Neuter gender

“ This asexual type of reproduction has been misinterpreted by a whole school of non-biological writers, who have followed the lead of Lester F. Ward, in his classification of these neuter-organisms as females. Ward says ("Pure Sociology," Ch. 14) : "It does no violence to language or science to say that life begins with the female organism and is carried on a long distance by means of females alone. In all the different forms of asexual reproduction from fission to parthenogenesis, the female may in this sense be said to exist alone and perform all the functions of life including reproduction. ”

“ Or that an individual with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome (that is, born with XX chromosomes, ovaries, and labia but without a vagina and uterus) can be female. Putting together these two concepts—that “biological sex” includes gender identity and that the markers of a person’s biological sex may diverge—despite the majority’s protestations otherwise, a person can be male if some biological components of sex, including gender identity, align with maleness, even if other biological components (for example, chromosomal structure) align with femaleness. ”

“ This is a very great departure from birds, rats and guinea pigs, whose bodies change over their sex type when the gonads are transplanted. Birds take on the male appearance when the sex glands are removed (or retain it, if they are males) . This is not true of man. The chemical life processes of the two sexes after puberty in the human species are quite characteristic. The male and female types are both very different from the infantile. When it becomes necessary to desex men, the resulting condition is infantile, not female. ”

“ It was formerly believed that when a woman gave birth to twins of opposed sexes, the female infant would prove to be barren, this barrenness being associated with defective development of her reproductive apparatus. John Hunter (Animal Economy) ascertained that in the case of twin calves of opposed sex, the genital organs of the female twin were almost invariably imperfectly developed. But the supposition that this is true also of the human species has not been confirmed by experience. I know several married women who had twin brothers, and these women have borne normal children ”

“ At an early stage of development the sexes are indistinguishable, and throughout life the traces of this early community of sex remain. The hen fowl retains in a rudimentary form the spurs which are so large and formidable in her lord, and sometimes she develops a capacity to crow, or puts on male plumage. Among mammals the male possesses useless nipples, which occasionally even develop into breasts, and the female possesses a clitoris, which is merely a rudimentary penis, and may also develop. ”

“ It cannot account for all the diverse ways in which the sexes are mixed up in the fighting—it cannot, for instance, explain the fact that an unpaired male will attack either sex of an adjoining pair indiscriminately—but nevertheless it appears at first sight to be a reasonable explanation of some of them. We must remember, however, that fighting continues throughout the whole period of reproduction. Even after the discharge of the sexual function has ceased, and the female is engaged in incubation or in tending her young, the male is still intolerant of intruders ”

“ There are breeds of the sheep and goat, in which the horns of the male differ greatly in shape from those of the female; and these differences, acquired under domestication, are regularly transmitted to the same sex. With tortoise-shell cats the females alone, as a general rule, are thus coloured, the males being rusty-red. With most breeds of the fowl, the characters proper to each sex are transmitted to the same sex alone. So general is this form of transmission that it is an anomaly when we see in certain breeds variations transmitted equally to both sexes. ”

“ In this stage, the embryo is susceptible of being influenced by external conditions to develop more strongly in the one or the other direction and thus become distinctly and permanently male or female. It is evident that this is the season in the development of the individual in which influencing conditions and causes must operate in deciding its sex, although it is possible in some of the lower animals to alter the tendency of sex in the embryo from one sex to the other, even after it has been quite definitely determined. ”

“ This is plain in the case of castrated animals, for, though only the generative part is disabled, yet pretty well the whole form of the animal changes in consequence so much that it seems to be female or not far short of it, and thus it is clear than an animal is not male or female in virtue of an isolated part or an isolated faculty. Clearly, then, the distinction of sex is a first principle; at any rate, when that which distinguishes male and female suffers change, many other changes accompany it, as would be the case if a first principle is changed. ”

“ That they are present in both sexes, is manifest when two species, having strongly-marked sexual characters, are crossed, for each transmits the characters proper to its own male and female sex to the hybrid offspring of either sex. The same fact is likewise manifest, when characters proper to the male are occasionally developed in the female when she grows old or becomes diseased, as, for instance, when the common hen assumes the flowing tail-feathers, hackles, comb, spurs, voice, and even pugnacity of the cock. ”

“ In the higher families however of animal life the distinction of sex in different individuals has become [107] the universal rule, and it produces a polarity or contrast which becomes ever more conspicuous as we rise in the scale of creation, until it attains its highest development in the highest stage hitherto reached, that of civilised man and woman. Both physical and mental characteristics depend mainly on the fact that the ovary or egg-producing organ is developed in the female, and thus the whole work of reproduction is thrown on her. ”

“ Thou mayst some day find use for the fact that was well known to the priesthood, who were the repository of all knowledge in the land of Kem, that in the embryonic or total life, both in animals and in man, there is absolutely no distinction of sex. Up to a short period prior to its birth, it is impossible to determine whether the offspring will be male or female--from which fact it seems to follow that sex is not a primary or essential function of animal existence, but dependent upon conditions during gestation which centuries of investigation have failed to disclose. ”

“ The process of the development of the male sex is by means of the sexual selection of the female. From being a mere fertilising agent, gradually, as evolution proceeds, it assumes the form and characteristics of an independent organism like the original female trunk organism. But the latter continues to maintain its supremacy in the life of the species, by means chiefly of sexual selection, until the human period, i.e. more or less (!) , for Mr Ward is bound to admit signs of male superiority in the higher vertebrates—viz. birds and mammals. ”

“ I have endeavoured in this chapter to shew that the arguments are not trustworthy in favour of the view that weapons, bright colours, and various ornaments, are now confined to the males owing to the conversion, by means of natural selection, of a tendency to the equal transmission of characters to both sexes into transmission to the male sex alone. It is also doubtful whether the colours of many female birds are due to the preservation, for the sake of protection, of variations which were from the first limited in their transmission to the female sex. ”

“ Why certain characters should be inherited by both sexes, and other characters by one sex alone, namely by that sex in which the character first appeared, is in most cases quite unknown. We cannot even conjecture why with certain sub-breeds of the pigeon, black striae, though transmitted through the female, should be developed in the male alone, whilst every other character is equally transferred to both sexes. Why, again, with cats, the tortoise-shell colour should, with rare exceptions, be developed in the female alone. ”

“ The dual basis for femaleness and maleness in each individual simply means that both factors are present, but that only one expresses itself fully. The presence of such a dual basis is proved by the fact that in castration and transplantation experiments both are exhibited by the same individual in a single lifetime. In the case of the Free-Martin cattle, even the female sex-glands are modified toward the male type to such an extent that they were long mistaken for testes. ”

“ If the male contributes no material to the embryo, there can be nothing in this view. If, as they say, he does contribute something of the sort, we must confront them in the same way as we did the theory of Empedocles, which accounts for the difference between male and female by the heat and cold of the uterus. They make the same mistake as he does, when they account for the difference by their ‘right and left’, though they see that the sexes differ actually by the whole of the sexual parts ”

“ The hermaphrodite conditions of these animals, as with other Mollusca in like case, present some knotty points for consideration, and especially in regard to the problem of sex-attraction. Where each individual is as much male as female, which is the dominating factor in desire, the maleness or the femaleness? Though each individual contains both ova and sperm cells, probably these ripen at different times, to avoid danger of self-fertilization. In this case the sex impulses are on the same footing as in the case of animals wherein the sexes are not thus combined. ”

“ If we admit that certain antics (or cries) common to both sexes of certain birds, have had a like origin in the case of either, then, if by such common actions some common beauty is displayed, it is unreasonable to think that this has been acquired through the action of sexual selection in the case of the one sex (the male) and not in the case of the other (the female) , for where the psychology and actions are the same, the laws governing them must be the same, and their effects the same. ”

“ In the outset it is important to observe that the physical differentiation of the sexes is itself a product of the struggle for existence. This important fact is made the starting-point of the argument by which Hellwald [272] finds the elements of the human mother-group and of mother-right in earlier animal experiences. Among the lowest members of the animal kingdom there is no individual distinction of sex. That first makes its appearance when the "artistically constructed organism, in order to sustain itself in the process of evolution, is called upon to perform a wider series of functions." ”

“ In the first place it has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of most people that no one male or female is wholly masculine or feminine. The stage of hermaphroditism through which all human beings are supposed to pass in their early fœtal development, is never apparently quite overcome, and the fully developed fœtus, as also the perfectly developed child, retains in its constitution vestiges of a sex to which its outward and primary sexual characteristics do not belong. ”

“ As our female progenitors gradually acquired this new character of nudity, they must have transmitted it in an almost equal degree to their young offspring of both sexes; so that its transmission, as in the case of many ornaments with mammals and birds, has not been limited either by age or sex. There is nothing surprising in a partial loss of hair having been esteemed as ornamental by the ape-like progenitors of man, for we have seen that with animals of all kinds innumerable strange characters have been thus esteemed, and have consequently been modified through sexual selection. ”

“ Here in a nutshell is the biological basis of sex problem in human society. Human individuals do wear out and have to be replaced by reproduction. In the reproductive process, the female, as in mammals generally, is specialized to provide an intra-maternal environment (approximately nine months in the human species) for each new individual, and lactation or suckling afterward. The biological phase of the sex problem in society consists in studying the nature of that specialization. ”

“ Although reproduction and sex are two distinct things, and although a creature that reproduces without sex cannot properly be called either male or female, still so completely have these conceptions become blended in the popular mind that a creature which actually brings forth offspring out of its own body, is instinctively classed as female. The female is the fertile sex, and whatever is fertile is looked upon as female. ”

“ But when he finds that neither in the egg nor uterus of the fowl is there any semen or blood, and avows his belief that nothing is emitted by the male in intercourse, that can by possibility reach the uterus of the female, nor in the egg discovers a trace of aught supplied by the male, he is compelled{352} to doubt how the semen, which is nowhere to be detected, which is neither mixed with the ‘geniture’ of the female, nor yet is added to it, nor touches it, can fecundate the egg, or constitute the chick. ”

“ The search for means of influencing the sex of the offspring through the mother is not of necessity doomed to failure. No results of a really positive kind have been obtained hitherto, and some of the facts point so clearly to sex-determination by the male germ-cell alone in man and other animals that many investigators have concluded that the quest is hopeless ”

“ The organic sex of unborn infants we know as not determined for a considerable period of gestation. Nature herself seems to hesitate, to postpone. The boy comes into the world not obviously affected in his sex as to any virile trait, born with a boy's body and a boy's mind; but unluckily for him endowed with the sexual impulses of a girl. Or the girl, blamelessly feminine in her physique, must go through life yearning for sexual union with a woman. ”