Taboo and Genetics | Page 3

BLANCHARD, PH.D.
THE SEX PROBLEM IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
I. SEX IN TERMS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
Bearing of modern psychology on the sex problem. Conditioning of the sexual impulse.
Vicarious expression of the sexual impulse. Unconscious factors of the sex life. Taboo
control has conditioned the natural biological tendencies of individuals to conform to
arbitrary standards of masculinity and femininity. Conflict between individual desires and
social standards.
II. HOW OUR INSTITUTIONS FIT INDIVIDUAL SEX PSYCHOLOGY

Social institutions controlling sex activities based on the assumption that all women are
adapted to as well as specialized for reproduction. Neurotic tendencies which unfit
women for marriage--the desire for domination. Sexual anæsthesia another neurotic trait
which interferes with marital harmony. The conditioning of the sexual impulse to the
parent ideal and the erotic fetish as factors which determine mating. Homosexual
tendencies and their part in the sex problem. The conflict between the desire for marriage
and egoistic ambitions. The social regulations from the viewpoint of individual
psychology.
III. DYSGENIC NATURE OF CERTAIN FACTORS OF SEX PSYCHOLOGY AND
NECESSITY FOR A SOCIAL THERAPY
Mating determined by unconscious psychological motives instead of eugenic
considerations. Some of the best male and female stock refusing marriage and parenthood.
The race is reproduced largely by the inferior and average stocks and very little by the
superior stock. As a therapeutic measure, society should utilize psychological knowledge
as a new method of control. Romantic love and conjugal love--a new ideal of love. The
solution of the conflict between individual and group interests.


PART I
THE NEW BIOLOGY AND THE SEX PROBLEM IN SOCIETY
BY
M. M. KNIGHT, PH.D.
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM DEFINED
What is sex? Asexual and mixed reproduction; Origin of sexual reproduction; Advantage
of sex in chance of survival; Germ and body cells; Limitations of biology in social
problems; Sex always present in higher animals; Sex in mammals; The sex problem in
the human species; Application of laboratory method.
Sex, like all complicated phenomena, defies being crowded into a simple definition. In an
animal or plant individual it is expressed by and linked with the ability to produce egg- or
sperm-cells (ova or spermatozoa). Sexual reproduction is simply the chain of events
following the union of the egg and sperm to produce a new individual. Looked at from
another angle, it is that sort of reproduction which requires two differentiated individuals:
the male, which produces spermatoza, and the female, which produces ova. In the case of
very simple forms, it would be simply the union or conjugation of a male and a female
individual and the reproductive process involved. Where there is no differentiation into

male and female there is no sex.
An individual which produces both sperm-and egg-cells within its body is termed an
hermaphrodite. Very few hermaphrodites exist among the vertebrates, although they may
be found in one or two species (e.g., the hagfish). There are no truly hermaphroditic
mammals, i.e., individuals in which both the male and the female germ cells function,
except perhaps in rare instances.
Sexless or asexual reproduction assumes various forms. What is usually considered the
most primitive of these is fission or simple division, in which the cell divides into two
equal, identical parts. There is of course no suggestion of sex here. It is fairly safe to
assume that life began thus in the world, as neuter or sexless--i.e., with no suggestion of
either maleness or femaleness.[A]
[Footnote A: 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.
In a word, life begins as female" (p. 313). Adding to this statement the assertion that the
male developed at first as a mere parasite, in the actual, physical sense, Ward proceeds to
build up his famous Gynæcocentric Theory, which is familiar to all students of social
science, and need not be elaborated here. It is obvious that a thorough biological
knowledge destroys the fundamental concept on which this theory is founded, for there is
no doubt that life begins as neuter or sexless, and not as female.]
There are a number of other forms of asexual reproduction, or the "vegetative type"
(Abbott's term, which includes fission, budding, polysporogonia and simple spore
formation). Budding (as in yeast) and spore formation are familiar to us in plants. Such
forms are too