Hermaphrodite Conworld

[Sacemd]

This is basically a thought experiment: the conworld itself is in all aspects similar to Earth (Climate, star, size etc., etc.) but the crucial difference is that the dominant species (a kind of humanoids I shall from hereon refer to as "humans" or "humanoids") are hermaphrodites. They basically look like humans, except that they are androgynous in appearance and have two sets of genitalia - the female genitalia are placed behind the male genitalia - copulation is usually front-to-back like most mammals, not front-to-front as is usual in earthly humans. These humanoids lack permanent breasts but develop them during pregnancy. Hips and thighs are shaped like those of earthly women. Facial hair is not more prominent than any other body hair.

I have two main questions:
a. Has this idea been worked out before in a conworld/novel/anything else before?
b. What would be the cultural effects of such a "lack of gender" - The eventual conworld will very probably be at a modern tech level, but I think I'll need to start from the most basic tribal society to trace all effects of this difference with our earth:
- How is the childbearing partner decided?
- If suppression of women is caused by a need to keep the population down, how is excessive population growth prevented? And if earthly suppression of women isn't caused by that, what did cause it?
- Is both partners getting pregnant at the same time or in turns efficient (I guess simultaneous pregnancy is no good idea - both partners are unable to do heavy physical labour for an extended period of time, and both have to face the dangers of childbirth in a premodern society)?
- How about polygamy?
- Do these humanoids menstruate in the way humans do? If so/not, what are the cultural effects?
- Other questions?

Note: I don't want a discussion whether a hermaphrodite dominant species is probable, which is not the aim of the thought experiment.

[Salmoneus]

This is basically a thought experiment: the conworld itself is in all aspects similar to Earth (Climate, star, size etc., etc.) but the crucial difference is that the dominant species (a kind of humanoids I shall from hereon refer to as "humans" or "humanoids") are hermaphrodites. They basically look like humans, except that they are androgynous in appearance and have two sets of genitalia - the female genitalia are placed behind the male genitalia - copulation is usually front-to-back like most mammals, not front-to-front as is usual in earthly humans. These humanoids lack permanent breasts but develop them during pregnancy. Hips and thighs are shaped like those of earthly women. Facial hair is not more prominent than any other body hair.

I have two main questions:
a. Has this idea been worked out before in a conworld/novel/anything else before?

Yes, this is one of the old SF staples. The most famous example is probably Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. (Although I can't remember the exact genital details of her Gethenians, who are effectively neuter between periods of heat - I suspect they don't actually have two functional sets of genitals all the time?).

b. What would be the cultural effects of such a "lack of gender" - The eventual conworld will very probably be at a modern tech level, but I think I'll need to start from the most basic tribal society to trace all effects of this difference with our earth:
- How is the childbearing partner decided?

Le Guin, iirc, has it be decided instinctually.

- If suppression of women is caused by a need to keep the population down, how is excessive population growth prevented? And if earthly suppression of women isn't caused by that, what did cause it?

...what do you mean by 'suppression of women'? [Different things described that way have been directly opposite situations]. But whatever you mean by 'suppression of women', it's unlikely to be the result of trying the keep the population down. People have almost always been trying to push the population up, and I don't see the rare periods of population-suppression as resulting in much woman-suppression. Compare, for instance, Europe in 1600 (relatively strong women, low population growth) and 1200 (relatively weak women afaiaa, very high population growth). Or look at today - very low population growth, even decline, but women don't seem particularly suppressed compared to, say, 1860.

- Is both partners getting pregnant at the same time or in turns efficient (I guess simultaneous pregnancy is no good idea - both partners are unable to do heavy physical labour for an extended period of time, and both have to face the dangers of childbirth in a premodern society)?

Pregnant women, when fit and healthy (and presumably these androgynous people would be fitter than earthican women) are usually capable of quite a lot of labour (no pun intended) for almost all their pregnancy, and your people could well be a bit better at it than humans. But yes, spreading out pregnancies would make more sense (which is what humans in general do, after all). I guess the exception would be if resources were highly seasonal?

- How about polygamy?

What about it?[/quote]
- Do these humanoids menstruate in the way humans do?[/quote]Don't ask me, they're your humanoids.

If so/not, what are the cultural effects?

Trivial? Menstruation may play a role in stories, but it doesn't have a big cultural effect. Some sort of temporary isolation or hygeine restrictions are often imposed, but not really culture-shaping. It can be an excuse for a broader exclusion of women from society, but iirc that's not all that common.

[Tesrin]

I have two main questions:
a. Has this idea been worked out before in a conworld/novel/anything else before?

Aside from Le Guin, Greg Egan wrote a very interesting version of hermaphrodism into Schild's Ladder. The hermaphrodites in that aren't naturally-occurring however, they are the result of centuries of human genetic engineering. In Schild's Ladder, sexual genitals aren't normally present on humans; they develop in response to a couple becoming emotionally close to one-another and their specific shapes & functions are somewhat unique to that couple. It's quite an interesting concept.

b. What would be the cultural effects of such a "lack of gender" - The eventual conworld will very probably be at a modern tech level, but I think I'll need to start from the most basic tribal society to trace all effects of this difference with our earth:

The first thing would be that one gender group would not necessarily be more dominant than the other, as it seems from your description that there would be no difference in strength between one person and another aside from the usual range of average strengths between humans of the same gender on Earth. That changes social structures right from the start. Would there still be an alpha human (or alpha pair?) who rule a group they mate with, or are tribes originally formed for different purposes?

- How is the childbearing partner decided?

There are a few options (of course) but I'm thinking two likely ones are that the more dominant of the pair would impregnate the less dominant one. Either that or it's randomly decided by who ends up pregnant first when the couple are mating.

- If suppression of women is caused by a need to keep the population down, how is excessive population growth prevented? And if earthly suppression of women isn't caused by that, what did cause it?

Sexism has many roots on Earth, depending on time and culture.

- Is both partners getting pregnant at the same time or in turns efficient (I guess simultaneous pregnancy is no good idea - both partners are unable to do heavy physical labour for an extended period of time, and both have to face the dangers of childbirth in a premodern society)?

Getting pregnant regularly is dangerous because of the strain it puts on the body. Taking turns would improve survival rates, especially in a primitive society where childhood mortality is a real problem; as you'll need to get pregnant more often if you are to ensure at least one child makes it to adulthood.

- How about polygamy?

I can't think of a legitimate reason why having two sets of genitals would change polygamy rates. It's not like you need to use both genitals at the same time (or is it?).

- Do these humanoids menstruate in the way humans do? If so/not, what are the cultural effects?

I'm not a biologist so I can't answer the first question but I can imagine that if everyone in a society menstruates, it would be seen as far less of a taboo to discuss it.

[CatDoom]

- How is the childbearing partner decided?
- Is both partners getting pregnant at the same time or in turns efficient (I guess simultaneous pregnancy is no good idea - both partners are unable to do heavy physical labour for an extended period of time, and both have to face the dangers of childbirth in a premodern society)?

With regard to the first question, I would imagine that this would vary to some degree from culture to culture. However, I tend to agree with you that it would be disadvantageous for both members of a mated pair to become pregnant at the same time. Even one human infant requires a great deal of care, and, as you mentioned, the birthing process itself carries a high risk of death and other complications in a pre-modern setting.

Therefore, I would imagine that the species would have evolved some biological mechanism preventing a mated pair from undergoing pregnancy at the same time. Perhaps once one partner's pregnancy reaches a certain stage it somehow triggers a hormonal response in those around them, rendering them temporarily infertile and terminating any early-stage pregnancy they might be undergoing. This would, of course, have cultural consequences, as pairs would probably maintain a certain degree of physical distance from one another, to avoid interfering with each other's fertility.

- If suppression of women is caused by a need to keep the population down, how is excessive population growth prevented? And if earthly suppression of women isn't caused by that, what did cause it?

As others have pointed out, sexism and misogyny have taken a lot of different forms and arisen from a lot of different factors throughout time and space. There is some justification for believing that the tendency for men to want to control the behavior of women is influenced by biological factors, however. Human infants require a lot of resources, and generally human males have to contribute to raising and providing for them. If the male is working to support an infant that isn't biologically related to him, the costs of providing that support will tend to reduce his own reproductive fitness. Thus, there is selective pressure for human males to both protect and sequester their mates, to reduce to chances of them being impregnated by another male in their social group.

That being said, there are plenty of examples of this behavioral tendency being overridden by cultural, social, and individual factors. For instance, most if not all societies have expectations that men (and women) will care and provide for children that aren't biologically related to them in the form of stepchildren and adopted children. Whatever biological predispositions may contribute to the history of the treatment of women in human cultures, they've probably never been the dominant factor.

- Do these humanoids menstruate in the way humans do? If so/not, what are the cultural effects?

If they have the same kind of year-round ovulation cycle that humans do, then they would menstruate in the same manner. If they don't, that could have a *huge* impact on their cultures, since they would only be fertile during certain times of the year, and would presumably go into heat in a manner similar to other mammals.

[Salmoneus]

As others have pointed out, sexism and misogyny have taken a lot of different forms and arisen from a lot of different factors throughout time and space. There is some justification for believing that the tendency for men to want to control the behavior of women is influenced by biological factors, however. Human infants require a lot of resources, and generally human males have to contribute to raising and providing for them. If the male is working to support an infant that isn't biologically related to him, the costs of providing that support will tend to reduce his own reproductive fitness. Thus, there is selective pressure for human males to both protect and sequester their mates, to reduce to chances of them being impregnated by another male in their social group.

Not really, no. Or rather: yes, but only when the value of labour is low relative to the value of capital. This is because the direct profit from children is in their labour, whereas the costs of children include both labour and capital. Generally, the labour of raising children is less than the labour you get from them in the long term, so, excluding cases of rapid inflation/deflation, the value of children is just a matter of the value of labour vs the value of capital. And, of course, the strength of the institutions that control labour vs the strength of the institutions that control capital.

Most human societies have strong institutions (the family, the extended family, the tribe, the clan, the nation) for controlling labour, and a vast surplus of capital (in the form of land), most of which is unproductive (because it's used for agriculture, and non-intensive agriculture at that). So the value of capital is low. But all forms of production in these societies are labour-intensive, so the value of labour is high. Therefore, in these societies, raising another man's child (or raising another woman's child) is not costly, but profitable - in these societies, for instance, adoption is frequent, and systems of slavery in which slaves and their children end up becoming members of the family.




On which note, hermaphroditism would discourage polygamy slightly, because it would make every marriage functionally polygamous: there would be two wives in each household. The point of polygamy is mostly that it increases population growth and family size (while at the same time allowing individual women to reduce their fertility), but having both partners potentially be child-bearing would already go some of the way toward accomplishing both those goals. Of course, most polygamy doesn't stop at two wives, so while this might slightly discourage polygamy or reduce the average number of wives, it wouldn't do away with it or anythign.

[CatDoom]

As others have pointed out, sexism and misogyny have taken a lot of different forms and arisen from a lot of different factors throughout time and space. There is some justification for believing that the tendency for men to want to control the behavior of women is influenced by biological factors, however. Human infants require a lot of resources, and generally human males have to contribute to raising and providing for them. If the male is working to support an infant that isn't biologically related to him, the costs of providing that support will tend to reduce his own reproductive fitness. Thus, there is selective pressure for human males to both protect and sequester their mates, to reduce to chances of them being impregnated by another male in their social group.

Not really, no. Or rather: yes, but only when the value of labour is low relative to the value of capital. This is because the direct profit from children is in their labour, whereas the costs of children include both labour and capital. Generally, the labour of raising children is less than the labour you get from them in the long term, so, excluding cases of rapid inflation/deflation, the value of children is just a matter of the value of labour vs the value of capital. And, of course, the strength of the institutions that control labour vs the strength of the institutions that control capital.

Most human societies have strong institutions (the family, the extended family, the tribe, the clan, the nation) for controlling labour, and a vast surplus of capital (in the form of land), most of which is unproductive (because it's used for agriculture, and non-intensive agriculture at that). So the value of capital is low. But all forms of production in these societies are labour-intensive, so the value of labour is high. Therefore, in these societies, raising another man's child (or raising another woman's child) is not costly, but profitable - in these societies, for instance, adoption is frequent, and systems of slavery in which slaves and their children end up becoming members of the family.

I was speaking only in terms of reproductive fitness and the evolution of human behavior, and in fairly abstract terms at that. It may also be relevant to point out that for all but a tiny fraction of our evolutionary, human beings and our evolutionary ancestors have been essentially hunter-gatherers, while children are generally a more "profitable" resource in agricultural societies.

Theoretically, the optimal model for reproductive fitness in a male is to impregnate as many different females as possible, *assuming* that the offspring of these pairings are likely to survive to reproductive maturity themselves. Because human young take so long to mature and are so helpless during infancy, the male usually needs to contribute to child-rearing in order for his offspring to have a reasonable chance of surviving to continue passing on his genes. Time and resources spent caring for an infant could otherwise be spent pursuing additional mating opportunities, so in order for the male to maximize his overall reproductive fitness he needs to be as certain that the offspring he's caring for is, in fact, biologically related to him.

Females of the species by necessity contribute tremendous resources to their offspring over the course of pregnancy, lactation, and so on, and their ability to produce multiple viable offspring is not significantly affected by the number of different mates that they can acquire (assuming all other factors are equal). The strongest selective pressure on the female, therefore, is to identify and acquire the optimal mate, defined as the one most likely to impregnate her with healthy, robust offspring *and* to provide sufficient care for that offspring after it is born. As a result, her best reproductive interests don't necessarily line up with those of her mate when there are more optimal partners available. This places additional selective pressures on the male to be able to monitor and control the activities of his mate(s).

If that sounds like a gross oversimplification, it absolutely is, but it represents a general outline of some very influential concepts in the body of theory relating to the evolution of human behavior. And again, I can't emphasize enough that biology is only *one* factor in determining the behavior of individual humans and human societies collectively, and rarely if ever the dominant one.

[Salmoneus]

It's not just a simplification, it's quite obviously false. I've already explained why: you fail to take economics into account. [There is no biology without economics!]

You assume that a male's a) access to mates and b) chances of having offspring survive are purely determined by how much time he puts into each of these. But that's obviously nonsense. Time is only one sort of resource, and it doesn't have to be HIS time in any case. It is absolutely in a male's reproductive interest to look after another male's offspring if that increases his own chance of having surviving offspring (or, more accurately, if that increases the chance of young with his own genes surviving, since of course it's his genes that matter from an evolutionary perspective, not his own reproduction).

This is why in fact animals do live in societies where they look after one another's offspring, and do not always seek to maximise the chance of the young they care for being their own. If your theory can't even work for non-sapient mammals (and birds, for that matter), it seems pretty pointless applying it to human societies.

[Children are very profitable in hunter-gatherer societies. In terms of gathering, assuming low population levels, your profit is proportional directly to your labour - capital costs are almost non-existent. Therefore the family with the most members will have the most money]

[CatDoom]

First of all, labor is a function of time, and as you've pointed out, "profit," particularly in a hunter-gatherer society, is directly proportional to labor. Even in pre-monetary societies, time is money. It's not the only resource, but it's the foundation of just about every other resource.

Secondly, because the number of genes shared between two individuals is inversely proportional to the number of generations between those individuals last common ancestors, the "return" in reproductive fitness on any resources invested in the survival of a child diminished rapidly when that child is not closely related to the caregiver. Resources spent caring for a child help to promote the survival and further propagation of 50% of a parent's genome. Resources spent on a nephew or niece only aid in propagating 25% of an aunt or uncle's genes. Resources spent on an unrelated individual benefit the fitness of the caregiver only if they result in a net resource profit and that profit is subsequently invested in activities that propagate the caregiver's genome.

Furthermore, ethnographic evidence illustrates, unsurprisingly, that physically and intellectually immature children are less capable of foraging for resources than adults. A child in a hunter-gatherer produces net resource deficit for their family for a variable number of years depending on the type and quantity of resources available in the environment. That's a considerable cost paid over a long period of time by the caregiver in anticipation of future returns that may never come if the child dies before reaching the age of productivity or otherwise fails to become a productive member of the family.

The point I'm trying to make is that, all other things being equal, spending time and energy on producing viable offspring of one's own is much more optimal behavior than spending the same resources contributing to the survival and reproduction of unrelated children. Therefore, there is selective pressure for a male (who, unlike a female, can't necessarily be certain that a given child is his own) to take steps to ensure that a child he is caring for is genetically related to him.

And as for the behavior of other animals, there are of course a diversity of different models for mating and sociality resulting from a diversity of evolutionary histories. Among mammals, particularly those who form relatively large groups, polygyny is by far the most common model, with one male defending a harem of females in order to prevent them from carrying unrelated offspring. Infanticide and other behaviors geared toward removing unrelated offspring from the group is common in these species, as well as in some more promiscuous species, including chimpanzee troops.

Monogamous mating behaviors (either life-long pair bonds or serial monogamy) are mostly associated with species (like humans) in which the survival of offspring is dependent on resource contributions from both parents. While few to no "monogamous" species are perfectly sexually monogamous, the majority of offspring in all cases are related to both parents, rather than just the mother, suggesting that monogamous behaviors are also influenced by the pressure on the male to expend resources promoting his own offspring, rather than those of other males.

[jal]

Do these humanoids menstruate in the way humans do? If so/not, what are the cultural effects?

This is a very weird question. Human menstruation is not at all common in other species, most species of animals do not menstruate at all. For an explanation why women menstruate, see e.g. here.


JAL

[Torco]

sure but you fail there to take into account division of labour: even if kids are less effective at foraging, there are many menial tasks any kid [that's not an infant, i'm thinking 6yo or something] can perform, such as cleaning fruit, butchering animals, gathering resources spotted by more skilled adults, thus freeing up the more skilled and competent adults to do important stuff. the kid could be, say, scraping flesh off the leather and putting that leather to dry while the adult is performing the more complicated task of hunting. or cleaning the fish his mum is catching, freeing the mother to spend the whole day fishing as opposed to having to catch one fish and then waste time cleaning it.

relevantly, children eat a bit less than adults [not a huge amount less though]. but perhaps more relevantly, hunter-gatherers don't work for as many hours a day as agriculturalists do, so even if a kid be less effective at labour all that means is that said kid needs to work a few more hours in order to carry his own weight.

[spidermilk]

Given the difficulty of having a kid. I see a Roman view (penetrated partner = bitch) of sex being common. I don't see mutual impregnation being common (Maybe for political reasons between leaders, a la arranged marriages of royals.) I see people being divided into "male" and "female" roles, based on the social status they've earned. Unless the mothering instinct is super strong, but even then dominate people will control their underling's sexuality. I don't think it would be a free love hippy commune utopia. I see it being like a prison shower.

[zompist]

If suppression of women is caused by a need to keep the population down, how is excessive population growth prevented?

To answer the original question here, I assume you're referring to anthropologist Marvin Harris's theory, which goes like this: especially in marginal ecologies, societies have an interest in not overcrowding the land, but absent birth control or abortion, the only mechanism available is limiting the number of women. To do this, societies try to create as many strong, warlike men as possible, with women as the reward. And they want strong warlike men for warfare. This strong preference will itself result in a numerical imbalance, as boys get better care. He most clearly explains the ideas in Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, which is great reading for a conworlder.

The problem with a lot of evolutionary psychology (as some folks are expounding in this thread) is that it's generally based on overgeneralizations by rather sexist professors. Animal sexuality is far weirder than it's often presented. There are more options than indiscriminate males and dominated females. For a nice overview I always recommend Olivia Judson's Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation.

If you look at our closest relatives, you see harems dominated by a single male (gorillas); extreme competition between males with multiple strategies on both sides (chimps), and female dominance with sex used for social binding (bonobos). As for humans, there tends to be a lot of projection backwards from more sexist societies. Nomadic and hunter/gatherer socieites were generally less sexist than agricultural ones; early civilizations like Sumer and Shang China grew more sexist as they became more sophisticated; Sparta was far better for women than Athens.

For your hermaphrodites, I'd recommend thinking a lot about their ancestral way of life. Lots of human features depend on somewhat picky details of our history-- e.g. our bipedality and lack of hair is probably an adaptation to running on the savanna (as opposed to ambling through the rain forest); bipedality forces infants to be born almost helpless; the lack of hair means that they can't hold onto their mothers but must be held. And those things affect sex relationships, as they require extra infant care.