#kirkup

These biological taxonomies were concerned to sort species and gender into their rightful places. They had a medieval concern to find a “natural hierarchy” that would produce and justify power inequalities, and assert the natural superiority/right-to-rule of white, middle-class European men. So the creation of taxonomies was also focused on identifying and classifying racial difference. The disenfranchising of women by identifying them as closer to “beasts” also extended to the disenfranchising of members of other cultures (and classes of society) by an identification based on different biological indicators. Discussion of the characteristics of non-European women, for example the “Hottentot Venus”, cast these women far beyond the defining characteristics of “human”. They became seen, and treated, as “monstrous”. The “Hottentot Venus” is an example of how technoscience creates monsters from those in some way seen outside the category of “human”.