>>54683564The biological makeup of the genders cannot be deleted from consider-
ation in any attempt to weigh the moral character of a particular sexual
transaction. In this connection it is ominous that China, with a quarter of the
world’s population, is consistently bringing more males into the world than
females, aborting female fetuses and murdering female infants. India is show-
ing the same trend. This is a prescription for an increased male redundancy
and a reduction of the numbers of conservators. Given male competitiveness,
it is also a prescription for war. In war, redundant males become expendable
as cannon fodder. War becomes, even, a biological necessity.
David Buss also points out the superfi ciality of widely accepted notions
of current gender confl ict, such as the claim that men are united in the com-
mon purpose of oppressing women, and that women are now uniting against
men to reclaim their share of available resources through gender equality.
Buss calls this a simple-minded view of same-sex conspiracies. In fact, he
says, men viciously compete with each other in the high-stakes gamble to
make themselves more desirable to women. Women, likewise, compete for
access to high-status men. Buss draws a startling conclusion: the dominant
control of resources worldwide, by a select few men, can be traced in part to
women’s preferences in choosing a mate.
For the most part, women do not
join with one another to create equity for themselves and men. Rather, they
more often compete with each other for a place beside the man who has the
greatest resources.
The Platonists and Stoics of ancient times, and their later Christian
followers, strove mightily to expunge the sex drive from humanity as
animalistic. They sought to elevate the human species to a higher plane,
the plane of the mind and soul. It was a grievous error to emphasize the
mind and soul at the expense of the body and its pleasures.
