The Lies That Blind or Why Humans are in Fact Bipedal

 

The Lies That Blind or Why Humans are in Fact Bipedal

by Stephen W. Houghton II

It is not a pleasant task to criticize the reasoning of someone who you significantly agree with. What classical liberal could want to argue with an argument that ends, “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,” especially when he teaches at your alma mater.

However, the truth is that in his book The Lies that Bind, Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah uses a form of reasoning regarding sex that is inappropriate, both ignoring the generation and applicability of generalities and showing a lack of interest in teleological reasoning. This leads him to a conclusion equivalent to: “humans are not bipedal.”

In his section, “Women, Man, Other,” Dr Appiah writes “The vast majority of human bodies can be recognized as belonging to one of two biological kinds. Simply examining the genitalia .. will generally allow you to see that some one is biologically male .. or biologically female.” He then explains how generally the effects of the Y chromosome transform the undifferentiated gonads into testis as opposed to ovaries in most cases. This is all true, but he then proceeds to, as the kids say, problematize the situation.

He points out rightly that while virtually all humans are born with either XX or XY chromosomes, this is not always the case. There are several different anomalies where in the individual has either only one X chromosome, or at least one X chromosome and a variable number of other X or Y chromosomes. Other examples include instances of chimerism where two fertilized ova fuse in utero forming a single individual and cases where for various reasons individuals develop primary sex characteristics (sex organs) not aligned with their genotype.

However, as Dr Appiah implicitly concedes, none of these conditions occur at a frequency greater than one in five hundred individuals and most at rates above (often well above) one in two thousand. In the most extreme cases they have been diagnosed in less than a score of individuals in a population exceeding 8 billion. To illustrate why it is inappropriate to use such cases to draw the general conclusion that sex is not binary, let us turn to another instance of human abnormality.

To mirror his argument, The vast majority of human bodies can be recognized as having two legs. However, that is not always the case, congenital amputation and other anomalies can result in people born without one or more legs. Further due to accident or other post-natal events people can lose one or more legs. It is therefore inappropriate to conclude that humans are bipedal.

It is important to acknowledge that in a formal logical sense both of these arguments are in some sense correct. The statement all A have B is disproven if you can show even one instance when A does not have B.

The reason this is not dispositive however is that Dr. Appiah does not trouble himself with defining concepts such as sex, male, female, etc., except by loose example. A good definition of sex would be the two forms that humans, all other mammals and many other animals and plants can be divided into on the bases of their reproductive functions.

          This is a good definition in part because it points squarely at the end or as The Philosopher would say, the telos of sex, that is reproduction. Sex is an evolved mechanism for the mixing of genes in the course of reproduction in multicellular organisms.

Males are those individuals who are, were, or will be able to produce small gametes (sperm). Females are those individuals who are, were, or will be able to produce large gametes (ova). That is gamete production is the definitive characteristic of sex differentiation.

However, in humans and many other animals there are other primary and secondary sexual characteristics that tend to be highly correlated with gamete production. For example, the primary sexual characteristics in males include testicles in a scrotum, a penis, van deferens, etc. Female primary sexual characteristics include a uterus, fallopian tubes, a vagina, etc. Secondary sexual characteristics include breasts, facial hair, body size etc. There are also differences between the sexes in the average rate of various personality traits.  

These characteristics are correlated to sex, presumably because they are necessary or useful for reproduction. This combination of characteristics is what we typically think of as maleness or femaleness. However, that does not mean that primary and secondary sex characteristics are always congruent with gamete production. For example, though on average men are larger than women, this is not always the case. In fact, the distribution of many traits among men and women form two overlapping bell curves.

It is for this reason that many people have come to believe that “sex is a spectrum,” because the distribution of secondary sex characteristics is spectrum like though with a bimodal distribution. There are two problems with the spectrum approach, first, it is a form of definition by non-essentials. Second it overlooks the fact that there is not one spectrum, but two, one of males and one of females. That is males can be placed along a spectrum from those with more male typical secondary sex traits to those with fewer, and the same with females. However, while the distribution of secondary sex traits overlap, they are separate spectrums.

This point can be demonstrated by the fact that the spectrums do not overlap with individuals who can produce both sperm and ova as would be the case if there was one spectrum. Instead, they overlap with individuals who are sterile, that is who are congenitally unable to produce sperm or ova or are unable to deposit or receive the opposite gametes, even if they can produce them, as in the case of individuals who suffer from Aphallia (males who are born without a penis). That is individuals who do not have reproductive capacity.

Those who look at the same variation and see not a spectrum, but more than two sexes are also in error. Since the end of sex is reproduction, sex must be defined in terms of reproductive function. Males produce sperm and females, ova that is what distinguishes them.  Unless there is a third (or fourth) type of gamete, there is not a third (or fourth) sex, there is not. Some might argue that intersex people (those with incongruous genitalia) are a third sex, but intersex people are either reproductively male, reproductively female, or sterile. The sterile are not a sex because, sex is about reproductive function, which sterile people by definition do not have.

So, despite the impression given in his book, sex is clearer, more in line with people’s intuitions and binary.

Having discussed sex, Dr Appiah then turns abruptly to describing gender, without, at first, defining it. He discusses several groups that vary from the conventional Western notions of men and women. He then defines gender as “the whole set of ideas about what women and men will be like and about how they should behave.”

While this is not a wrong definition it is not a great one either. A better one would be that gender is how language and society deal with the fact of sex. It is a better definition because it points to the fact that gender is about how societies deal with a critical reality, one that determines if they can reproduce. It also helps explain why though societies differ to some extent in how they deal with sex, there are many commonalities.

This is because while as discussed above there is variation in how sex is expressed, there are regularities in average traits that will express themselves in social norms. It is not an accident that men tend to be predominate in professions that require strength. Nor is it an arbitrary social convention that women tend to predominate in the so-called caring professions.  Indeed, given that humans are mammals it would be strange if the latter were not the case.

Thus, gender systems, almost inevitably take account of the innate average traits of males and females. The most important of these is the one that is universal, the ability of women to conceive and bare children. The support and protection of the resulting mother child dyad is a feature of the gender systems of all successful societies.

This usually takes the form of binding the father and mother together in an economic, social, and genetic alliance, usually a dyad, that in our society is called a marriage. While polygyny and polyandry do exist, they are the exception, not the rule.

Polyandry virtually always is the result of an extreme climate that requires the labor of more than one man to support the household. The co-husbands are almost always brothers because this ensures that the resulting children are at least all the nephews of all the co-husbands or more likely either nephews or progeny of all co- husbands. This is an example of the fact that this whole discussion is, if you will pardon the expression, pregnant with the implications of evolution by natural selection.   

          While polygyny is a wide spread norm, fulfilling as it does one of the advantages from the female evolutionary prospective of the utility of male children, the ability to produce a larger number of grandchildren than a female child and from the male perspective more sex and offspring, in practice most marriages in successful polygynous societies are monogamous. That is the union of one male and one female and a family of them and their children and grandchildren.

This is likely the consequence of, given the birth of equal numbers of male and female offspring, the fact that polygyny outside the elite would result in large numbers of males unable to find a mate. Since males in most mammalian species are more given to physical competition and conflict to find mates, leaving a large number of them without one would lead to social instability. The exception would be in pre-state societies where male death due to war makes wide spread polygyny feasible.  

          While strictly monogamous societies are less common than polygynous ones in the sense that of 1,231 societies that have been studied only 186 are monogamous, however they have tended to be very successful. Rome, a serially monogamous society for example ruled the whole Mediterranean basin for centuries. Great Britian, a much more strictly monogamous society conquered about a quarter of the land area of the globe. This is presumably a result of the benefit of such social arrangements: the elite investing in economically productive endeavors rather than additional wives, a reduction in social instability from more men being able to find partners, fewer women being forced into prostitution to sate the lust of unmarried men etc.

          There are other marriage patterns than these but they are much less frequent and can be left for later discussion. But social norms around gender are not limited to social recognition of parentage and the obligations arising therefrom. They nearly universally result in a gendered division of labor.

          In these systems it is extremely common for women to take on labor that can be performed while supervising and nurturing young children. This has been a constant across different basic economic patterns

          For example, our hunter gatherer ancestors and indeed cultures that pursue that lifestyle today, almost exclusively send men away from the settlement or camp to hunt while women undertake activities like gathering or processing that are more compatible with child minding.

In agricultural societies a not dissimilar pattern occurs where the more distant labor like sheepherding and some field labor is performed mostly or exclusively by men, while women raise chickens, garden within the curtilage, and process food and clothing where they can keep an eye on the children.

          None of this means that all or even any existing gender system is completely justified, it is to point to the fact that gender and gender norms arises out of biological facts. As liberals, we are to oppose the imposition of such norms by state force, and to help those of unconventional traits to find a path to happiness. But we are not called upon to battle with reality. We are to regard gender norms as training wheels that help most, but not all people. 

          Turning to the various instances of gender non-conforming groups that Dr Appiah discusses. While a liberal society must make a place for individuals who have unconventional traits, they cannot be at the center of society or social analysis. Just as medieval monasteries fulfilled an important function in preserving classical learning through troubled times and the Shakers provided care to orphans in America for centuries, neither could survive without the reproducing society around them, so to any community that does not produce children.

That does not mean that such communities don’t have rights and they may be socially beneficial, but insofar as they are sterile and thus dependent for their continued existence on the wider reproducing community, they cannot be central. In the current rhetoric, heteronormativity is to be centered, not decentered. Nor does that apply only to gay people, lifelong bachelors such as this writer and spinsters can’t be the center either. Which doesn’t mean we can’t be useful adjuncts to society and have fulfilling lives in our own way.

          The last point I want to address is the title of Dr Appiah’s book, The Lies that Bind. While it is true that many social realities can be somewhat arbitrary, that does not make them less real. To say that Christianity exists and Christians have a common belief system is not to say that every member thereof even knows every word of the Nicaean Creed much less that they understand the words in exactly the same way. Some facts are fuzzier than others, but social facts are still real.

          As an American I have my doubts about the utility of the British peerage system, but it is a fact of reality that, because of British law regarding the decent of titles of nobility, Dr. Appiah is not the Baron Parmoor, but that his second cousin Seddon Crips is. That is not a lie, but a truth. If it binds or divides is another matter.

          Does any of this matter? If philosophy is the love of wisdom, then truth always matters. In this day it must be added, to paraphrase Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”