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Introduction : women and sexology : knowledge, possibilities, and problematic legacies -- The emergence of sexology in early twentieth century Germany -- As natural as eating, drinking, and sleeping : redefining the female sex -- Challenging the limits of sex : envisioning new gendered subjectivities and sexualities -- Troubling normal, taking on patriarchy : criticizing male (hetero)sexuality -- The erotics of racial regeneration : eugenics, maternity, and sexual -- New social and moral values will have to prevail : negotiating crisis and opportunity in the First World War -- Fluid gender, rigid sexuality : constrained potential in the post-war period

In Sexual Politics and Feminist Science, Kirsten Leng restores the work of female sexologists to the forefront of the history of sexology. While male researchers who led the practice of early-twentieth-century sexology viewed women and their sexuality as objects to be studied, not as collaborators in scientific investigation, Leng pinpoints nine German and Austrian "women sexologists" and "female sexual theorists" to reveal how sex, gender, and sexuality influenced the field of sexology itself. Leng's book makes it plain that women not only played active roles in the creation of sexual scientific knowledge but also made significant and influential interventions in the field. Sexual Politics and Feminist Science provides readers with an opportunity to rediscover and engage with the work of these pioneers.Leng highlights sexology's empowering potential for women, but also contends that in its intersection with eugenics, the narrative is not wholly celebratory. By detailing gendered efforts to understand and theorize sex through science, she reveals the cognitive biases and sociological prejudices that ultimately circumscribed the transformative potential of their ideas. Ultimately, Sexual Politics and Feminist Science helps readers to understand these women's ideas in all their complexity in order to appreciate their unique place in the history of sexology.

This article explores the "tactical polyvalency" of scientific discourse for early twentieth-century feminism by examining the writings of Johanna Elberskirchen (1864-1943), an independent and prolific agitator on behalf of women's and homosexual emancipation in Wilhelmine Germany. Based on an analysis of four texts written by Elberskirchen, I argue that science offered Elberskirchen and feminists like her an opportunity to assert truthful "facts" about women in an authoritative, objective voice, which they claimed was not at odds with a feminist standpoint. Drawing upon science helped feminists like Elberskirchen to move discursively from a moral critique to an objective one. In advancing such an argument, I contribute to an emerging historiography that analyzes first wave feminists' engagement with science.