To “Better the Breed of Men”: Women and Eugenics in New Zealand, 1900-1935
(/isis/citation/CBB001030828/)
Book
Kline, Wendy;
(2001)
Building A Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom
(/isis/citation/CBB000101074/)
Book
Martin, Paula J.;
(2014)
Suzanne Noël: Cosmetic Surgery, Feminism and Beauty in Early Twentieth-Century France
(/isis/citation/CBB001510104/)
Article
Gibbons, Sheila;
(2014)
“Our Power to Remodel Civilization”: The Development of Eugenic Feminism in Alberta, 1909--1921
(/isis/citation/CBB001420271/)
Thesis
Rensing, Susan Marie;
(2006)
Feminist Eugenics in America: From Free Love to Birth Control, 1880--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001561652/)
Article
Ben Harris;
(2021)
Eugenics, social reform, and psychology: The careers of Isabelle Kendig
(/isis/citation/CBB708695182/)
Chapter
Jane Russo;
Sérgio Carrara;
Alain Giami;
Sharman Levinson;
(2021)
Politics, Religion, and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the Brazilian Publishing Market in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB599790446/)
Book
Heike Bauer;
(2015)
Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World
(/isis/citation/CBB614048749/)
Thesis
Hamlin, Kimberly Ann;
(2007)
Beyond Adam's Rib: How Darwinian Evolutionary Theory Redefined Gender andInfluenced American Feminist Thought, 1870--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001560667/)
Article
Marsha L. Richmond;
(2015)
Women as Mendelians and Geneticists
(/isis/citation/CBB662855210/)
Be the first to comment!