I SEX DETERMINATION

“Sex is the central problem of life.”—Havelock Ellis.

In reviewing the long and unenlightened past, one is tempted to ask whether Woman was not in league with the god of mystery to hide one of Nature’s simple laws from the knowledge and comprehension of man. Between woman and the possibility of instructive observation and the outward visible signs of its expression, there has seemed to exist an impenetrable barrier, so formidable as to baulk successfully every effort of the biologist. No doubt the educational system of bygone times contributed to the difficulties under which scientists laboured in dealing with the problems of sex. It was practically impossible for maid or matron to allow her thoughts or conversation to stray from the beaten track without subjecting herself to severe reproof from Mrs. Grundy. A source of information was thus suppressed, for women as well as men have as much right to use their own understanding in judging of truth as they have to use their own eyes to see their way.

Now girls are allowed to learn, and encouraged to think, and women allowed to speak and encouraged to act. Thus we are at last approaching an explanation of the determination of sex, because, depending on woman, and on woman alone, it can be solved only with her assistance. “Life,” says Professor Lester Ward, “begins as female. Life is feminine. In the woman is the ‘creative centre.’ That everything proceeds from the egg, the ‘vital focus,’ is the verdict of Biology.”⁠[1] In the ovum an egg alone is the germinal spot, the dawn of the future life. The theory that the sex of a child is fixed before the ovum is fertilised has now become an absolute certainty as a result of thousands of successful tests which have established it. The male, according to science, is not a sex-determining begetter: he is simply and only a fertilising agent.

It is not necessary here to give a complete list of all the theories for sex determination that have from time to time been advanced. One by one, without ceremony, we can conscientiously demolish them, thus clearing the ground of useless impedimenta and narrowing down the difficulties to be overcome. Many of these theories were based on experiments and observations made on rats, bees, tadpoles, ferns, and even sponges. Then again the health, age, environment, habits, and diet of parents were successively advanced, apparently on the principle that any peg is good enough to hang a hat on.

Perhaps Schenk’s⁠[2] theory beats the record for extravagance, though it gained at one time many adherents. According to his curious doctrine, sex is determined during the months of pregnancy or well after conception has taken place. Surely as wild a proposition as endeavouring to grow a rose from a poppy seed by cultivating the soil in which it is planted.

This does not mean that there is no such thing as paternal heredity, in other words, that physical or moral characteristics do not descend from father to son throughout the generations. On the contrary, modern biology has demonstrated that a father does transmit any weakness he may possess to his progeny in a heavy percentage of cases, and more especially that the female members of a family will partake of this weakness; just as the mother passes on any tendency to disease or weakness of her own to her male offspring. These facts have a very important bearing on the transmission of disease, and it is obvious that the power of pre-determining sex would tend to result in a strong and healthy race. If physical and mental deficiency in the male parent tends to be reproduced in the female offspring, and conversely in the male by a like deficiency in the female parent, it becomes simply imperative to ensure that in the former case only male children should be born and in the latter only female. A tubercular father need have little anxiety if he confines himself to sons only. A mentally deficient mother might without apprehension have a family of girls. With such possibilities open to us, we might even be willing to admit with Marcus Aurelius that “an accident is a misfortune, but bearing it well turns it to advantage.”

Since people who suffer from chronic disabilities will insist on producing offspring, let them at least make use of the essentially eugenic law which is offered here. Let them understand that henceforth, if they produce a specimen of humanity inheriting their own defects, they are alone to blame.

From time immemorial parents have accepted in silence, but in bitterness of spirit, the advent of offspring of an unwanted sex. In 70 per cent. of these cases, it is roughly estimated, a girl has arrived when a boy was hoped for. In 30 per cent. only was a girl wished for and a boy born. Prayer without some kind of forethought must surely be unavailing. Help thyself, and Heaven will help thee. It would be of interest to turn for a moment to the East—to India in particular—and survey the conditions of life that prevail there. The abject plight of a great proportion of the women is largely the result of their lack of childhood, for among orthodox Hindus every girl must be married before her eleventh year; great numbers are married earlier still, some as soon as—if not before—they are born! The conditions under which the widows live—and these number over 20,000,000—are too tragic to contemplate, so trivial is their market value. In no country in the world is the Man-Child so ardently desired, for he is regarded as the Salvation of the household, as it is he who will ultimately be called upon to officiate at the death-ceremonies of his parents, requisite for their re-birth, which to them represents their whole eternity.

In this great Dependency the mere whisper of sex-control evokes unlimited joy and enthusiasm among all who have heard of it and even faintly realised its possibilities.

Hitherto the ignorance of parents has been shared by a whole world of unobservant people, convinced “that the science of life and being is unattained and unattainable by these weak organs.”

That this helpless and hopeless outlook has resulted in the voluntary limitation of many families is illustrated to absolute demonstration by almost innumerable correspondents. “Were I to be sure of providing my husband with a son to carry on his name, I should most certainly bear another child” is a typical assurance. Most poignant in its pathos is the lament: “My husband refuses to let me start a child for fear it may be a girl, and my heart is literally breaking for want of children.” Yet another epistle, several pages long, expresses the sorrows of an older woman, starved by an incomplete motherhood: “If only,” she writes, “I could make sure of a girl to be a sister to my three growing boys, I should willingly try my luck once more. But my husband absolutely refuses to have a fourth son to rear and start in life.”

Do not these extracts, which can be multiplied indefinitely, prove how essential is the choice of sex, in view of the perilous inroad birth-control is making amongst the classes from which we draw our best human material?

It behoves us, as human beings, to accept life with some degree of responsibility, not as animals pushed along the path of procreation by blind instinct alone. If, in the space of a generation or two, we have secured to mankind a better equilibrium of birth-rate, we shall have helped to make the world a far better place, and totally abolished that crying social evil “the superfluous female.”