THE NEW BIOLOGY AND THE SEX PROBLEM IN SOCIETY
M. M. Knight, Ph.D.
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
Gynaecocentric 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.]
