Disclaimer: I am now retired, and am therefore no longer
an expert on anything. This blog post
presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.
Michael Dolnick’s “The Seeds of Life” is a fascinating look
at how scientists figured out exactly how human reproduction works. In particular, it shows that until 1875, we
still were not sure what fertilized what, and until the 1950s (with the
discovery of DNA) how that fertilization led to a fully formed human
being. Here, however, I’d like to
consider what Dolnick says about beliefs before scientists began/finished
their quest, and those beliefs’ influence on our own thinking.
In a very brief summary, Dolnick says that most cultures
guessed that the man’s seminal fluid was “seed”, while the woman was a “field”
to be sown (obviously, most if not all those talking about cultural beliefs are
male). Thus, for example, the Old
Testament talks about “seed” several times.
An interesting variant was the idea that shortly after fertilization,
seminal fluid and menstrual blood combined to “curdle” the embryo like milk
curdled into cheese – e.g., in the Talmud and Hindu writings, seminal fluid,
being milky, supplied the white parts of the next generation, like bone, while
menstrual blood, being red, supplied the red parts, like blood. In any case, the seed/field belief in some
ways casts the woman as inferior – thus, for example, infertility is always the
woman’s fault, since the seeds are fine but the field may be “barren” – another
term in the Bible.
In Western culture, early Christianity superimposed its own
additional concerns, which affected our beliefs not just about how procreation
worked and the relative inferiority or superiority of the sexes, but also our
notion of “perfection”, both morally and with regard to sex. The Church and some Protestant successors
viewed sex as a serious sin “wanting a purpose [i.e, if not for the purpose of
producing babies]”, including sex within marriage. Moreover, the Church with its heritage in
Platonism viewed certain things as less disgusting than others, and I would
suggest that many implicit assumptions of our culture derive from these. The circle is perfect, hence female breasts
are beautiful; smooth surfaces and straight lines are beautiful, while body
hair, the asymmetrical male member, and the crooked labia are not. Menstrual blood is messy, “unclean,” and
disgusting, as is sticky, messy seminal fluid.
Effects on Sexism
It seems to me that much more can be said about differing
cultural attitudes towards men and women based on the seed/field belief. For one thing, the seed/field metaphor
applies in all agricultural societies – and until the early 1900s, most
societies were almost completely agricultural rather than hunter/pastoral or
industrial. Thus, this way of viewing
women as inferior was dangerously plausible not only to men, but also to women. In fact, Dolnick records examples in Turkey
and Egypt of modern-day women believing in the seed/field theory and therefore
women’s inferiority in a key function of life.
Another implication of the seed/field theory is that the
“nature” of the resulting children is primarily determined by the male, just as
different types of seed yield different plants.
While this is somewhat counteracted by the obvious fact that physically,
children tend to favor each parent more or less equally, there is some sense in
literature such as the Bible that some seed is “special” – Abraham’s seed will
pass down the generations and single out for special attention from God his
Jewish descendants. And that, in turn,
can lead naturally to the idea that mingling other men’s seed with yours can
interfere with that specialness, hence wives are to be kept away from other men
– and that kind of control over the wife leads inevitably to the idea of women
as at least partially property. And
finally, the idea of the woman as passive receptacle of the seed can lead to men
viewing women actively desiring sex or a woman’s orgasm as indications of
mentally-unbalanced “wantonness”, further reinforcing the (male) impression of
women’s inferiority.
I find it not entirely coincidental that the first major
movements toward feminism occurred soon after Darwin’s take on evolution
(implicitly even-handed between the sexes) and the notion of the sperm and the
egg were established as scientifically superior alternatives to Biblical and
cultural beliefs. And I think it is
important to realize that, with genetic inheritance via DNA being still in the
process of examination and major change, the role of culture rather than
“inherence” in male and female is still in the ascendant – as one geneticist
put it, we now know that sex is a spectrum, not either-or. So the ideas of both similarity and
“equality” between the sexes are now very much science-based.
But there’s one other possible effect of the seed/field
metaphor that I’d like to consider. Is
it possible that the ancients decided that there was only so much seed that a
man had, for a lifetime? And would this
explain to some extent the abhorrence of both male masturbation and
homosexuality that we see in cultures worldwide? Think of Onan in the Bible, and his sin of
wasting his seed on the barren ground …
Rethinking Disgust
“Girl, Wash Your Face” (by Rachel Hollis, one of the latest examples of the
new breed that live their lives in public) is, I think, one of the best
self-help books I have seen, although it is aimed very clearly not at men – because many of the things
she suggests are perfectly doable and sensible, unlike the many self-help books
in which in a competitive world only a few can achieve financial success. What I also find fascinating about it is the
way in which “norms” of sexual roles have changed since the 1950s. Not only is the author running a successful
women’s-lifestyle website with herself as overworking boss, but her marriage is
what she views as her vision of Christianity, complete with a positive view of
sex primarily on her terms.
What I find particularly interesting is how she faced the
age-old question of negotiating sex within marriage. What she decided was that she was going to
learn how to want to have sex as a
norm, rather than being passively “don’t care” or disgusted by it. I view this as an entirely positive approach
– it means that both sides in a marriage are on the same page (more or less)
with the reassurance that “not now” doesn’t mean “not for a long time” or “no,
I don’t like you”. But the main
significance of this is that it means a specific way of overcoming a culture of
disgust, about sex among other things.
I believe that the way it works is captured best by poetry
by Alexander Pope: “Vice is a monster of
so frightful a mien/As, to be hated, needs but to be seen/Yet, seen oft,
familiar with her face/We first endure; then pity; then embrace.” The point is that it is often not vice that
causes the disgust, but rather disgust than causes us to call it vice – as I
have suggested above. And the cure for
that disgust is to “see it oft” and become “familiar” with it, knowing that we
will eventually move from “enduring” it to having it be normal to “embracing”
it.
Remember, afaik, we can’t help feeling that everything about
us is normal or nice, including excrement odor, body odor, messiness, maybe
fat, maybe blotches or speech problems – and yet, culturally and perhaps
viscerally, the same things about other people disgust us (or the culture tells
us they should disgust us). And
therefore, logically, we should be disgusted about ourselves as well – as we
often are. Moreover, in the case of sex,
the disgusting can also seem forbidden and hence exciting. The result, for both sexes, can be a tangled
knot of life-long neuroses.
The path of moving beyond disgust, therefore, can lie simply
with learning to view the disgusting as in a sense ours: the partner’s body odor as our body odor,
their fat as our love handles, etc. But
it is “ours” not in the sense of possession, but in the sense of being part of
an integral part of an overall person that is now a vital part of your world
and, yes, beautiful to you in an every-day sort of way, just as you can’t help
think of yourself as beautiful. This
doesn’t happen overnight, but, just as the ability to ignore itches during Zen
meditation inevitably happens, so this will happen in its own good time, while
you’re not paying attention.
The role of science in general, not just in the case of how
babies are made or sex, has typically been to undercut the rationale for our
disgust, for our prejudices and for many of our notions of what vice is. And thus, rethinking our beliefs in the light
of science allows us to feel comfort that when we overcome our disgust about
something, it is in a good cause; it is not succumbing to a vice. And maybe, just maybe, we can start to
overcome the greatest prejudice of all:
against crooked lines, imperfect circles, and asymmetry.
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