Only One Sex? -- Why Not?

Roger Odisio rodisio at igc.org
Fri Nov 26 22:19:00 PST 1999


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> Roger says:
> >Speaking of Carrol, he can only deny the foregoing biological fact by claiming
> >that species reproduction is trivial--a political decision, he says, which
> >humans
> >can decide to do or not. But, do I even have to say this, nothing is more
> >fundmenatal to the existence, or understanding, of a species than its
> >reproduction. Think Marx, Carrol. You don't understand capital (as a social
> >relation) until you understand its system of reproduction (self expansion).
>
> As Stephen Jay Gould says, evolution does *not* work "for the good of
> species" (see my post titled "Stephen Jay Gould: 'We Might Ask Why Males
> Exist At All'");

Why is "for the good of the species", the phrase on which the rest of your post depends, in quotes? I said no such thing. If you will merely fix your gaze above you will see that I said reproduction (not evolution) is both essntial to the (existence) of a species, and a grasp of it (reproduction) is necessary to understand the species. The first is a tautology and together, well, they're not all that interesting I think. In any case, nothing I said about the centrality of reproduction to the understanding of the species could be interpreted as you claim. The example I gave of reproduction. ie., self expansion, of capital as necessary to understand capitalism, of course, implies, if anything the opposite, depending. of course, on your social perspective.

Of course, your distortion of what I said, Yoshie, gives you the chance to go off on a lecture of your choosing. And it gave you the chance to accuse me of being "obnoxiously androcentric and anthropocentric" too (this is an example of when to use quotes, btw; when the person you are talking to actually said something you want to repeat). You may not know anything about Marx, but you can sure construct a good insult.

RO



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