Vicente, Marta V., Debating Sex and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Spain

The book studies the creation of a two-sex model of human sexuality based on different genitalia within Spain, reflecting the enlightened quest to promote social reproduction and stability. Drawing on primary sources such as medical treatises and legal literature, this study traces the lives of individuals whose ambiguous sex and gender made them examples for physicians, legislators and educators for how nature, family upbringing, education, and the social environment shaped an individual’s sex.