Feminism and Sex-Extinction. Arabella Kenealy

are abnormal is shown by twins being below the average always in health or in faculty; usually in both.

      IV

      As already mentioned, Sex is regarded by the large and ever-increasing order of the adherents of Mendel as a "Mendelian factor." But in applying Mendelian truth to humans, I venture to think the applications have not been carried to their ultimate and most momentous conclusions.

      Because, given the keynote to the Principle of Duality in the phenomenon of the Contrasting Traits found manifesting in plant-heredity and constitution, the duality of the Human Sexes, with their respective orders of Contrasting characteristics, suggests itself as being analogous.

      Human attributes, physical and mental, are seen, like those of plants, to group themselves into two distinct categories, the Male and the Female sex-characteristics, primary and secondary. And these, though wholly contrary in nature and in trend, are found—precisely as occurs in plants—linked together in the hybrid offspring of the two parents from whom they were, respectively, derived; blending in a temporal unity, but remaining, nevertheless, unchanged in their essential differences; coming to means and counterpoises in individual organisations, yet nevertheless preserved distinct and unalloyed in these, as is shown by their emergence, unaltered, in offspring of opposite sexes.

      As a hybrid plant is the product of two parents characterised by opposite traits—Tallness and Dwarfness, for example—so, I submit, a human creature is the hybrid offspring of two parents characterised by opposite traits—Maleness and Femaleness, with the Sex-traits differentiating one sex from the other.

      And at once a solution of the many baffling presentments and problems of Sex presents itself—of the enigma of man with Woman potential in him, of woman with Man potential in her; a key to the mysterious Duality of human biology and psychology, with its conflict of battling impulses, its harmonies of blending attributes, its innumerable and diverse developments in proportions, in means, in extremes; in normalities, eccentricities, deviations and reversions. And the analogy between the two orders of Traits—in Plant-life at the lower end of the scale of species, and in Human life and psychology at the higher end—suggests that the ever-increasing complexity of organisation and faculty which has characterised Evolutionary Progress, has had for aim, as it has had for method, the ever further differentiation and more perfect segregation, but, nevertheless, the ever closer and more intricate association of the contrary factors of Maleness and Femaleness.

      In the lower organisms—plant and animal—the two groups of Traits are but crudely differentiated as characteristics distinguishing one sex from the other. In such lower organisms, Sex-development is merely rudimentary; the first foreshadowings in Life of two intrinsic orders of Essential Attribute, the progressive evolution whereof reveals two contrary trends in physiological and psychical inherences.

      Like Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold, Sex is a phenomenon of Dual states which manifest by way of relativity. Without Maleness, Femaleness has no significance—no existence, in fact. And the converse. And in the lower and rudimentary forms of existence, in proportion to their degrees of undevelopment, the dual states of Sex are but faintly defined. The very lowly forms are bi-sexual and self-fertilising. While the first and simplest mode of reproduction is by cell-division merely; the principle of Sex, with its dual factors, functioning, but not yet differentiated into dual forms.

      The evolution of Species and the evolution of Sex have been so absolutely co-incident in biological progress, indeed, that we are forced to perceive them as cause and effect; or, rather, as one and the same thing. And the evolution of Sex has meant, of course, the ever further divergence and the more complex specialisation, in form and in function, of the characteristics of the one sex from those of the other.

      V

      On still closer consideration, it appears, moreover, that the evolution of Sex has meant pre-eminently the evolution of the female sex—the slow and gradual emergence and development, in species, of female characteristics, as, in course of Evolution, these have freed themselves and have risen ever further into evidence from long subjection by the stronger, fiercer, more assertive—in a word, the Dominant—traits of the male.

      (A conclusion as singularly interesting, I think, as it is instructive, in view of modern Feminist doctrine and aims, which make, not for the culture and the ever further evolutionary development of the Woman-traits in woman, but, on the contrary, for a reversion to earlier cruder states of the subjection in her of her Woman-traits by those male Dominant ones, which, as the hybrid offspring of a male and of a female parent, every female creature inherits from her father, together with the Woman-traits she inherits from her mother. There is seen here the irony that woman has, by long ages of biological development, released herself from sociological subjection by the male, only voluntarily to set the Woman in herself in far worse psychological subjection to the male in herself.)

      In the new and profoundly interesting light thrown by Mendel on some previously unsolved problems of heredity, the reason for the long subjection of woman, biological and sociological, becomes clear.

      Because, given the key-notes of Tallness and Colour as Dominant traits, one identifies these, at once, as traits of Maleness; the greater stature of male creatures and the richer colour of their fur and plumage in the lower species pointing unmistakably thereto. Dwarfness (or lesser stature) and Whiteness (or lesser colour) are Recessive, and are obviously Female traits. The plant of Dominant type, though still bi-sexual, is making for a male genus; the Recessive type is making for a Female genus. White creatures are so feminine in general effect that it seems an anomaly when they are males. The converse is true of black creatures. The black horse is stubborn and restive; the white, gentle and submissive.

      White poultry are prolific in egg-production; white cattle are good milkers—a female characteristic. Jersey cows are both small in size and pale of colour.

      The male sex stands presumably for Dominance. And his positive, or objective, traits overpowering the negative, or subjective, traits of Recessiveness, prevail accordingly in early biological development.

      The female sex stands for Recessiveness. Her less assertive traits yield and recede into the background before those of the Dominant male. In stature, in strength, and in colour, and in the allied mental attributes, he holds the foreground in form and in function. The reason being that his rôle in Life is adaptation to environment.

      The male, therefore, in his masculine rôle of Adaptation, with his Dominant traits making fiercely for the survival and for the ever further development of physical fitness—until physical fitness, or Adaptation, had attained due degrees of ascendancy—was long lord of Creation; the female, his vassal. And this not only in life and in action, but too in the personal characteristics of both sexes. During æons before the Recessive female-traits were able to come into evidence as definite traits, they functioned as negations, merely; submerged and over-ridden in all female creatures by the Dominant male-traits they had inherited from their sires.

      Primal physical development may be said, thus, to have derived its first impulse from those fierce and fighting male-proclivities which characterised it in the epoch of that early savage struggle with environment whence Species emerged. Only with further evolutionary progress, do the female traits manifest as personal characteristics, secure survival, and find increasing exercise and sway.

      The tigress is only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the tiger. Primal woman was only less fierce, less strong, and less savage than the male. It is only, indeed, in the maternal function and relation that the female traits of both tigress and primal woman awake, and find justification, impulse, and scope for development. And while the material progress which has led to modern Civilisation resulted from Adaptation to, and of, environment, and derived its impulse from the male proclivities of strength, assertiveness and intelligence, the moral progress thereof may be said to have derived its impulse from the evolution of the female sex-characteristics. Because the evolution of Woman-traits has meant the ever further tempering and counterpoising of the fiercely active and aggressive male propensities, by the more passive and self-surrendering qualities of the female.

      Judging the respective characteristics of the sexes by their widely-differing