ORIGINAL ARTICLE Of Monkeys, Men and Menstruation: Gendered Dualisms and the Absent Referent in Mid‐ Twentieth Century British Menstrual Science Catherine Duxbury 1,2 Abstract In this paper, I analyse the historical constructions of menstruation in mid‐twentieth century Britain. I examine the complex intertwining relations between the female human body and the female non- human body. My argument is twofold: firstly, I argue that endocrinological experiments on nonhu- man animals' reproductive cycles were mobilised towards affirming a binary division of female/ male, animal/human. This facilitated the perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies in British biomedical research. Secondly, I argue that as a result of these dualistic conceptualisations, the female nonhu- man body intersected with the female human body in scientific discourses. These bodily transmuta- tions in scientific research contributed towards a form of social control over women, strategically rendering them as ‘Other’ with nonhuman animals. I illustrate this using Carol J Adams' (2015) con- cept of the absent referent. At the Fourth Annual Addison Lecture, at Guy's Hospital on July 13, 1950, Dr George Corner, embryologist and keen investigator of the menstrual cycle, advocated the importance of experiments on monkeys in order to explore the biological processes of menstruation in women. He declared that the ‘study of other menstruating animals has aided and stimulated investigation of the human cycle’ . Further research on understanding menstruation ‘calls for continual experimental work on monkeys’ (Corner, 1951:921). Corner went on to explicate the historical development of sci- entific knowledge about the menstrual cycle, citing numerous studies on other animals such as pigs, dogs, rabbits, and apes. In a rather contradictory manner, he at once denounced the ‘erroneous notions’ of the early twentieth cen- tury scientists' analogies between the menstrual flow of women and the oestrus phase of the animal cycle (Corner, 1951:919), while at the same time expounding his views of the value of experimental work with animals on under- standing this cycle in women. For Corner, as well as the use of monkeys, acquiring pigs and pig embryos from his local abattoir was fundamental to his support of the virtues of using nonhuman animals in the study of menstruation. His completion of studies using sows provided medical science with a ‘diagrammatic representation of the mammalian cycle in general’ (Corner, 1951: 920). Corner was only one of a collection of male scientists studying menstruation in the mid‐twentieth century. He visited Britain from the U.S. to deliver his speech on the history of menstrual 1 Teacher, Department of Health, Education and Social Sciences, UCC, Colchester Institute, Colchester, Essex, UK. 2 Visiting Fellow, Interdisciplinary Studies Centre, School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex, Colchester, UK. DOI: 10.1111/johs.12218 J Hist Sociol. 2019;1–14. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/johs 1