Bøker av Joan Cadden

This book examines how scientific ideas about sex differences in the later Middle Ages participated in the broader culture's assumptions about gender. Cadden discusses how medieval natural philosophical theories and medical notions about reproduction and sexual impulses and experiences intersected with ideas about the roles of men and women.

In medieval Europe, where theologians saw sin, some natural philosophers saw a phenomenon in need of explanation. They believed some men were born with homosexual inclinations and others acquired them as habits based on early pleasurable experiences.