PONDERING CONTEMPORARY SEX

Indulge me.  I might not agree with the statements below tomorrow or next year.  But it seems important to think about them.

CHROMOSOMAL MEIOSIS

Two strands of chromosomes, one from “male,” meaning the gender-determining chromosome has an X gene and a Y gene.  It’s also possible but rare to have an XXY or an XYY.  The outcome will not be good, but not as bad as YY or YYY.  The conceptus cannot survive without at least one X.

CHIMERICAL MEIOSIS

Occasionally two sperm may get into one ovum.  The outcome, if there is a viable zygote, would be unpredictable.  An interventional chimera is produced when the nuclear chromosomes of one woman are introduced into the de-nucleated cell machinery of another woman.  (I don’t know what happens with two nuclei but it is probably not good.)  The purpose is to remove the nuclear chromosomes of the mitochondria, which are cells within the cells and occasionally faulty.  Mitos have no secondary chromosomal input from a male.  (It’s also possible for the conceptus to be conceived in a petri dish, then implanted and gestated in a womb that is not the “biological” mother.)

We know that infant cells can migrate into a woman’s body or that an incomplete conceptus or twin can be absorbed into the developing conceptus.  Normally they persist as just a cell mass, but sometimes begin to develop at adolescence, even in a male body.

THE ECONOMY OF THE BIG EGG AND THE LITTLE MIGRATING SPERM

The female must produce the egg and take to term the conceptus.  The male only has to inject the triggering sperm.  Whatever helps the female to maintain the pregnancy and then protect the infant will persist over time, simply because any without advantages have worse chances.  The male sperm is best served by being planted many times in many “gardens.”  But if a man chooses his receptor carefully, is protective and contributes to the healthy gestation and the subsequent infant’s successful growth, then his babies will survive.

INFANCY

Every baby is born into a unique culture, environment, expectations, and so on.  Certain abilities to learn from the situation are probably genetically sourced and will help babies to adapt to some families and cultures but not others.  If the match is happy, the baby will thrive.

MIXED MESSAGES

Not every baby has the expected binary sexual organs.  A small percentage may have both, some might have neither, some might have a mix, a confusion.  Surgical and hormonal intervention is possible and some may choose to be a “woman with a penis” or a man with a vulva/vagina.  Fertility might or might not be related, depending on the status of the generating organs.  A penis is a delivery system, a uterus is a container.  The crucial creative organs are testes and ovaries and their internal support systems, whether organs or hormones.

PSYCHOLOGY OF MALE/FEMALE

If the family and/or culture’s expectations do not match the learning style or temperament or other “hard wiring” of the baby that might not have anything to do with sex, the baby’s sexual organs may not match the situation of the baby’s cultural expectations and the person may end up wanting to change, maybe by impersonation or nowadays with surgery.

ABERRATIONS

Varying from the norm in any culture means “difference” but since humans wear clothes, it is possible to hide or contradict some differences, therefore awareness of them might be low.  In some cultures a variation like twins is considered dangerous and the twins are killed.  In others, twins are highly valued.  In some cultures (this is SO tricky) twins are so valued that their sacrifice is considered efficacious in propitiating the gods.

This applies to some imagined lines of development (the children of bad people carrying “bad seed” or the children of good people inheriting high expectations) which loads up the simple ovum/sperm seams of persons with lots of cultural embroidery. 

CHILDHOOD

Because human babies are born unfinished, they must be sheltered in early childhood.  If the process of forming oneself has the added burden of adapting to sexual demands by adults, the child may struggle lifelong to overcome a felt incompleteness, which some describe as the shattering of the self.  After early childhood the burden of carrying a baby to term or competing with other males for access to a female is so heavy that humans develop in at least two more stages.  First they must unfold who they are and fit into their situation.  Some cultures require children to begin to work at this point, even something so arduous as underground mining.  The second stage, adolescence, is to become sexual in some way, which means managing appearance and drives. 

ADOLESCENTS

If adolescents are unsupported and unguided by the culture, the attrition will be high.  Mothers who are too young produce faulty babies even if they survive themselves.  Boys who are too young to compete are often victims of violence.  Sometimes they are unprotected even within the family and sometimes their drive to perform takes them into danger.  Neither is likely to have the stability to raise babies.  In cultures where youngsters reproduce, there is usually a supporting extended family.  If not, many just don’t survive.  This is not a matter of morality, but simple lack of what is needed.

COMING OF AGE

The last (4th) stage of maturation is post-adolescent, around the twenties.  In this time the most recently evolved brain capacities “come online”  -- both in terms of knowledge and emotional stability.  At this point a human being is able to manage a vast tapestry of cultural possibilities as well as personal decisions and practices.  They might choose to deny parts of themselves, transform other parts, intensify and develop others, or simply jump cultures.  

At this point the binaries of male/female are only a beginning for the multitude of possibilities along several spectrums of measurement: desire, desirability, awareness of other practices, conformity to context, faithfulness, desire for children, displacement to other kinds of creativity and so on.  

HOMOSEXUALITY

Confusion about the reference of this word is rampant.  In Biblical terms it probably had more to do with onanism, since survival of the tribe depended on willingness to reproduce.  Contrast that with the situation of China which is equally draconian about over-reproduction since population density threatens them.  In modern USA we have far more children than there are people responsible enough to protect and rear them, so it makes sense to encourage adoption by gays and het contraception. 

The real threat to “morality” is not same-sex marriage but incomplete relationships that produce children but abandon them, whether or not the relationship had legal standing.  We are only beginning to explore what the legalities of biological parents might be, whether it is in terms of “shoots and leaves” or in terms of legal sperm donors who have created hundreds of biological descendants.  Nor do we know what to do about biological mothers who do not bond psychologically, or those on whom the effect of the pregnancy hormone surge derails them. These aberrations may prevent survival of offspring, but they also damage the larger society, which is what justifies intervention.

It appears that gay men are created in the womb in a number of mammal species (though no one has identified a gay "gene") and persist genetically because they contribute to the survival of the group rather than the individual.  How they might make their contribution as "uncles" probably depends more on the culture, but often is through artistic creativity or other humanities.  They might also be athletes, mechanics, farmers or cowboys.  There is no "build" or "voice" or "gestures" that identify gays.  

Lesbians seem to be more influenced by the culture, probably more in the nourishing, protective maternal style but maybe not.  Since actual fertilization is not necessarily voluntary, women have evolved to survive where they are, even if it is an imprisonment and against their personal nature.

COMMODIFICATION

In a capitalistic and status/class based society, the culture will impose, evoke, and reinforce even such things as sexual characteristics.  Hugh Hefner’s success was as much a product of selling high-end booze, expensive cars, music, fireplaces and smoking jackets as it was sexual liberty and access to bunnies.  The real porn was the advertising.  "Gay" is a market.  Homosexuality is a major Netflix category. “Special” places, clothing, tools, etc. are all pitched to gender differences, sexual markers, and invented categories.  The appeal of them might not correlate with children: skinny women with breast implants who use many chemical cosmetics and get pregnant late in life are not so likely to have the best outcomes.  But the commodification offered to the woman who can pay for ovum donors, in vitro fertilization, mitochondrial transplant, and surrogate gestation has got to be in the hundreds of thousands.

Even that is dwarfed by the kind of commodification called “criminalization.”  Managing incarcerated prisoners is worth billions.  All the adjunct functions like methadone clinics or anger management groups have a sexual valence to them, or why would the media be so obsessed with prison rape?  How else could things like the criminalizing of carrying condoms be justified when they are so clearly beneficial?  The criminalization of drugs is deeply entwined with the criminalization of sex.

These thoughts are in part triggered by reading "The Evolution of Human Sexuality" by Donald Symons. (1979)  It's packed with challenges to people who have dominated the field, maybe unjustifiably.  Anyway, time for a re-think.

FROM POOH TO PI; FROM TEDDIES TO TIGERS

My collection of what I call “teddy bear books” began about the time I graduated from college in 1961.  They were not about stuffed toys, but about the then-new “attachment theory,” the crucial importance of a secure, loving relationship with a caregiver in the first year or two of life.  The teddy bears were considered a version of a “blankie” or a binky -- a comforting extension of the caregiver.  Harry Harlow had finally broken the iron grip of the strict nanny who insisted on discipline and letting babies “cry themselves out” by setting up an experiment with baby monkeys.  Instead of their own mothers, the babies got two puppet mothers.  A wire monkey fed the milk.  The other was simply as cuddly as a teddy bear.  The babies stayed with the wire mom only enough to survive, then quickly leapt to the soft mom and clung for comfort.  The photos were vivid and distressing.

Pretty soon the pediatricians and psychologists were getting the point.  And by now the neurologists are able to tell us what is really happening.  Primates, including humans, “unfold,” following a pattern that is embedded in “timer” genes and basically going through the steps of previous evolution because each mutation is built on the previous one, even though the mutation may mean a subtraction from what is there.  So the body and its capacities are “sculpted” both by addition and subtraction, and continues to change after birth.  We know that a LOT of brain cells are there at first, that those that fit into patterns by experience are preserved, and then the unused ones “pop” -- they die, resorb, whatever.  But if something creates a new pattern and sufficient information keeps being fed into that pattern, then brain cells are resupplied as needed.  Not just that, but long filaments of connection grow among the cells in a web, or rather a set of webs.  You can see them in this video, which has an excellent explanation.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5MI-EACI0     The experts say that in the beginning the key to full human development is JOY.  Think of that!  Not time-tables, exercises, equipment, prosperity -- simply JOY.

Human development seems to go in phases that can be identified by the tasks at hand.  These tasks are dictated by the need to survive.  During the period of helplessness after birth, the body/brain is just trying to figure itself out and get control.  Survival depends upon bonding with the caregiver.  Then there is a period when babies try to figure out the world around them -- why stuff falls, what stuff tastes like, the limits of what they can do with stuff.  That’s when the toys and Cheerios go flying, the block towers are built -- then crashed.  All innocent experiments, of course.

The next period is the one that intrigues me because I can remember it well:  “adrenarche” (5 or 6 to around 9) when the child creates identity.  It is a malleable, responsive time, but also a time of separation when the child can recognize what other people want but also know his or her separate wants.  There is testing of relationship, but also empathy for others.  This is the period that most of us think of when we think of pedophiles -- also the years when serious damage can to done to the formation of the person, because getting “stuck” at this age is very hard to remedy.  It’s not the sex, per se, even if it is physically brutal, but the resulting deep confusion about things like self-worth, boundaries, intimacy, blame, secrecy, trusting oneself to understand and cope.  Though the brain’s assumptions grow out of the dependency experience from earlier, these are the years when the terms of deep rational meaning are set.  One begins to think through propositions and to begin to use metaphor and memory as compasses and rudders. 

In the formation of a person, then, at first the inner “realm” is established within the cradle formed by grownups.  The second “pre-school” stage is more about the outside realm: the world to which we connect through our senses -- eyes, ears, mouths, noses and so on.  Our memories from that time are very intense and saturated with emotion. But during adrenarche there is a kind of interlacing pattern forming between the world outside the body -- which by now has a sense of reality and a fund of information -- versus the realm inside the body, information about emotions, bodily comfort and functions, and skills.  A person this age (I DO remember it) can think, maybe even testify in court, has a rudimentary sense of right and wrong, and is constantly busy because they are acting out the internal patterns they are forming.  They value stories and internalize them as vicarious experience.  This needs to get done before the sexual adolescence begins because they are the foundation of trusting sexual relationship, as well as the ability to provide effective caregiving for the babies produced by sex.

People will agree that children in adrenarche are too young for sex, but when adolescence is reached, people individually and as a culture are very confused.  Once we stopped living in tribes and went to legal pairs -- not even extended families living together -- the terms of survival became much more restrictive.  A twelve-year-old girl is technically able to get pregnant, but the price her body will pay is very high.  Many twelve-year-old boys are emotionally fragile, still dependent on parents.  The law sets rules, but the law varies.  People vary.  

There has been talk about “Tiger Mothering.”  Demanding, unyielding, high-standards and high-stakes.  That’s one thing to think about.  But there’s another:  children who are badly traumatized early in their lives can become tigers themselves.  Here’s a remarkable and chilling interview with a child who is a killer.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=g2-Re_Fl_L4   If you watch this all the way through, you’ll see that the people who treated this child are hopeful that their work has rebuilt a predator into a little girl again.  It took as much effort and strategy as coping with a Bengal Tiger on a small boat. 

This is not narcissism, or delinquency, or even some defiant  disorder.  This child’s father’s assaults made her a changeling.  In another era she might simply have been killed.  In our times, without treatment, on the streets -- she will also be killed, not simply and not without taking others with her.  This is not because she was “bad seed” or “brain damaged” by trauma, but simply because there was no joy, no relationship, neither mothering nor teddy bear.  Nothing to make her human.

THE OVERBURDENED CHILD

“The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self”, by Alice Miller, was a great favorite book among the Unitarians -- whose children are always above average.  The Above Average Child is a favorite trope of middle-class aspiring families who have read many Sunday supplement stories about prodigies who became famous -- and made a lot of money.  These are the two favorite indices of success for people who want to be recognized and praised, but -- alas -- they aren’t always markers of true achievement, especially in today’s world.  Today the book is selling very well in Japan where children are urged to score high on tests, attend the “best” schools, and get powerful jobs.  The pressure goes up, along with the suicide rate.

The “this” child and the “that” child -- the Oversensitive Child, the Hurt Child, the Gifted Child, the Slow child.  I was fooling around with Google trying to find out more about the child who is 6 to 9 (adrenarche) a relatively neglected research group but not in the storybooks I read at that age.  Nearly all the heroes and heroines were about straight-sided (pre-adolescent), plucky, overmatched, but eventually triumphant children.  The girls were equally tough and resourceful as the boys but I paid no attention to gender anyway.  Often stories were about preadolescent kids caught in the extraordinary circumstances of the frontier or war.  A favorite example was the group of seven children whose parents died on the Oregon Trail.  Even when their oxen died, the children put the last of their belongings into a kind of wheelbarrow improvised from the wagon, and kept on until they made it.

My report cards from primary school label me a “Weeping Child.”  No one asked me why I wept and no one did anything about it.  Reading these stories helped.  I can’t remember why I wept.  They said I was Oversensitive.  Some have suggested the trope of “the Hurt Child,” which seems to come from the disability community and maybe groups like cancer survivors.  It suggests grief for one’s own physical losses and limitations, a sense of inadequacy, and a need to be understood.  Now no doubt the Hurt Child would include sex abuse victims, which are such a surprisingly big proportion of survivors.  Part of my problem was unrecognized near-sightedness.  I was less hurt than aggrieved and pouting.  I became an “Armored Child,” stoic and self-contained.  I use myself as the main example because I can’t tell you about the people I know who share these roles, though they are legion.

The Overburdened Child is defined as the child trying to survive divorce, both by managing their own fear and confusion, by trying to parent younger siblings, and by trying hard to repair the marriage and the hurt of the parents.  I have a hunch that the characteristics apply as well to the children of come-and-go battling marriages, addict or alcoholic marriages, loveless marriages, compromise marriages, and households that don’t involve any marriages, just a lot of passing-through non-contributing incompetent adults -- addicts or felons. 

These days kids often try to take care of each other, believing that adults simply don’t understand  -- which can be quite true.  Anyway, adults work, sometimes two or three jobs, and are exhausted when they are home.  Kids will try to counsel their adults, according to what they pick up from TV shows; try to broker peace agreements; try to enforce some kind of dependability and to exclude unwelcome sex partners.

Studies of the children of divorce that extended over decades revealed surprisingly harsh consequences for a long period of time -- not just for the children but also for the adults, especially women, partly because of the economic hit.  The kids carried a deep fear of betrayal, because adults had let them down so many times.  They were self-deprecating even when they were driven achievers, because they were so used to coming home proudly after winning a prize and then being torn down to the ground by jealous or controlling adults.  Like a car stuck in mud, they rocked forward and backward between compliance and defiance but never escaped the trap.  

By the time I was in high school, I was no longer a quiet weeper -- by then I sometimes exploded in desperate tantrums under the pressure of classwork, dramatics participation, and family tension.  My day started at 5AM, listening for the fate of Hungary (this is the mid-Fifties) while I did homework.  Then school (I walked two miles -- no snow, just rain), then rehearsal, and in the evening stage crew building sets.  My father was baffled in his life by the unrecognized damage of a closed-skull head trauma.  His job kept him on the road.  My mother was resuming college, having realized she would probably have to support the family with a teaching degree.   I was convinced that the atomic bomb would be dropped on Portland.  My report cards were straight A’s with a few B’s and it was the B’s that were addressed.  I felt responsible for it all, but helpless.

Adults who make demands on their children, even unspoken ones, but do not respond to the needs of the child, force the child to become the caretaker.  In adulthood the children often continue to be rescuers, burdened rescuers who never feel as though they’ve managed to do enough.  I think my parents were this way and passed it on.  Their parents were part of the rural generation that moved to the city but never quite succeeded there.  No one even considered divorce.  I don’t think divorce is the only marker.  My parents had a huge taboo on quarreling.  I don’t think quarreling is the only marker.  My parents never beat us or sexually abused us.  That’s not the only marker.  

The marker is subjective: the felt burden on the child to make things better.  Bob Scriver certainly felt it.  He was his “mother’s boy,” and when she was unhappy -- and consequently when I was unhappy -- he was almost fawning, offering small gifts.  The rest of the time he was oblivious.  His family was oblivious to everything but success (as socially defined) or trouble (also socially defined).  They found him totally unmanageable and mysterious -- one of those “artist fellers.”  Both of us were self-centered enough to protect ourselves with a shell (Armored Children), which didn’t work out when we tried to share lives.  We were both workaholics to the point of damaging our health, him more than me.  We became porcupine children, even skunk children sometimes, but always beavers.

Categories like “Hurt Child,” “Abandoned Child,” “Gifted Child,” and “Overburdened Child” are helpful to the extent they provide a way to combine and conceptualize observations and feelings so that they can be addressed.  Shrugging them off with denial or exceptionalism (“that’s just the way they are”), keeps people stuck in place, always yearning for their “true self.”  And the truth is that there are many ways to be true to yourself: they are as much built as found.  Each child is a Unique Child.