MEDICAL DISCOURSE, THE CORNERSTONE OF THE GENDER RELATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES

The concept of gender establishes not only a distinction between biological sex (natural data and the object of biological and medical knowledge) and social sex (constructed within and by power relations). As a category of analysis, it also allows us to research the area of tension which governs the mutual construction of both. This construction inevitably pervades language and its capacity to establish categories of thought in cultures. This paper will demonstrate how the conceptual and linguistic category of "Woman" is one of the areas where this mutual construction may be found in the 19th century.