18. Ellis, Havelock. Man and Woman. 1904
ed., pp. 284f
19. Thomas, W.I. Sex and Society. 1907,
p. 19.
20. Schaefer, Sir Edw. An Introduction to
the Study of Internal Secretions. London, 1916,
pp. 106f.
SEX SPECIALIZATION AND GROUP SURVIVAL
Adaptation and specialization; Reproduction a group
not an individual problem; Conflict between specialization
and adaptation; Intelligence makes for economy in
adjustment to environment; Reproduction, not production,
the chief factor in the sex problem.
From the facts briefly stated in the preceding chapters
it is quite evident that the general superiority of
man over woman or vice versa cannot be proven
by biology. Such an idea arises from a careless
and unscientific use of language. Superiority
is a term which, when used to express the rather exact
ideas of biology, is employed in a carefully limited
and specific, not in a general, sense. That is,
superiority, even if an apparently general idea like
survival value is referred to, always implies a given,
understood environment where such is not specifically
mentioned. Wolves, for example, might be found
to possess superior chances for survival over foxes,
beaver or partridges in a given environment.
A biologist would probably use more exact and less
ambiguous terms to express such a fact, and say that
wolves were the best adapted to the given surroundings.
If all these animals continued to live side by side
in the given environment, they could be compared only
as to specific details—size, strength, cunning,
fleetness in running, swimming or flying, concealment
from enemies, etc. Then the biologist would
probably make his meaning perfectly clear by stating
that one is specialized in one direction or
another.
Especially is general superiority a vague idea when
the things compared are different but mutually necessary
or complementary. If their functions overlap
to some extent (i.e., if certain acts can be performed
by either), we may say that one is better adapted to
a certain activity than the other. Thus it may
be that women are generally better adapted to caring
for young children than are men, or that men are on
the whole better adapted to riveting boiler plates,
erecting skyscrapers, or sailing ships. Where
their activities do not overlap at all, even the word
adaptation hardly applies. For example, women
are not better “adapted” to furnishing
the intra-maternal environment for the young, since
men are not adapted to it at all. It is a case
of female specialization.
Men being neither specialized nor adapted, to any
extent whatever, to this particular activity, any
attempt at comparison is obviously fruitless, since
one term is always zero. This specialization,
absolutely necessary to the survival of human groups,
is either present or it is absent in a given individual.
Any attempt to formulate a general proposition about
superiority either attaches purely arbitrary values
to different kinds of activity or is absurd from the
standpoint of the most elementary logic.
