ehrenreich on biology

[Katha Pollitt]

Dear kelley -- i pretty much agree with your five-point position on
biology and culture. I don't share the 'evolutionary psychological"
views of some on the list,  I don't think I've ever said I believed the
sexes were "opposites" etc. So perhaps we have driven each other to the
margins of our own philosophies, and read each other as more adversarial
than we really are. I know I don't reply to everything you say -- but
you say a lot! Sometimes your posts are very vehement and perhaps
overstate your real position. then, when I attack the overstatement,
you  write as if I've misunderstood you. I will say, though, I think you
are too blithe about the prospects of med technology  eradicating
reproductive diffs. it's true women don't need a man in their bed to
conceive a child -- a turkey baster will do (not quite as well, though,
from the conception angle), but the other stuff -- aiding older women,
infertile women (or men) postmenopausal women etc is nothing to count
on. Too expensive, painful, poor success rate, immensely stressful. Also
perhaps dangerous.

  It is hard for me to imagine a future or near future US in which this
won't be the case. If  US staYS capitalist, fertility medicine will
remain the province of the rich and desperate. If it becomes socialist,
medicine will have many other priorities.  

  I also have been meaning to question whether berdaches are really a
"third gender.'  Only a man can become a berdache, after all.  That
berdaches are always the example cited as evidence that some societies
have a multiple-gender organization makes me wonder, too. Are there
others?

best,
katha