SHOULD WE BE hermaphrodites like the Hutts in Star Wars?
Once upon a time, long before Adam was a lad – I mean about the time of the Big Bang – there was neither man nor woman. Millions of years ago! Scientists said that we were like snails and those sorts of creatures – mollusks, crustaceans and so on. Some say that through a theory called Higgs boson or Higgs particle (its discovery today is elusive), the things acquired mass. Frogs, then birds, then dogs, then lizards, then apes, then man – the order may be wrong.
It is believed that at first there were female creatures having also male characteristics. They reproduced both males and females. Then males joined with females as if this was a natural order and a precedent was established. I do not like this theory. I prefer the rib theory – apples, fig leaves and all – although it is allegorical.
According to a Google search, and if my early learning is correct, the term hermaphrodite (what we call mophrey) originated from the Greek myth where Hermaphroditus, child of Hermes and Aphrodite, combined both male and female organs. But surely that was not the beginning. While people today attribute two different sex organs in one body to a freak of nature, perhaps it might very well have been the real McCoy.
Suppose it was? Both men and women may now feel aggrieved. For example, some women nowadays would seem to prefer not to have anything to do with men, but they want children. In the papers they complain about men cheating, being violent, unsupportive of children they help bring into the world. Men complain about the unwillingness of women to cooperate, which leads to hostile clinches. Some men seem to prefer to be dealing only with their children. For example, in the issue of child support they would give the money or materials only to the children themselves.
Could this be an unconscious throwback to a gene?
Our Good Book’s translation, commissioned by King James I of England, seems reluctant to deal with the subject. Indeed while it explicitly deals with topics such as the oldest profession, Sodom and Gomorrah, eating pork and shellfish, people interfering with their neighbour’s wife (not husband) or ass, and “tiefing”, it does not say how to treat hermaphrodites or why such people exist. In fact, condemning their resultant behaviour as sinful seems like shying away from the root of the issue.
Modern thinking puts a different slant on many of these things and our attitude towards people with this aberration. In the name of modernizing, countries all over the world are going great guns for repealing anti-homosexual laws, just as we now eat every part of Mr Trenton and play cricket on Sundays.
You may say that Barbados is behind the times when our Prime Minister pontificates on the likelihood of same-sex marriage coming to Barbados – we already have the other thing. (The Wild Coot has often recommended solving the problem of intersexual quarrels by accepting the polygamous habits of Barbadians).
Do not condemn the Wild Coot for broaching such topics as this, the internecine political feud, care for testes, and the prepuce debate. We are in the age where contentious topics can no longer be swept under the carpet when we have Facebook to face.
However, all is not lost. Soon we shall have as an everyday occurrence the sun, sea and wind eliminating the need for an electricity company, motorcars flying in the sky, people buying a return ticket to the moon, and science being able to clone, besides a sheep, a woman. Scientist may then be able to give back to the woman the features she originally possessed.
That is why the Wild Coot wants to live until 2050. If he does not, then he hopes to come back with the full knowledge and experience he had while here before – dreams that somehow tell him that it will be so.
Good luck for the next five years. Let us look south.
Harry Russell is a banker. Email [email protected]
