Marañón and sexual identity: biology, sexuality and gender in the Spain of the 1920s
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2013.759n1004Keywords:
Marañón, sexuality, women, motherhood, hormones, sexual differentiation, sexual educationAbstract
This article examines three works by Gregorio Marañón, published for the first time in 1926 under the epigraph Tres ensayos sobre la vida sexual [Three essays on sexual life]. These essays had a huge impact and they were republished several times. The aim of this paper is to help situate Marañon’s medical and scientific views, as expressed in these essays, in the political, scientific and socio-cultural context of 1920s Spain. Marañón’s theory of sexual differentiation and his defence of women’s maternal mission is discussed at a time when many feminists accepted a sexualised view of the world in which women’s identity was articulated around motherhood. The analysis of these essays is framed in the contemporary historiography on sexuality and women’s history.
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