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
George's statement that "there are no men and ... no women; there are
only sexual majorities"[p.61, op. cit.] has been widely quoted. The
feminists, he adds, "base themselves on Weininger's theory, according to
which the male principle may be found in woman, and the female principle
in man." Unfortunately, George does not make clear what he means by
"principle," so his theory, if he has one, is impossible to appraise in
biological terms. From the embryonic idea expressed above, he deduces a
very positive social philosophy of sex. The feminists, he says,
"recognize no masculine or feminine '_spheres_' and ... propose to
identify absolutely the conditions of the sexes." So, while George seems
to think much more highly of women than does Weininger, their
philosophies come together, for quite different reasons, on the
practical procedure of disregarding reproduction and letting the race go
hang[10, p.345]. Weininger seems to recognize the dual basis for sex;
George evidently does not quite follow him. Both entirely misconceived
the real issues involved, as well as the kind of evidence required to
settle them, as we shall see later in discussing adaptation and
specialization.
Dr Blair Bell[14,15] has collected a mass of evidence on intersexes in
the human species. This includes his own surgical and other cases, as
well as many treated by his colleagues, and a very considerable review
of the medical literature. He not only believes in degrees of femininity
in women, but has worked out classifications which he claims to have
found of great practical value in surgery.[14, pp.166-7] As noted above,
Riddle discovered that his more feminine female pigeons were often
killed by a dose of testicular extract which was practically harmless to
a partially masculinized female. Sex in the human species being a matter
of all the glands organized into a complex, the quantitative "strength"
of that complex would be useful to know before removing any one
secretion from it. Dr Bell states that the oöphorectomy operation
(removal of ovaries) may be performed upon a masculine type of woman
with "little disturbance of the metabolism..." But he thinks that the
degree of masculinity should always be carefully observed before
undertaking such operations, which in some cases have most undesirable
effects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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