female. Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey writes:
In their somatic organization, the gonads always retain
a greater or lesser amount o f the opposite-sex tissue
which remains functional throughout life. 1
4. Chromosomal sex is not necessarily the visible
sex of the individual. It happens that a person of one
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chromosomal sex develops the gonads o f the other sex. *
Gonadal sex and chromosomal sex can be in direct contradiction.
5. Chromosomal sex is not only X X or XY. There
are other chromosomal formations, and not much is
known about them or what they signify.
6. A person can have the gonads o f one sex, and the
secondary sexual characteristics o f the other sex.
7. Men and women both produce male and female
hormones. T h e amounts and proportions vary greatly,
and there is no way to determine biological maleness
or femaleness from hormone count.
8. One hormone can be transformed by the body
into its “opposite, ” male into female, female into
male. In Sex, Gender, and Society, Ann Oakley gives this
example:
. . . the fact that rapidly maturing male adolescents
sometimes acquire small breasts —the substantial increases in testosterone which accompanies puberty
[are] partially metabolised as oestrogen, which in turn
causes breast developm ent. 2
9. It is now thought that the male hormone determines the sex drive in both men and women.
* Question: Can a person with the chromosomal sex o f a male and the
gonadal sex o f a fem ale conceive? I f so, we would have to accept the notion
that men can have children. I would think that such cases do exist in nature,
even though I could find no confirmation that such persons are ferule. Since
anyone who has children is defined as a woman, and chrom osom e tests are
not done routinely, such persons would probably not be discovered except
by accident.
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10. The female hormone (progesterone) can have a
masculinizing effect. Dr. Sherfey writes:
We may have difficulty conceiving it, but natural selection has no difficulty using sexually heterotypic structures for homotypic purposes. For example,
progesterone is the “pregnancy hormone” essential
for menstruation and the prolonged pregnancy. It is as
uniquely a “female” hormone as one can be. Yet progesterone possesses strong androgenic properties. It may be used to masculinize female embryos. In 1 960,
Jones (27, 63) demonstrated that progesterone given
to human mothers early in pregnancy to prevent
threatened miscarriages. . . severely masculinized a
female fetus. 3
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 deter-
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179
mined. T here are cultures in which there are no great
differences in somatotype o f men and women:
In one small-scale (“primitive”) society for which there
are good photographic records —the Manus of the
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'. 4
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. 5
We have seen how deep the commitment to human sexual discreteness and polarity goes —that commitment
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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. ) 6 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. ” 7 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 and live sperm were found in different
regions o f 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. 8
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Parthenogenesis also occurs naturally in women. Fran-
coeur refers to the work o f 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. ” 9
On the basis o f 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. 10
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. ” 11 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
o f 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 o f hermaphrodites in the general population, for the consistency o f male-female somatotypes that we do find, and for the relative rarity o f 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 o f cultural selec
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tion 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 o f a personality which is by nature
sexual. 12
* An object in the cell itself which would seem to determine gender.
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183
Since there can be total contradiction between/
among any o f the above, since we have discussed some
(by no means all) o f the cross-sexed characteristics o f
human biological functioning, since we recognize hermaphroditism and parthenogenesis as human realities, we are justified in making a radical new formulation o f
the nature o f 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 *
T he concrete implications o f multisexuality as we
find it articulated in both androgynous mythology and
biology necessitate the total redefinition o f scenarios o f
proper human sexual behavior and pragmatic forms
o f human community. I f human beings are multisexed,
then all forms o f sexual interaction which are directly
rooted in the multisexual nature o f people must be part
o f the fabric o f human life, accepted into the lexicon o f
human possibility, integrated into the forms o f 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
*
T h e notion o f bisexuality is organically rooted to structural polarity
and is inappropriate here for these reasons: the word itself has duality built
into it; one can be bisexual and still relate to the fictions “ male” and “ fem ale"
— to both instead o f to one; one can be bisexual and still relate exclusively to
one role, the masculine or the fem inine, w hether found in men or women.
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Woman Haling
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
* For bisexuality, cf. p. 183.
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185
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 o f polarity, coupling, and role-
playing, the criteria cited above must also be applied to
homosexual relation. T oo often homosexual relation
transgresses gender imperatives without transforming
them.
An exclusive commitment to one sexual fo
rmation,
whether homosexual or heterosexual, generally means
an exclusive commitment to one role. An exclusive
commitment to one sexual formation generally involves the denial o f many profound and compelling kinds o f sensuality. An exclusive commitment to one
sexual formation generally means that one is, regardless o f the uniform one wears, a good soldier o f 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 o f 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
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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