The case I am trying to make is for the acknowledgment of the
conflict between a new state of affairs in the world and our
perspectives, limited or not by the literate model of sexuality.
The current situation recalls the world before literacy, before
the expectation of homogeneity, and before the attempt to derive
order and complexity through linear progression. The atom of
that sexual world was the genderless human being, a generic
existence not yet defined by sexual differentiation. The
male-female distinction came as a surprise-the realization of
seeing the same and its negative, as in the case of a stone and
the hole that remains after it is unearthed. Some read the
genderless world as androcentric, because the generic human being
it affirmed had a rather masculine bent. The significance of
whatever such a genderless model embodied needs to be
established in the pragmatic realm: how does difference result
from same, if this same is an archetypal body with
characteristics celebrated copiously over time? Painting,
medical illustration, and diagrams, from the Middle Ages to the
17th century, focus on this genderless person, who seems today
almost like a caricature.
The pragmatics of the time period just mentioned were conducive
to a different image of genders. The sense of excitement
associated with human advances in knowing nature certainly
spilled over into every other form of human experience, sex
included. A new scale of mankind required that the efficiency of
human activity increase. This was a time of many innovations and
groundbreaking scientific theories. It was also a time of
diversified, though still limited, sexual experiences, made
possible by a framework of creativity different from the
framework of the Middle Ages. Discoveries in many domains shook
the framework of thinking according to Platonic archetypes,
appropriated by the Catholic Church and used as explanatory
models for all things living or dead. Pragmatics required that
the one-sex model be transcended because limits of efficiency
(in thinking, medical practice, biological awareness, labor
division) were reached within the model. The world of practical
experiences of this time unfolded in the Industrial Revolution.
With literacy established, some sexual attitudes, consonant
with the pragmatic circumstance, were enforced. Others were
deemed unacceptable, and qualified as such in the literate
language of church, state, and education. From the ubiquity of
natural sexuality to what would become sexual self-awareness and
sexual culture, no matter how limited, the journey continued in
leaps and bounds.
To acknowledge the woman as a biological entity, with
characteristics impossible to reduce to male characteristics,
was not due to political pressure-as Thomas Lacquer, a
remarkable writer on the subject, seemed to believe-but to
pragmatic needs. It simply made sense to know how the body
functions, to acknowledge morphology, to improve the quality of
life, however vaguely acknowledged as such, by addressing the
richness of the human being. Interestingly enough, the order in
nature and matter found by science contradicted the new
experience of variety, sexuality included, made possible by the
scientific revolution. A gulf opened between reality and
appearance, motivating a healthy empirical program, well extended
in the realm of sexual encounters.
Back in the medium aevum, Maximus of Torino thought that "the
source of all evil is the woman," probably embodied in the
prototypical Eve. The social importance of women in the context
of the empirical program, leading to the need for generalized
literacy and better knowledge of the human body, discredited this
prejudice of the Middle Ages, and of any age since. Sexuality
made the transition to the two-sex world with a vengeance.
Reproduction still dominated, since incipient industry needed
more qualified workers in its own reproduction cycles, and
productivity triggered the need to maintain consumption. But the
unnatural dimension widened as well. The context was population
growth, limited means of birth control, and levels of production
and consumption characteristic of the pragmatics of high
efficiency.
Those who think that the relation between industry, sexuality,
and reproduction is far-fetched should recall the birth policies
of countries obsessed with industrial growth. In what was
communist Romania, workers were needed to do what there were no
machines to do: to produce for the benefit of the owners of the
means of production. To a similar end, the Soviets handed out
medals to mothers of many children. The government structure,
bearing the characteristics of literacy, clashed with the harsh
pragmatic framework existing in the former communist countries.
The result of the clash was that women avoided birth at all
cost.