Sexuality by itself is a very simple process which is easy to observe
objectively. There are a great many other aspects which are very
complex, difficult to observe, and prone to much distortion due to their
subjective nature. No one spends much time worrying about why human
beings don't eat rocks, the reasons are pretty obvious to anyone with an
IQ above single digits. No one applies moral concepts to the fact that
we don't. However, human values, desires, and vague concepts of
"morality" cloud most peoples' ability to regard sexuality with any
degree of objectivity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
suspect that you came here looking for answers in one of the topics in
the table above. If you are one of those people who always reads the
last page or chapter of a novel first, there is nothing I can do to
prevent you from skipping over the contents of this page to "get right
to the meat". However, if you do, you will have wasted your own time as
well as mine because an understanding of these basic concepts is
fundamental to understanding their expression in human behavior.
Second,
since this is a web page and not a graduate school textbook, some
definitions to explicitly narrow the topics to ones which can be
productively deal with in such a brief forum:
Sex - (from the latin secus,
division, the same root that gives us section and segment.) A general
term covering all aspects of the form of biological reproduction which
involves two separate packages (or cells) of genetic material, gametes,
uniting to form a composite cell, a zygote or embryo, which has the
capacity to develop into a mature member of the same species. Virtually
all multi-celled organisms reproduce sexually. It is nearly universal in
the animal kingdom and one of several reproductive strategies in the
plant kingdom.
Sexuality - having sexual
characteristics, ie. differentiated into one of 2 genders and possessing
the attributes characteristic of that gender which allow
differentiation.
Male - the gender whose role in
reproduction is limited to handing over its genetic material to the
other gender, called female. The male package of genetic material is
generally called a sperm.
Female - the gender
whose role in reproduction is to receive genetic material from the male,
provide the environment for joining of the 2 gametes, and provide the
food source and environment necessary for the zygote or embryo to
develop to the point where it can survive outside that environment. The
female package of genetic material is generally called an ovum or egg.
Humans,
like all animals, are divided into male and female. ("male and female
they were created"). Each plays a specific role in reproduction which is
essential to survival of the species. You are here to read this because
thousands of generations of humans have engaged in sexual reproduction
to keep our species from dying out. As eating (something other than
rocks) is essential to survival of the individual, reproduction is
essential to the survival of the species.
All this seems so
simple and obvious that it seems ludicrous to have to state, like
explaining that people don't eat rocks and why. But, in a culture where
some emotionally ill individuals are able to classify ALL sex between
human beings as a violent crime (and be taken the LEAST BIT SERIOUSLY!)
and women feel compelled to paint their faces with an amalgum of animal
waste products and toxic pigments in order to attract the attention of
men, it is obvious that a return to the basics is long overdue.
An
individual member of any species is the result of the joining of an
ovum and a sperm. These are specialized cells within a multi-celled
organism made up of many types of differentiated cells. Blood cells
carry the oxygen we need to live, bone cells make us different from
jellyfish, muscle cells allow us to move, gamete cells allow us to
reproduce. Every warm blooded creature on the face of the earth is the
result of the union of one egg with one sperm, how in the world did the
mechanics of bringing this about get so incredibly confused?
Every
living thing has a life cycle. Nothing lives forever. New life starts,
grows, reaches reproductive maturity, ages, and dies. There is a, often
brief, time window of this cycle when the conditions which will allow
successful reproduction prevail. In order to avoid extintion, males of
the species must deliver a sperm cell to unite with an ovum cell within
that window. Human females often speak of this phenomenon as their
"biological clock".
At this point the female element of the pair
takes over, retaining posession of the ovum+sperm composite and adding
or providing nourishment to it which allows it to develop beyond the
single cell stage. The male element is now done with his part of the
process and is totally superfluous. In many species he dies. This is
true of all flowering plants, many insects (and their relatives the
arthopods or spiders), and some fish (salmon being the most familiar
example). In the reproductive sense, males are utterly expendable once
they've done their sperm donor duty.
There are several key
concepts within this which need to be highlighted. First, if the male
delivers the sperm either too early or too late the whole process is
wasted. The egg will die unfertilized. Second, and this is extremely
important, since the egg is the gamete that will eventually develop,
nature significantly favors it when allocating biological resources. It
generally contains many times the amount of cellular material that the
sperm does so it has the energy to develop once fertilized. Third, it
stays in place while the sperm is mobile so the amount of cellular
material does not hamper its ability to play in the reproductive
olympics. Sperm, on the other hand, would have their mobility hampered
by excess weight so they are lean and mean. Many simply do not have the
energy to make the entire journey and die en route. If there were an
equal number of sperm and ova produced, this would mean that many ova
would also die unfertilized. Therefor sperm are produced in numbers far
in excess of the number of eggs. The ratios are millions to one. This
also goes with the second point, because the amount of cellular material
required to produce one sperm is only a minute fraction of the material
required to produce an egg. Mother nature is pretty efficient. Given
the same amount of raw material she can manufacture either one egg, or
multiple thousands of sperm. Given two loads of the material she
manufactures one egg out of one load, and millions of sperm out of the
other. The vast majority of sperm are simply discarded. As long as one
gets to the egg at the right time, everything is copacetic.
The
right time is the key phrase here. An ovum is receptive to fertilization
for a very brief time. Thus any male element of a species which
delivers the sperm at the wrong time will have its genetics drop out of
the gene pool by the process of natural selection. Only those
males who manufacture and deliver their sperm at the same time the egg
is ripe get their genes to play in the next round of the evolution
sweepstakes. In plants, the bloom contains both the male and female
elements so that the pollen (male) and the ova (female) develop and
ripen concurrently. (To all you hay fever and allergy sufferers, I hope
you find it humorous that all your suffering is caused by leftover plant
sperm.) In animals, there is a condition or state known as estrus, or
heat, which the female enters when she is fertile. Like her distant
plant relatives' condition of blooming, this state is clearly
distinguishable from her normal state of infertility. And like their
male counterparts in the plant world, the stamens of the bloom, male
animals are stimulated to let loose their sperm at that time.
That, in a nutshell, is MALE sexuality.
Now
I seriously doubt that you came here looking for Biology ½. You were
probably curious about the sexuality of human males and explantions of
their sexual behavior in the 1990s. Unfortunately, it is precisely the
ignorance and denial of the role of the biology of maleness which is
causing so much pain, confusion, and animosity these days. If this were
fully understood and accepted, there would be little more discussion of
it than of eating rocks. Misconceptions regarding Love, Romance,
Marriage, and Human Behavior dominate the public discourse. It is to
these topics we now must turn.
No comments:
Post a Comment