Woman Hating (18 page)
11. Visible sex differences are not discrete. There are men with tiny cocks, women with large clits. There are men with highly developed breasts, women with almost no breast development. There are men with wide hips, women with no noticeable hip development. There are men with virtually no body hair, women with much body hair. There are men with high voices, women with low voices. There are men with no facial hair, women who have beards and mustaches.
12. Height and weight differences between men and women are not discrete. Muscle structures are not discrete. We know the despair of the tall, muscular woman who does not fit the female stereotype; we know also the despair of the small, delicate man who does not fit the male stereotype.
13. There is compelling cross-cultural evidence that muscle strength and development are culturally determined. There are cultures in which there are no great differences in somatotype of men and women:
In one small-scale (“primitive”) society for which there are good photographic records —the Manus of the Admiralty Islands — there is apparently no difference at all in somatotype between males and females as children, and as adults both men and women tend to the same high degree of mesomorphy (broad shoulders and chest, heavily muscled limbs, little subcutaneous fat).... In Bali, too, males and females lack the sort of differentiation of the physique that is a visible difference in our culture. Geoffrey Gorer once described them as a “hermaphroditic” people; they have little sex differential in height and both sexes have broad shoulders and narrow hips. They do not run to curves and muscles, to body hair or to breasts of any size. (Gorer once remarked that you could not tell male and female apart, even from the front. ) Another source informs us that babies suck their fathers' breasts as well as their mothers'.
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14. There are hermaphrodites in nature. Robert T. Francoeur, in
Utopian Motherhood: New Trends in Human Reproduction, admits:
The medical profession and experimental biologists have always been very skeptical about the existence of functional hermaphrodites among the higher animals and man, though the earthworm, the sea hare, and other lower animals do combine both sexes in the same individual.
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We have seen how deep the commitment to human sexual discreteness and polarity goes —that commitment makes the idea of functional hermaphroditism conceptually intolerable. It is interesting here to speculate on the perceptions of men like Lionel Tiger (Men in Groups)
who in effect project human cultural patterns of dominance and submission on the animal world. For instance, Dr. Sherfey tells us that
“In many primate species,
the females would be diagnosed hermaphrodites if they were human”
(Italics hers. )
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Most probably, we often simply project our own culturally determined modes of acting and perceiving onto other animals —we effectively screen information that would challenge the notions of male and female which are holy to us. In that case, a bias toward androgyny (instead of the current bias toward polarity) would give us significantly different scenarios of animal behavior.
Hermaphroditism is generally defined as “a congenital disorder in which both male and female generative organs exist in the same individual. ”
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A “true” hermaphrodite is one who has ovaries, testes, and the secondary sexual characteristics of both sexes. But this is, it seems to me, the story of a functional hermaphrodite:
The case involved a sixteen-year-old Arkansas girl who was being operated on for an ovarian tumor. As is the custom in such surgery, the tissue removed is carefully examined by a pathologist. In this instance, signs of live eggs live sperm were found in different regions of the tumor. With the egg and the sperm situated right next to each other in the same organ, Dr. Timme claimed “there was a great possibility that they would combine and make a human being. ”... The unique feature... would be that the same person contributed both germ cells.
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Parthenogenesis also occurs naturally in women. Fran-coeur refers to the work of Dr. Landrum B. Shettles who
in examining human eggs just after they were removed from their ovarian follicles... found that three out of four hundred of these eggs had “undergone cleavage
in vivo
within the intact follicle, without any possible contact with spermatozoa. ”
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On the basis of Shettles’ work, Francoeur estimates
that virgin births are a rather common occurrence, in about the same frequency as fraternal twins and twice as often as identical twins occur among white Americans.
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Seemingly a conservative, Dr. Sherwood Taylor, a British scientist, “has suggested a much lower frequency for human parthenogenesis, estimating one case in ten thousand births. ”
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However much, however little, it does occur.
We can presume then that there is a great deal about human sexuality to be discovered, and that our notion of two discrete biological sexes cannot remain intact. We can presume then that we will discover cross-sexed phenomena in proportion to our ability to see them. In addition, we can account for the relative rarity of hermaphrodites in the general population, for the consistency of male-female somatotypes that we do find, and for the relative rarity of cross-sexed characteristics in the general population (though they occur with more frequency than we are now willing to imagine) by recognizing that there is a process of
cultural selection
which, for people, supersedes natural selection in importance. Cultural selection, as opposed to natural selection, does not necessarily serve to improve the species or to ensure survival. It does necessarily serve to uphold cultural norms and to ensure that deviant somatotypes and cross-sexed characteristics are systematically bred out of the population.
However we look at it, whatever we choose to make out of the data of what is frequently called Intersex, it is clear that sex determination is not always clearcut and simple. Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University has basically isolated these six aspects of sex identity:
1.
Genetic or nuclear sexuality
as revealed by indicators like the sex-chromatin or Barr-body, a full chromosomal count and the leucocytic drumstick;
*
2.
Hormonal sexuality
which results from a balance that is predominantly androgenic or estrogenic;
3.
Gonadal sexuality
which may be clearly ovarian or testicular, but occasionally also mixed;
4.
Internal sexuality
as disclosed in the structure of the internal reproductive system;
5.
External genital sexuality
as revealed in the external anatomy, and finally;
6.
Psychosexual development
which through the external forces of rearing and social conditioning along with the individual's response to these factors directs the development of a personality which is by nature sexual.
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Since there can be total contradiction between/among any of the above, since we have discussed some (by no means all) of the cross-sexed characteristics of human biological functioning, since we recognize hermaphroditism and parthenogenesis as human realities, we are justified in making a radical new formulation of the nature of human sexuality.
We are,
clearly,
a multi-sexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete.
*
The concrete implications of multisexuality as we find it articulated in both androgynous mythology and biology necessitate the total redefinition of scenarios of proper human sexual behavior and pragmatic forms of human community. If human beings are multisexed, then all forms of sexual interaction which are directly rooted in the multisexual nature of people must be part of the fabric of human life, accepted into the lexicon of human possibility, integrated into the forms of human community. By redefining human sexuality, or by defining it correctly, we can transform human relationship and the institutions which seek to control that relationship. Sex as the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism, is what we know now. Sex as community between humans, our shared humanity, is the world we must build. What kind of sexual identity and relation will be the substance of that community?
Heterosexuality and Homosexuality.*
There are men I could spend eternity with,
But not this life.
Kathleen Norris
a little zen in our politics a little acid in our tea, could be all we need, the poof is in the putting.
Jill Johnston
I have defined heterosexuality as the ritualized behavior built on polar role definition. Intercourse with men as we know them is increasingly impossible. It requires an aborting of creativity and strength, a refusal of responsibility and freedom: a bitter personal death. It means remaining the victim, forever annihilating all self-respect. It means acting out the female role, incorporating the masochism, self-hatred, and passivity which are central to it. Unambiguous conventional heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our common humanity.
That is not to say that “men” and “women” should not fuck. Any sexual coming together which is genuinely pansexual and role-free, even if between men and women as we generally think of them (i. e., the biological images we have of them), is authentic and androgynous. Specifically,
androgynous fucking requires the destruction of all conventional role-playing, of genital sexuality as the primary focus and value, of couple formations, and of the personality structures dominant-active
(“male”)
and sub-missive-passive (“female”).
Homosexuality, because it is by definition antagonistic to two-sex polarity, is closer at its inception to androgynous sexuality. However, since all individual consciousness and social relationship are polluted by internalized notions of polarity, coupling, and role-playing, the criteria cited above must also be applied to homosexual relation. Too often homosexual relation transgresses gender imperatives without transforming them.
An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation, whether homosexual or heterosexual, generally means an exclusive commitment to one role. An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation generally involves the denial of many profound and compelling kinds of sensuality. An exclusive commitment to one sexual formation generally means that one is, regardless of the uniform one wears, a good soldier of the culture programmed effectively to do its dirty work. It is by developing one’s pansexuality to its limits (and no one knows where or what those are) that one does the work of destroying culture to build community.
Transsexuality
How can I really care if we win “the Revolution”? Either way, any way, there will be no place for me.
A transsexual friend, in a conversation
Transsexuality is currently considered a gender disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt identity.
Since we know very little about sex identity, and since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judgment that transsexuality is caused by faulty socialization. More probably transsexuality is caused by a faulty society. Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions.
There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency (see p. 185) as a transsexual. There are 3 crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.
Transvestism
The first time I put on the black silk panties I got a hardon right away.
