I have recently started re-reading Tho mas Laqueur’s Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud to balance my reading of Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism by Marina Warner. It’s not uncommon for my to mix up my non-fiction reading a bit as pursuing one kind of fact for too long can be wearying. And it’s sometimes interesting to read books that compliment each other or give two different perspectives.

The epigram of the first chapter instantly brought back all of my I am fond of Laqueur’s book and analysis and why I keep this book around to refer to time and again:

The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are “the opposite sex” (though why “opposite” I do not know; what is the neighboring sex”?). But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world.

Dorothy L. Sayers “The Human-Not-Quite-Human”

Then we get to the good stuff, like historical accounts of maidens awaken from comas with “passionate embraces”, the pluses and minuses of the old belief that female orgasm was necessary for conception and, of course, inside-out penises. And that’s only the first chapter.