Evolution's Rainbow. Joan Roughgarden
suggested a new theory that I call “social selection.” This new theory accommodates variation in gender and sexuality. It envisages animals as exchanging help in return for access to reproductive opportunity, producing a biological “labor market” for mutual assistance by employing reproductive opportunity as currency. This theory proposes that animals evolve traits that qualify them for inclusion in groups that control resources for reproduction and safe places to live and raise offspring. These traits, called social-inclusionary traits, are either possessed only by females and unexplained by any theory, such as the penis of female spotted hyenas, or possessed only by males and interpreted as a secondary sex characteristic even though they are not actually preferred by females during courtship.
Part 2, Human Rainbows, deals with the areas of biology focused on human development. I tell the story of human embryogenesis as a first-person narrative (“when my sperm part met my egg part”) to emphasize that agency and experience function throughout life, before birth and after. I also wish to destabilize the primacy of individualism, to emphasize how much cooperation takes place during development, from the mother who chemically endorses some sperm and not others as competent to fuse with one of her eggs, to genes that interconnect to produce gonads, tissues that touch each other and direct each other’s development, and hormones from adjacent babies in utero that permanently influence each other’s temperament. Therefore, what we become arises more from our relationships than from our atomic genes, just as a piece of coal’s atomic bonds differ from a diamond’s, even though both consist solely of carbon atoms.
I’ve coined the term “genial gene” to distinguish my conception from the popular notion of the selfish gene, which is imagined to single-handedly control development for its own ends. Instead, I emphasize that genes must cooperate lest the common body they inhabit sink like a lifeboat filled with squabbling sailors. I dwell at length on genetic, physiological, and anatomical differences among people. We are as different from each other under the skin as we are on the surface. Although biological differences can be found between the sexes and between people of differing gender expression and sexuality, biological differences can also be found between any two people. For instance, musicians who are string players have been discovered to have brains that differ from those of people who don’t play strings. Part 2 shows how medicine seizes on the often tiny anatomical differences between people, and on differences in life experience, to differentiate them from an artificial template of normalcy and deny a wide range of people their human rights by defining them as diseased. Meanwhile, in our society we face not only persecution of people with diverse expressions of gender and sexuality, but also the prospect of doing permanent harm to the integrity of the gene pool of our species, thereby damaging our species for posterity. Part 2 concludes with a summary of the dangers inherent in attempts by genetic engineers to “cleanse” diversity from our gene pool.
In Part 3, Cultural Rainbows, the book progresses from biology to social science, offering a survey and new reading of gender and sexuality variation across cultures and through history. Many tribes of Native Americans accommodated gender and sexuality variation by identifying people as “two-spirits” and including them within social life to an extent that is inspirational to those persecuted in modern society. In Polynesia, the mahu, comparable to the Native American two-spirits, are experiencing cultural tension as a result of the introduced Western concept of transgender. Across the globe in India, we find a large castelike group of transgender people called hijra; there are over one million hijra in a total population of one billion Indians. The hijra enjoy an ancient pedigree and provide an Asian counterpart to the European history of gender variation that extends from Cybelean priestesses in the Roman empire to the transvestite saints of the Middle Ages, including Joan of Arc (called here Jehanne d’Arc), a transgender man. Early transgender people in Europe were classed as eunuchs, a large group similar to the hijra, with whom they may share a common origin. The Bible, in both Hebrew and Christian testaments (including a passage from Jesus), explicitly endorses eunuchs for baptism and full membership in the religious community. Gender variation was recognized in early Islamic writings as well.
Early Greece enforced a gender binary for techniques of sexual practice: certain practices were considered appropriate for between-sex sexuality and others for same-sex sexuality. Approved practices were called “clean” and those disapproved called “unclean.” The Bible is relatively silent on same-sex sexuality, in spite of the centuries-old belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality. I suggest the Bible’s clear affirmation of gender variation and its relative silence on same-sex sexuality reflect different ages of gender- and sexuality-variant categories of identity. The category of eunuch extended to the time of Christ and beyond into prehistory, whereas homosexuality as a category of personal identity originated relatively recently in Europe, during the late 1800s. Thus, when the Bible was written, there existed a language for categories of gender variance but not for categories of sexuality variance.
My focus then shifts to anthropologists working in Indonesia, who describe coming reluctantly to acknowledge a legitimate element of masculine gender identity in lesbian expression, although they at first believed that lesbian sexual orientation should not include a masculine presentation. In contrast, an investigator studying Mexican vestidas (transgender sex workers) never moves beyond pejorative descriptions. Also, an interesting situation has occurred in the Dominican Republic, where enough intersexed people lived in several villages to have produced a special social category, the guevedoche. I wind up the cultural survey by returning to the contemporary United States to discuss the politics of transgender people and their growing alliance with gay and lesbian organizations, and conclude by stating a political agenda for trans-gendered people. Part 3 demonstrates that our species manifests the same range of variation across cultures and through time, but shows great variation in how we package people into social categories.
In Part 3, I’ve discussed affirming diversity from a religious standpoint. I believe that ignoring religion, and the Bible specifically, is to work with tunnel vision. Regardless of what science tells us, if people believe that the Bible disparages lesbian, gay, and transgender people, then the cause of inclusion is jeopardized because many would choose religion over science. In fact, I find that the Bible is mostly silent about sexual orientation and that the passages about eunuchs that directly affirm trans-gender people have been largely ignored. Overall, the Bible gives no support to the religious persecution of gender and sexuality variation. Moreover, the well-known story of Noah’s ark imparts a moral imperative to conserve all biodiversity, both across species and within species.
As an appendix, I offer concrete policy recommendations. I suggest strengthening the undergraduate curriculum in psychology and improved education for premedical and medical students to prepare them better to understand natural diversity. I propose new institutional processes to prevent continuing medical abuse of human diversity under the guise of treating diseases. I demand that genetic engineers take an oath of professional responsibility and that they be licensed to practice genetic engineering only after having passed a certifying examination. Finally, I float the idea that our country should construct a large statue and plaza, called the Statue of Diversity, which would be to the West Coast what the Statue of Liberty is to the East Coast.
This book is my first “trade book,” a term publishers use for books intended for a wide audience rather than specifically for classroom use—my previous books have been specialized textbooks, monographs, or symposium proceedings.4 In this type of book I’m free to express opinion and to adopt an informal style. In this book, I freely declare where I’m coming from. Being up front about my position automatically raises the question of objectivity; I’ve told the truth, and the whole truth, as best I can. Yet I offer my own interpretation of the facts, as if I were a lawyer for the defense opposing lawyers for the “persecution.” You, my readers, are a jury of friends and neighbors, and you will make up your own mind. Please consider that everyone writing on these topics is writing from a particular perspective and with a vested interest. Some benefit from the biological excuse for male philandering that Darwin’s sexual selection theory provides. Others find validation in Darwin’s reinforcement of their aggressive worldview. Still others enjoy the genetic elitism of sexual selection theory, confident that their own genes are superior. I find that refuting sexual selection theory imbues female choice with responsibility for decisions about power and family far more sophisticated than