The Nonlinear Evolution of Human Sex

Abstract

Chapter 3 examined skeletons, gonads, hormones, and genes as often- cited signifiers of sex “differences” between women and men. However, the ability of some women to sexually reproduce is the most frequent and powerful signifier of “sexual difference” in Western cultures. Whatever social, political, and economic changes might take place to alter women’s position in society, female sexual reproduction is seen as both immutable “fact” and cause of structural differences between women and men. Of the almost countless references to female “materiality” as reproduction, my training as a sociologist secures Emile Durkheim’s rendition as a particularly sharp thorn in my side. He writes, “... society is less necessary to her because she is less impregnated with sociability ... Man is actively involved in it whilst woman does little more than look on from a distance” (1970: 385). Not only does Durkheim remind his readers that it is female bodies that can be (passively) impregnated, but this impregnation is limited to fleshy materiality (babies). If male bodies are (actively) impregnated, it is with decidedly nonmaterial sociality.

he very fact that nonsexual reproduction is called asexual reveals the normative preference given to sexual reproduction.

(Schiebinger, 1993: 22)

Not that it really matters whether or not he [sic] ever knows about the vast populations of inorganic life, the ‘thousand tiny sexes’ which are coursing through his veins with a promiscuity of which he cannot conceive. He’s the one who misses out. Fails to adapt. Can’t see the point of his sexuality. Those who believe in their own organic integrity are all too human for the future [to come].

(Plant, 1997: 205)