"Weird Sex Science" in Britain, ca. 1900-1939: Narratives of Naturalisation and Eradication
This thesis examines changing concepts and practices relating to sex variations— intersexualities, transformations of sex, and non-heteronormative sexual desires and behaviours—derived from the biological sciences and their impact in Britain through the Edwardian and interwar eras. Using a variety of published and archival sources, the thesis makes three main contributions to scholarship. Firstly, it identifies tensions between narratives of naturalisation and narratives of eugenic manipulation that emerged as British biologists reconceptualised sex variations, sex differences, and sexualities more generally, following major discoveries in genetics and endocrinology around 1900, especially X and Y chromosomes and “sex” hormones. Even as biologists produced a new biology of sex within a profoundly patriarchal and queerphobic cultural environment, sex variations were pivotal to their endeavours, posing a plethora of challenges to long-standing cultural, theological, and legal proscriptions that construed such variations as unnatural and/or immoral. Second, the thesis contributes to a vibrant area of scholarship on science popularisation by examining how leading biologists, F. A. E. Crew and Julian Huxley chief among them, exploited semi-popular and popular platforms, including Britain’s newspapers, to relate their sexological studies of sex variations to their social and eugenic agendas. In order to better understand this dynamic use of non-specialist scientific platforms, the thesis presents a new, adaptationist model of science popularisation. Thirdly, the thesis explores the relationship between the private lives of scientists and the science they produce. In this regard it pays particularly close attention to Julian Huxley, arguing that what he referred to as his own “unresolved conflicts about sex” are reflected in his sexological studies, especially his inability to unify his field studies of avian courtship with laboratory-based studies of sex. By expanding scholarship on the rapid development and impact of biological models of sex differences and sexualities through the Edwardian and interwar eras, the thesis reaches towards a queerer science historiography.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations