Taboo and genetics : $b A study of the biological, sociological and psychological foundation of the family — John Shaqi
Taboo and genetics : $b A study of the biological, sociological and psychological foundation of the familyKnight, Melvin M. (Melvin Moses)
Science
Taboo and genetics : $b A study of the biological, sociological and psychological foundation of the family
Knight, Melvin M. (Melvin Moses)
Sex (Biology); Sex (Psychology); Taboo; Women
Havelock Ellis[18] and G. Stanley Hall[19] have applied the idea of a
"race-type" female with peculiar insistence to the human race. Goodale
has finally killed the bird evidence upon which earlier workers so
largely founded this doctrine, by showing that the "race type" toward
which birds tend unless inhibited by the female ovarian secretion is the
male type, not the female. There is a great difference in the way the
internal secretions act in birds and in man, as will be pointed out
later. It is so important that such a major point as general variability
must be supported and corroborated by mammalian evidence to prove
anything positively for man. As already noted, the statistical studies
of Pearson and Mrs. Hollingworth _et al._ have yielded uniformly
negative results.
In the utilization of data gathered from non-human species, certain
differences in the systems of internal secretion must be taken into
account. Birds differ from the human species as to internal secretory
action in two vital particulars: (a) In the higher mammals, sex depends
upon a "complex" of all the glands interacting, instead of upon the sex
glands alone as in birds; (b) The male bird instead of the female is
homogametic for sex--i.e., the sperm instead of the eggs is uniform as
to the sex chromosome.
Insects are (in some cases at least) like birds as to the odd
chromosome--the opposite of man. But as to secondary sex-characters they
differ from both. These characters do not depend upon any condition of
the sex organs, but are determined directly by the chemical factors
which determine sex itself.[20]
In crustacea, the male is an inhibited female (the exact opposite of
birds), as shown by the experiments of Giard and Geoffrey Smith on
crabs. A parasite, _Sacculina neglecta_, sometimes drives root-like
growths into the spider crab, causing slow castration. The females thus
desexed do not assume the male type of body, but castrated males vary so
far toward the female type that some lay eggs[3, p.143; 20]. It is the
discovery of such distinctions which makes it necessary to re-examine
all the older biological evidence on the sex problem, and to discard
most of it as insufficiently exact.
The work of Steinach[12, pp.225f.] on rats is another well-known example
of changing sex characters by surgery. Steinach found that an ovary
transplanted into a male body changed its characteristics and instincts
into the female type. The growth of the male sex organs he found to be
definitely inhibited by the ovaries. He went so far as to transplant the
whole uterus and tube into the male body, where it developed normally.
One of the most interesting of his results is the observation of how the
instincts were changed along with the type of body. The feminized males
behaved like normal females toward the other males and toward females.
Likewise they were treated as normal females by the males.
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