“The Law of Gender” — a book by Laure Murat on the cultural history of the “third sex” in France

“The Law of Gender” (La Loi du genre) is a book published in French by Flammarion, written by the French cultural historian Laure Murat about the formation of gender norms in France from the 19th century onward. In the context of the history of the LGBT community and the medicalization of sexuality, this study shows how rigid gender norms clashed with real people whom society labeled as criminals or patients.

Laure Murat is a French researcher and professor. Her academic interests are focused on the history of psychiatry, literature, and cultural representations of gender and sexuality.

In her book, Murat turns to the concept of the “third sex” — an umbrella category through which 19th-century French society attempted to comprehend people who did not fit into the traditional division into men and women. The work recounts how police, medicine, literature, and moralistic journalism created and controlled the images of people whose gender behavior did not conform to social norms.

Murat traces the evolution of views on gender from the persecutions in Paris during the era of Honoré de Balzac to the medical descriptions and early testimonies of trans experience in the period between the First and Second World Wars. Police archives, sexological treatises, and literary works are used as sources for the analysis. In 19th-century France, behavior previously considered criminal became an object of study for doctors and psychiatrists, which made the medical perspective on sexuality decisive for the period that followed.