Saturday 26 February 2005

Pic of the day: Non-reproductive but probably scripted behavior from the anime DearS. My apologies to those who get hot and bothered by the sight of two naked women interacting: With me it is the opposite. The more affectionate women are toward each other, the less I consider them relevant from a man's point of view. Then again, I am overly rational, which is hardly a trait favored by evolution.

The Hite of feminism

I recently heard on Norwegian radio an interview with Shere Hite, of Hite Report fame. Evidently she is considered very controversial in the United States. Perhaps we Europeans are simply more tolerant of eccentric people, at label for which she certainly qualifies. I am thinking of such statements as "we cannot have equal human rights without changing the institution of coitus". While I eagerly agree that a society of equal worth between men and women must extend into the bedroom, there are actually some differences that are biological in origin. Just like our bodies are not perfectly the same for men and women, nor are the ways in which we use them for reproduction.

The only logical way to go forward with this subject is exactly the one that Shere Hite has chosen most lately: She has devoted herself to the study of lesbians. In this she has found some encouragement: Lesbian couples don't stick to a script, she says.

I cannot possibly have an opinion on that based on personal experience. But neither am I sure that mixed-sex couples (will that ever become a real expression in the English language?) are exactly sticking to a script either. I think perhaps Hite is seeing a script that is scripted not by society but by nature itself. If anything it seems to me that the variation in human sexual behavior is staggering and somewhat meaningless, to the point where people endure actual suffering during acts of procreation that don't even have procreation as a goal.

OK, that was obscure. Let us try this perspective: Originally, the sexual act must have been intended for reproduction, if not in modern humans than certainly in our ancestors. But even in apes sexuality takes on a secondary function and is used to express feelings rather than just produce babies. In humans, it can be argued that this is the primary function of sex. Perhaps not the most important, because without reproduction we would not have been born. But in terms of both quality and quantity, most humans probably value their sexuality most for the expression of emotion. We can think of this as being the one step removed from the original task of babymaking. But then people take another step and create forms of sexual interaction that are very different from the forms that would be ideal if they were just trying to have children. This goes so far that the new practices sometimes cannot possibly result in a pregnancy.

Surely I don't need to go into detail here. Most of you probably have more knowledge of this than I have. But I dare say that deviating from the "script" is not restricted to same-sex couples. In absolute numbers they are probably a small minority as far as nonreproductive sexuality is concerned. But in percentage, of course, same-sex couples engage in 100% nonreproductive sexuality when they are sexually active at all.

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To achieve 100% sexual equality even in the bedroom, we must necessarily eliminate one of the sexes. Otherways the biological differences will result in at least some behavioral differences. Unless we attain immortality, the women are the ones who have to stay. There are already several species, mostly insects but also at least one reptile, where the females reproduce without male intervention, their offspring basically clones of the mother. Our technology is gradually moving toward a level where a human colony could sustain itself in the same way. I'm sure some women would prefer that. That would be the height of feminism, wouldn't it? Perhaps this will become the standard on some other planet we colonize in the far future. But here on Earth, I don't think we men have made ourselves quite that unpopular yet. Let us do our best to continue that way.