Do you have to have sex to have sex? Defining sex in British law and medicine from the 1950s

Abstract

Sex has at least two different but related meanings: a biological property that bodies can seemingly ‘have’, and a set of bodily practices that one or more people can ‘have’. In the 1950s, the endocrinologist CN Armstrong stated that biomedical evidence of sex variance and the lack of a clear legal definition of sex highlighted a problem with the criminalisation of homosexual activity. It was not until the 1970s that a clear category of legal sex was enacted in law. In this paper, we consider the Wolfenden Committee (1954–57) and the legal cases of Georgina Somerset and April Ashley (1969–70). As we demonstrate, despite the complexity revealed by biomedicine, the law has not struggled to enact binary categories, due to the normative force of binary and heteronormative social understandings of sex (in all its meanings). We conclude by reflecting upon the many queer ways that people have and do sex outside of the purview of legal or medical definitions.