Authors: Simone de Beauvoir
It has already been pointed out that for many vegetables and some primitive animals, among them mollusks, gamete specification does not lead to individual specification, as they produce both ova and sperm. Even when the sexes separate, the barriers between them are not tight like those that separate species; just as gametes are defined from an originally undifferentiated tissue, males and females develop more as variations on a common base. For certain animals—the
Bonellia viridis
is the most typical
case
*
—the embryo is first asexual, and its eventual sexuality is determined by the incertitudes of its development. It is accepted today that in most species sex determination depends on the genotypical constitution of the egg. The virgin egg of the honeybee reproducing itself by parthenogenesis yields males exclusively; that of fruit flies in the exact same conditions yields females exclusively. When eggs are fertilized, it is to be noted that—except for some spiders—an approximately equal number of male and female individuals is procreated; differentiation comes from the heterogeneity of one of the two types of gametes: for mammals sperm possess either a male or a female potentiality. It is not really known what determines the singular character of heterogenic gametes during spermatogenesis or oogenesis; in any case, Mendel’s statistical laws are sufficient to explain their regular distribution. For both sexes, fertilization and the beginning of embryonic development occur in an identical way; the epithelial tissue destined to evolve into a gonad is undifferentiated at the outset; at a certain stage of maturation testicles take shape or later the ovary takes form. This explains why there are many intermediaries between hermaphroditism and gonochorism; very often one of the sexes possesses certain organs characteristic of the complementary sex: the toad is the most striking case of that; the male has an atrophied ovary called Bidder’s organ that can be made to produce eggs artificially. Mammals also have vestiges of this sexual bipotentiality: for example, the pedicled and sessile hydra, the
uterus masculinus
, mammary glands in the male, Gartner’s duct in the female, and the clitoris. Even in species where sexual division is the most clear-cut, there are individuals that are both male and female simultaneously: cases of intersexuality are numerous in animals and human beings; and in butterflies and crustaceans there are examples of gynandromorphism in which male and female characteristics are juxtaposed in a kind of mosaic. Genotypically defined, the fetus is nevertheless deeply influenced by the milieu from which it draws its nourishment: for ants, honeybees, and termites, how nutrition occurs makes the larva a realized female or thwarts its sexual maturation, reducing it to the rank of worker; the influence in this case pervades the whole organism: for insects the soma is sexually defined very early and does not depend on gonads. For vertebrates, it is essentially the gonadic hormones that play a regulatory role. Many experiments have demonstrated that varying the endocrine milieu makes it possible to act on sex determination; other grafting and
castration experiments carried out on adult animals have led to the modern theory of sexuality: in male and female vertebrates, the soma is identical and can be considered a neutral element; the action of the gonad gives it its sexual characteristics; some of the secreted hormones act as stimulants and others as inhibitors; the genital tract itself is somatic, and embryology shows that it takes shape under the influence of hormones from bisexual precursors. Intersexuality exists when hormonal balance has not been realized and when neither of the two sexual potentialities has been clearly accomplished.
Equally distributed in the species, and evolved analogously from identical roots, male and female organisms seem profoundly symmetrical once they are formed. Both are characterized by the presence of gamete-producing glands, ovaries, or testicles, with the analogous processes of spermatogenesis and ovogenesis, as was seen earlier; these glands deliver their secretion in a more or less complex canal according to the hierarchy of the species: the female drops the egg directly by the oviduct and holds it in the cloaca or in a differentiated uterus before expelling it; the male either lets go of the semen outside or is equipped with a copulating organ that allows it to penetrate the female. Statistically, the male and the female thus look like two complementary types. They have to be envisaged from a functional point of view to grasp their singularity.
It is very difficult to give a generally valid description of the notion of female; defining her as a carrier of ova and the male as a carrier of sperm is insufficient because the relation of organism to gonads is extremely variable; inversely, the differentiation of the gametes does not directly affect the organism as a whole: it was sometimes claimed that as the ovum was bigger, it consumed more living force than the sperm; but the latter is secreted in infinitely greater quantity so that in the two sexes the expenditure balances out. Spermatogenesis was taken as an example of prodigality and ovulation a model of economy: but in this phenomenon there is also an absurd profusion; the immense majority of eggs are never fertilized. In any case, gametes and gonads are not microcosms of the whole organism. This is what has to be studied directly.
One of the most noteworthy features when surveying the steps of the animal ladder is that, from bottom to top, life becomes more individual; at the bottom it concentrates on the maintenance of the species, and at the top it puts its energies into single individuals. In lower species, the organism is reduced to barely more than the reproductive apparatus; in this case, the ovum—and therefore the female—takes precedence over everything else, since it is above all the ovum that is dedicated to the sheer repetition of life;
but it is barely more than an abdomen, and its existence is entirely devoured by the work of a monstrous ovulation. It reaches gigantic dimensions compared with the male; but its members are often just stumps, its body a formless bag; all the organs have degenerated to nourish the eggs. In truth, although they constitute two distinct organisms, males and females can hardly be thought of as individuals; they form one whole with elements that are inextricably linked: these are intermediary cases between hermaphroditism and gonochorism. For the entoniscid, parasites that live off the crab, the female is a kind of whitish sausage surrounded by incubating slivers harboring thousands of eggs; in their midst are minuscule males as well as larvae destined to provide replacement males. The enslavement of the dwarf male is even more total in the edriolydnus: it is attached beneath the female’s operculum and is without a digestive tube of its own; it is solely devoted to reproduction. In all these cases the female is just as enslaved as the male: she is a slave to the species; while the male is fastened to his spouse, his spouse is also fastened, either to a living organism on which she feeds as a parasite or to a mineral substratum; she is consumed by producing eggs the minuscule male fertilizes. As life takes on more complex forms, individual autonomy develops with the loosening of the link uniting the sexes; but insects of both sexes remain tightly subordinate to the eggs. In the case of ephemerals, both spouses often die after coitus and laying; and in the case of rotifers and mosquitoes, the male, lacking a digestive apparatus, sometimes perishes after fertilization, while the female can feed herself and survive: egg formation and laying take time; the mother dies as soon as the next generation’s future has been assured. The privilege of many female insects comes from the fact that fertilization is generally a rapid process while ovulation and incubation of the eggs demand a long period of time. For termites, the enormous mush-stuffed queen that lays an egg a second until she is sterile—and then is pitilessly massacred—is no less a slave than the dwarf male attached to her abdomen that fertilizes the eggs as they are expelled. In bee and ant matriarchies, males are intruders that are massacred each season: at the time of the wedding flight, all the male ants escape from the anthill and fly toward the females; if they reach and fertilize them, they die immediately, exhausted; if not, the female workers refuse them entry. They kill them in front of the entrances or let them starve to death; but the fertilized female has a sad fate: she digs herself into the earth alone and often dies from exhaustion while laying the first eggs; if she manages to reconstitute a colony, she is imprisoned for twelve years laying eggs ceaselessly; the female workers whose sexuality has been atrophied live for four years, but their whole life is
devoted to raising the larvae. Likewise for the bees: the drone that catches the queen in her wedding flight crashes to the ground eviscerated; the other drones return to their colony, where they are unproductive and in the way; at the beginning of the winter, they are killed. But the sterile worker bees trade their right to life for incessant work; the queen is really the hive’s slave: she lays eggs ceaselessly; and the old queen dies; some larvae are nourished so they can try to succeed her. The first one hatched kills the others in the cradle. The female giant spider carries her eggs in a bag until they reach maturity: she is bigger and stronger than the male, and she sometimes devours him after coupling; the same practices can be seen in the praying mantis, which has taken shape as the myth of devouring femininity: the egg castrates the sperm, and the praying mantis assassinates her spouse; these facts prefigure a woman’s dream of castration. But in truth, the praying mantis only manifests such cruelty in captivity: free and with rich enough food around, she rarely makes a meal out of the male; if she does, it is like the solitary ant that often eats some of her own eggs in order to have the strength to lay eggs and perpetuate the species. Seeing in these facts the harbinger of the “battle of the sexes” that sets individuals as such against each other is just rambling. Neither for the ants, nor the honeybees, nor the termites, nor the spider, nor the praying mantis can one say that the female enslaves and devours the male: it is the species that devours both of them in different ways. The female lives longer and seems to have more importance; but she has no autonomy; laying, incubation, and care of the larvae make up her whole destiny; her other functions are totally or partially atrophied. By contrast, an individual existence takes shape in the male. He very often takes more initiative than the female in fertilization; it is he who seeks her out, who attacks, palpates, seizes her and imposes coitus on her; sometimes he has to fight off other males. Accordingly, the organs of locomotion, touch, and prehension are also often more developed; many female butterflies are apterous, whereas their males have wings; males have more developed colors, elytrons, feet, and claws; and sometimes this profusion can also be seen in a luxurious vanity of gorgeous colors. Aside from the fleeting coitus, the male’s life is useless, gratuitous: next to the diligence of worker females, the laziness of drones is a privilege worth noting. But this privilege is outrageous; the male often pays with his life for this uselessness that contains the germ of independence. A species that enslaves the female punishes the male attempting to escape: it eliminates him brutally.
In the higher forms of life, reproduction becomes the production of differentiated organisms; it has a twofold face: maintenance of the species and creation of new individuals; this innovative aspect asserts itself as the
singularity of the individual is confirmed. It is thus striking that these two moments of perpetuation and creation divide; this break, already marked at the time of the egg’s fertilization, is present in the generating phenomenon as a whole. The structure of the egg itself does not order this division; the female, like the male, possesses a certain autonomy, and her link with the egg loosens; the female fish, amphibian, and bird are much more than an abdomen; the weaker the mother-to-egg link, the less labor parturition involves, and the more undifferentiated is the relation between parents and their offspring. Sometimes, the newly hatched lives are the father’s responsibility; this is often the case with fish. Water is an element that can carry eggs and sperm and enables their meeting; fertilization in the aquatic milieu is almost always external; fish do not mate: at best some rub against each other for stimulation. The mother expels the ova and the father the sperm: they have identical roles. There is no more reason for the mother to recognize the eggs as her own than the father. In some species, parents abandon the eggs, which develop without help; sometimes the mother has prepared a nest for them; sometimes she watches over them after fertilization; but very often the father takes charge of them: as soon as he has fertilized them, he chases away the female, who tries to devour them; he fiercely defends them from anything that approaches; there are those that put up a kind of protective nest by emitting air bubbles covered with an isolating substance; they also often incubate the eggs in their mouths or, like the sea horse, in the folds of the stomach. Analogous phenomena can be seen in toads: they do not have real coitus; the male embraces the female and this embrace stimulates the laying: while the eggs are coming out of the cloaca, the male lets out his sperm. Very often—and in particular in the toad known as the midwife toad—the father winds the strings of eggs around his feet and carries them around to guarantee their hatching. As for birds, the egg forms rather slowly within the female; the egg is both relatively big and hard to expel; it has much closer relations with the mother than with the father that fertilized it during a quick coitus; the female is the one who usually sits on it and then looks after the young; but very frequently the father participates in the nest’s construction and the protection and nutrition of the young; there are rare cases—for example the passerine—where the male sits on the eggs and then raises the young. Male and female pigeons secrete a kind of milk in their crop that they feed to the fledglings. What is noteworthy in all these cases in which fathers play a nurturing role is that spermatogenesis stops during the period they devote to their offspring; busy with maintaining life, the father has no impetus to bring forth new life-forms.