Taboo and Genetics | Page 6

human male
has a larger and stronger body, on an average, than has the human female. This is true
also of the anthropoid apes, the species which most resemble man physically and are
commonly supposed to be his nearest blood relatives in the animal kingdom. It has been
true of man himself as far back as we have any records.
Such differences are only superficial--the real ones go deeper. We are not so much
interested in how they originated in the world as in how they do come about in the
individual. At least, we can come a good deal nearer ascertaining the latter than the
former. In either case, our real purpose is to determine as nearly as possible what the
unlikeness really consists of and so help people to sensibly make up their minds what can
be done about it.
To define sex with rigid accuracy as the term applies to human beings, it is necessary to
tell what it is in mammals, since man is a mammal. The presence of distinct body-cells is
not peculiar to mammals, but there is one respect in which these latter are quite different
from non-mammals: A mammalian individual, beginning like a non-mammal with a
fertilized egg, has a period of intra-maternal development which a non-mammal has not.
That is, a non-mammalian is a fertilized egg plus its parental (or extra-parental)
environment; but a mammalian individual is a fertilized egg, plus its intra-maternal
environment, plus its non-parental environment.
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. From the purely sociological
standpoint, the sex problem concerns the customs and institutions which have grown up
or may grow up to meet the need of society for reproduction.
The point which most concerns us is in how far biological data can be applied to the sex
problem in society. Systematic dissections or breeding experiments upon human beings,
thought out in advance and under control in a laboratory, are subject to obvious
limitations. Surgical operations, where careful data are kept, often answer the same
purpose as concerns some details; but these alone would give us a fragmentary record of
how a fertilized egg becomes a conscious human being of one sex or the other. The
practice of medicine often throws light on important points. Observation of abnormal
cases plays its part in adding to our knowledge. Carefully compiled records of what does
occur in inheritance, while lacking many of the checks of planned and controlled
experiments, to some extent take the place of the systematic breeding possible with
animals. At best, however, the limitations in experimentation with human subjects would
give us a rather disconnected record were it not for the data of experimental biology.
How may such biological material be safely used? Indiscriminately employed, it is worse
than useless--it can be confusing or actually misleading. It is probably never safe to say,
or even to infer directly, that because of this or that animal structure or behaviour we
should do thus and so in human society. On this point sociology--especially the sociology
of sex--must frankly admit its mistakes and break with much of its cherished past.
The social problem of sex consists of fitting the best possible institutions on to the
biological foundation as we find it in the human species. Hence all our reasoning about
which institution or custom is preferable must refer directly to the human bodies which
compose society. We can use laboratory evidence about the bodies of other animals to
help us in understanding the physical structure and functions of the human body; but we
must stop trying to apply the sex-ways of birds, spiders or even cows (which are at least
mammals) to human society, which is not made up of any of these.
It is possible to be quite sure that some facts carefully observed about mammals in a
biological laboratory apply to similar structures in man, also a mammal. Because of this
relationship, the data from medicine and surgery are priceless. Thus we are enabled to
check up our systematic experimental knowledge of animals by an ascertained fact here
and there in the human material, and to get a fairly exact idea of how great the
correspondence actually is. Gaps thus filled in are narrow enough, and our certainty of
the ground on either side sufficiently great, to give a good deal of justifiable assurance.
If we use our general biological