Abstract

The terms “race” and “sex / gender” have a specific relation to the Age of Enlightenment. Both were relevant for the new discourses of anthropology or the ‘nature of men’. Both have ‘naturalistic’ and social aspects that intersect, as the double-termed idea of “sex / gender” shows explicitly. The idea of “race” is no less complex. Both terms were topics of theoretical anthropology, but were nevertheless charged with pragmatic implications which lead to naturalistic fallacies: the equation of physical features and character traits or mental skills. Therefore, even today there is a complex intersection between both terms. Using this history of ideas first I will go back to a time before ‘races’ were invented and ‘gender’ became scientifically relevant. How did these categories of the other (from the European perspective) historically develop? What is or was their function? What kinds of (unconscious) intersections were there? I will then provide an overview of the use of the term “race” and its etymology. I will then reconstruct the development of the term “sex / gender”. Why, in which way, and by whom were they used? And how did the terms intersect from the beginning and thereby reinforce the confusion of ‘naturalistic’, scientific, social and other aspects (naturalistic fallacy)? I will focus on these questions. In so doing we can better understand the Enlightenment’s negative legacy and the sexisms and racisms of today.