Implications of a race of hermaphrodites?

[CCamfield]

Their relations with other races would be prejudiced by the fact that they're largely female in appearance. The assumption, therefore, is that they're weaker than male-dominated societies. This is patently untrue, but the occasional hostile takeover attempt would provoke them into developing a powerful military. Everyone would recieve basic training, and they'd be very suspicious of outsiders - as most outsiders would be coming to look for fresh wives or something weird like that, and the hermaphrodites wouldn't want to be taken off.

Not only that, but without gender-based dimorphism everyone is a potential warrior. That may not make a difference if in the game world civilizations typically have as many male and female warriors, but the civilization would have twice as many potential soldiers as one in which only one gender gets recruited into the army.

 

[fusangite]

Tsyr says:

I dunno, I guess the same reason anyone wants any race in their world... "just because". She also wanted an "outcast" elven race that wasn't evil or drow-like in any way, so I guess this is her answer to that. If you have need of some specific bit of information, I can either ask her, or just tell you... I might just make an on-the-spot decision about it, since she hasn't given me much.

Gee -- I guess I'm really wearing my world-building style on my sleeve here. I don't want to put you or your friend out. Since I had this total gaming revelation in 1997, my world-building has become very metaphorical, symbolic and teleological. I thought you friend's problem was an interesting one that I might want to work on but I'd answer her questions completely differently depending on a whole bunch of stuff.

I guess my question is this: whom is this race in conflict/competition with and what is this conflict about? If the race isn't in conflict/competition with anyone else, why isn't it? Although I may have supplementary questions, answers to those would go a long way to helping me.

You've already helped me a bit in that it sounds like the elves are a sundered people in many ways. Kind of like Greg Stafford's Runequest Trolls, maybe. OK-- that's my third question: in case you're familiar with Runequest, is this comparable? If you're not, is there a clean, easy way to explain why and how the elves are a sundered people?

Thanks.

 

[beta-ray]

Not much to add to what is a very interesting topic...

The largest taboos I could think of for a race of hermaphrodites would be to produce a child on one's own (whoa) or to effectively neuter another person against their will. Of course those are only sexually related taboos... (murder and other violations would be taboo as well)

The Star Trek episode that has been mentioned (I didn't read all the posts so sorry if this is a repeat), is called "The Outcast" and the person was referred to as "androgynous". For more info:
http://www.startrek.com/library/tng_episodes/episodes_tng_detail_68540.asp

I also enjoy the author James Alan Gardner who wrote a book about a race that has to choose a gender once they hit a certain age... They switch between genders until then... In this case, the person isn't sure they want to choose...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380798271/qid=1050284569/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-3705718-4697416?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

To be honest, not his best work. I wonder if hermaphrodites would look down on races with only one gender... If you play your Elves haughty, imagine them even moreso. hehehe

 

[rounser]

Well, first off, they are everywhere. Take a shovel, dig up some dirt. The earthworms worms you see are true hermaphrodites. Given that, in terms of biomass there are more hermaphrodites on land than there are vertebrates. So much for them not being successful.

We're talking humans, not earthworms. Humans are a lot more social than earthworms, for starters, and a social environment breeds a lot more competition. Despite it's seeming "fluffiness", this observation is not something you can dismiss out of hand - man's worst enemy and greatest competitor is other men (and greatest ally too, but you catch my drift).

Then why are there still so many earthworms?

See above.

There's a common misconception - that if a solution is even throetically possible, evolution will find it. This is simply not true.

It's highly probable though, and in the case of something as fundamental as sex, it's almost definite.

Evolution is not driven by a thoughtful mind - it does not say, "This would be advantageous, so I will do it".

Duh.

Evolution does no seek advantage.

Nope, but it weeds out suboptimal solutions a lot of the time when it comes to something as critical as mating strategy.

Evolution must happen on a trait by chance, and that trait must be advantageous (or at least not harmful) at the time in order for it to come to be part of a species.

Yes. That's why we don't have hermaphrodites - they're not as advantageous to producing quality and quantity of offspring amongst humans as the individual genders are. This was decided a lot earlier than in the existence of humans, though, but the same principles still apply.

A great many unlikely things have come up during the course of terrestrial evolution, but there's many things that also haven't come to pass. Evolution does not try every possible solution. It only tries the ones it happens to stumble across.

Are you finished? You're proving nothing, and acting as if I don't know this. ALL of this.

Perhaps you weren't reading fully - there are no true hermaphrodites among vertebrates now. Not because it's disadvantageous, but because it's not physically possible. The presence of active testes causes deformaties in ovaries, and vice versa. Getting to a state where that is not the case requires a fundamentla restructuring of how the testes and ovaries work. This is not exactly easy to do without killing the organism, or making it sterile.

I put to you that that is nonsense - if the design worked with regards to game theory, the biology would have found a way, hormones or not. Not amongst humans, but somewhere in their evolutionary history.

Well, hermaphrodism does not at all change the nature of sex, in that it still allows for the remixing of genetic material.

Nobody said it had no purpose. I said that, now having it, it is nigh impossible to change. There are any number of things in the land-vertebrate body plan that are similar - bilateral symmetry, or having four limbs. We are stuck with the basic body plan of our ancestors because radical alterations are not easy to do, while subtle alterations are.

You're not thinking back far enough - the two genders were defined for us long before that stuff was mapped out.

As you put it, the method of our reproduction is fundamental. Therefore, changing it is nigh impossible.

I'm not talking about changing it; I'm talking about why it doesn't exist for humans.

Consider that the trait must result in a fertile cross-fertile with non-hermaphordites. The trait must be heritable - when it mates with normal members of the species, tyhe results must at least carry the potential to produce later hermaphrodites. It must also be able to mate with normal members of it's species - for example, a critter who had the full set of male and female parts would also emit both male and female pheromones, which might well exclude it from mating. For humanoids - how likely are you to make with another human who has both sets of genitalia?

Assume that somewhere down the line, some mammalian ancestor existed which could impregnate and become pregnant. It's almost certain that it did, perhaps at multiple stages. That design got outcompeted, and is no more.

Not necessarily. There are many traits that would be advantageous that we don't posess. A spinal column that isn't so vulnerable to stress injury would be highly advantageous, but we don't have it. And that's simpler than hermaphrodism.

Apples and oranges. A barely adequate spinal column is "good enough", but a sub par mating strategy will be wiped out in a handful of generations.

It's for a lot more than that. Avoiding the deformities of recessive genes, and increasing the availability of immunities to the population are notable, but are far from the limit of what the mixing is for.

That's the primary reason, though. There are other ways to avoid deformities that don't involve the cost of sex, and what a huge cost it is.

Genes interact in strange and mysterious ways. If you don't mix them, you don't fully experiment with the material at your disposal.

Right, time for me to go on the attack. Ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? Genes don't act as a species - they act in a way that's good for them individually. If there's no "personal gain" to be had in "experimenting", they won't.

We've never seen a true vertebrate hermaphrodite, so we cannot say what it is or is not good at. We most certainly cannot say that their non-appearance is proof, because we don't know if the experiment has ever been tried.

I suggest that it's naive to suggest that it hasn't...not amongs humans, perhaps, but at least somewhere down the line which created us. Hermaphrodites keep on popping up as mutations among humans even today, and I don't think it's out of line to suggest that at one stage, some early ancestor managed to be fertile in both ways.

Perhaps Stephen Jay Gould put it best. The phrase "Survival of the fittest" is a bit of circular logic. The typical way we define fitness is by survival. That means the phrase reduces to "Survival of those who suvive," which gives us no information - speciifcally, it gives us no information on why they survived.

It also doesn't prove your point. I will say that you're being utterly naive in assuming that mammals having two sexes is a spandel, and leave it there. I'm not at all surprised that you're quoting Gould, either, by the way.

Besides, you're not even attacking my point directly. You're saying that it probably didn't evolve, and so was never tried, whereas I'm saying that even if it did evolve (and I suspect that it did, perhaps not amongst humans but on behalf of a whole branch of the evolutionary tree we belong to) the game theory doesn't work, and the genes don't get passed on in a handful of generations. It's a special case, unlike a "good enough" spinal column, because competition for mates is so fierce.

When I get home, I'll remember this time, and post you an example of why hermaphrodites don't work amongst humans when they have to compete with males and females.

 

[Tsyr]

I guess my question is this: whom is this race in conflict/competition with and what is this conflict about? If the race isn't in conflict/competition with anyone else, why isn't it? Although I may have supplementary questions, answers to those would go a long way to helping me.

What I'm thinking right now is that this race isn't all *that* populus yet... Probably because other than the original group of a couple hundred, there isn't much in the way of new blood for them. I'm envisioning them hanging around the fringes of elven culture... probably mostly within their lands, for the protection afforded. There is a bit more, but it ties in with the rest of your question...

You've already helped me a bit in that it sounds like the elves are a sundered people in many ways. Kind of like Greg Stafford's Runequest Trolls, maybe. OK-- that's my third question: in case you're familiar with Runequest, is this comparable? If you're not, is there a clean, easy way to explain why and how the elves are a sundered people?

As I understand the Runequest Trolls, (I just went and did a search on them ), kinda. There are a number of very different elven races... They were basicly the only mortal race in existance when the gods were warring. Aformentioned magic caused a lot of changes... there are a number of distinct different races of elves. Most of them were pretty easy to detail though.

How I have it working right now is that elves are sort of a loose nation of different races... Generaly, the races of the elves intermingle to some extent... The exception being the two most extreme varients on the race, the Y'mir (the race in question here) and the De'Shanan (Which she stole from my world, a race of winged elf), who are different enough to warent some seperation, and another race that just decided they didn't want anything to do with the rest of Elvendom and struck out on their own. (Ironicly enough, these are actualy her trolls...) The De'Shanan are isolationists, but are also a bit more numerous. The Y'Mir never exactly got back on their feet after their creation... They didn't die out, like some of the races, but they are probably the most scarce of the subraces of elf.

I'm thinking that a good portion of the world just doesn't know that Y'mir are a race... They would probably just seem to be female elves to outsiders. The Y'mir might also have a desire to keep it that way, if possible, I havn't decided that yet.

I'm thinking the rest of the elves will probably have a love-hate relationship with them, sort of... They probably don't want anything directly to do with them (Little intermingling), but at the same time they might feel sorry for them (The Y'mir think they are an evolutionary advancement... the rest of the elves don't share that vew, I suspect).

Help any?

 

[Agback]

G'day

Take these as suggestioins, not implications. The diversity of human, not to mention vertebrate, 'family' arrangements should warn us against the belief that reproductive biology dictates reproductive strategy, let alone general social arrangements.

"It's a wise man as knows his own father", they say. Likewise, it is a wise man that knows his own children. This being the case, when no-one is forced by biological circumstance to invest effort in testicular children that are at best putative, people are likely to invest more resources and effort into their uterine children (whose relatedness is certain). So perhaps the link between fathers and their testicular children will be weak, even non-existent. A person who is pregnant or raising children may turn for assistance to her mother and sisters rather than to the father of her child. Families may be matrilineal, and the identity of fathers generally unknown. People are likely to be casual about whom they inseminate, and may be either casual or very choosy about whom they allow to inseminate them.

With no sex-role division, the members of society will have no need to establish a link with people of complementary sex-role. Women will not need male 'protection'. Men will not need to control sexual access to women to assure their own reproductive success. There will be no possibility of one sex or other securing exclusive rights to property or political roles, and therefore much less marriage for wealth or position. There may be no marriage, and no social role of 'father'. There may be no marriage alliances between dynasties and lineages. If there is no marriage, but people exercise some choice in whom they allow to inseminate them, the people who have the traits of masculine attractiveness may enjoy considerable (unrecognised) reproductive success, even if they bear no children.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Umbran]

We're talking humans, not earthworms. Humans are a lot more social than earthworms, for starters, and a social environment breeds a lot more competition.

A different sort of competition, yes. Not necessarily more competition. As you yourself say, man is our best ally. Our social environment has vastly reduced the amount of competition between individuals. Relatively few of us fail to live to breeding age, and when we do fail, it isn't because another human gave us a hard time.

It's highly probable though, and in the case of something as fundamental as sex, it's almost definite.

Assertion is not a viable stand in for proof. The more fundamental the system, the less likely it is to change - the more fundamental the system, the more likely the change will be lethal, or lead to a non-viable organism.

Yes. That's why we don't have hermaphrodites - they're not as advantageous to producing quality and quantity of offspring amongst humans as the individual genders are. This was decided a lot earlier than in the existence of humans, though, but the same principles still apply.

It was not decided a lot earlier than the existance of humans, or there would be no earthworms. Or hermaphroditic plants (of which there are many).

Are you finished? You're proving nothing, and acting as if I don't know this. ALL of this.

Yep, because you are acting as if you don't. If you know this, you cannot simultaneously claim that the experiment has been tried.

I put to you that that is nonsense - if the design worked with regards to game theory, the biology would have found a way, hormones or not. Not amongst humans, but somewhere in their evolutionary history.

Problem - the fact that game theory says it would be advantageous in no way guarantees that nature will try that route. Again, you seem to be ignoring the fact that nature does not try every possible experiment.

I'm not talking about changing it; I'm talking about why it doesn't exist for humans.

In order to discuss it existing for humans (and why it doesn't) you must also discuss the change, because the change would be required for it to exist.

Assume that somewhere down the line, some mammalian ancestor existed which could impregnate and become pregnant. It's almost certain that it did, perhaps at multiple stages. That design got outcompeted, and is no more.

No, let us not make that assumption. It is not at all certain to have happened. There is no fossil or other evidence of which I'm aware to suggest it did.

Right, time for me to go on the attack. Ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? Genes don't act as a species - they act in a way that's good for them individually. If there's no "personal gain" to be had in "experimenting", they won't.

Ever heard of personification? Genes are mindless. They have no will, and have no way to choose to stop the experimentation. They take a random walk. If that random walk does not bring them through a place where the experimentation stops, it doesn't stop, because they are stuck with the mechanic handed down to them.

I suggest that it's naive to suggest that it hasn't...not amongs humans, perhaps, but at least somewhere down the line which created us.

Again, assertion is not proof. Show me a fully functional vertibrate hermaphrodite, or evidence of one. Otherwise, your suggestion is just that - a suggestion without support.

Also, "somewhere down the line" is not adequate. If you go far enough back down the line, the situation becomes different enough to be irrelevant. What didn't work then may or may not work now.

Hermaphrodites keep on popping up as mutations among humans even today, and I don't think it's out of line to suggest that at one stage, some early ancestor managed to be fertile in both ways.

So called "hermaphrodism" among humans is generally the result of chromasomal anomaly, rather than gene mutation. The same anomalies that causes a human to have ovarian and testicular tissue in one individual also ensures that the rest of the reproductive system is non-functional.

It also doesn't prove your point. I will say that you're being utterly naive in assuming that mammals having two sexes is a spandel, and leave it there.

I'm saying that having two sexes is as much a spandel as having a skeletal system. Species are not free to abandon their ancestral traits willy-nilly. They are generally stuck with the basics of their ancestral form, upon which they can make some modifications. You are stuck with a skeletal system, four limbs, and two sexes in your species, simply because changing them is too darned unlikely or difficult.

Games theory and competition don't enter the picture before the trait exists. It is naive to simply assume that the trait automatically has come to pass merely because you imagine it. Nature has limits that your imagination does not.

...the game theory doesn't work

There's a major problem with games theory. It assumes you know all the rules. The rules for a simple system are occasionally tractable. For complex systems, it's generally impossible to know all the rules, making games theory analyses weak. Earthworms are behaviorally simple things. Vertebrates are not. Mammals even less so. Humans (or fantasy humanoids) have the most complex and flexible behavior patterns ever seen. Unless you're Hari Seldon, you don't have a games theory solution for humans.

 

[Lela]

Something that occured to me.

Assuming both parents would hang around, would their be any difference in the terms childeren use for them? We call our parents mom and dad but they may go by (first) names or simply say "Parent" when talking to either one--which could cause confusion. Another option is for each individual child to refer to the perent who birthed it as mom and the other as dad. Having a large family that shares pregnency would result in various different names for each parent--we already deal with two names in our society, another might not be all that difficult.

The fact that they really did desend from elves would also lead me to believe that they do have individual names for each parent, whther it be mom, dad, or something entirely different, I'm not sure.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I suppose that the simpe point of my post is that the society would probably tend to develop some sort of divisions based on pregnancy.

I would guess that a good strategy would be for everyone to try being pregnant, but for there to also be certain periods/groups in which pregnancy was not encouraged or actively discouraged.

In general, it is probably advantageous for everyone who can bear children to try since the risk of not an individual not being able to bring a humanoid child to term is pretty high, at least in our own species and I would assume the same is more or less true for all other higher order primates.

On the other hand, it is also very advantageous that a certain portion of the society not be pregnant at all times since pregnancy carries a general risk for loosing the person who is giving birth and people who aren't pregnant carry less risk for themselves and others and thus provide the society with a certain level of insurance against the risks of pregnancy as well as expendability compared to the value of those who are pregnant.

Not too mention the fact that pregnancy is a pretty intense process and having a population of non-pregnant people around gives you someplace to transfer additional stresses to to make things easier for the people who are pregnant. Mind you this last point is certainly not a given in human societies, in which the non-pregnant portion of the population often lives in a great deal of comparative luxury and idleness.

Being a long lived species I would also guess that pregnancy at an early age has a lot of biological advantages, but that child rearing works better for those who are older. Thus the split between the age groups associated with child bearing and child rearing.

BTW, Umbran, your posts have been really well done.

 

[rounser]

A different sort of competition, yes. Not necessarily more competition.

WRONG. The complexity of our social environment is one of the things that pushes forward intelligence. You need it in order to outcompete your neighbour. This is why, for instance, dogs are smarter than domestic cats. They live together more, and therefore need to outsmart each other in competition.

As you yourself say, man is our best ally.

When it suits him.

Our social environment has vastly reduced the amount of competition between individuals.

I'm sorry, but that's just plain ignorance on your part. The more social we become, the more fierce the competition gets.

Relatively few of us fail to live to breeding age, and when we do fail, it isn't because another human gave us a hard time.

You're still incorrect. You are still most likely to be cuckolded or killed by your own species, and you'll have to compete for the most desirable partners. It is true that we're likely to live longer now, but that wasn't always the case, and when reaching breeding age is no longer an issue, you're still competing for quality and quantity of offspring. Hermaphrodites would still find themselves being outcompeted on both those counts.

Assertion is not a viable stand in for proof. The more fundamental the system, the less likely it is to change - the more fundamental the system, the more likely the change will be lethal, or lead to a non-viable organism.

Wait until I present the model of what happens when hermaphrodites have to coexist with males and females, and who wins that mating game very quickly.

It was not decided a lot earlier than the existance of humans, or there would be no earthworms. Or hermaphroditic plants (of which there are many).

How ridiculously petty of you - how earlier is "a lot", pray tell? Okay, how about "somewhat earlier", then.

Yep, because you are acting as if you don't. If you know this, you cannot simultaneously claim that the experiment has been tried.

Nope, you're posing, and attempting to use theory where it doesn't apply. If you can't see the difference between a gender-determined mating strategy and a spine, I can't help you.

Problem - the fact that game theory says it would be advantageous in no way guarantees that nature will try that route. Again, you seem to be ignoring the fact that nature does not try every possible experiment.

You're getting mixed up - the game theory says it's DISADVANTAGEOUS, therefore even if it did exist, it wouldn't for long if there were males and females about to outcompete it. Despite the fact that it probably did (given that we have hermaphrodites of the non-fertile variety living and breathing with us today).

In order to discuss it existing for humans (and why it doesn't) you must also discuss the change, because the change would be required for it to exist.

Even if it did exist, it wouldn't for long. The genes would become extinct very quickly. Just wait for a few hours and I'll show you why.

No, let us not make that assumption. It is not at all certain to have happened. There is no fossil or other evidence of which I'm aware to suggest it did.

Okay, let's not. Let's just accept the fact that even if they did exist, the wouldn't be able to hold their own in the mating game for more than a handful of generations before hermaphrodite genes were wiped out in favour of male and female ones.

Ever heard of personification? Genes are mindless. They have no will, and have no way to choose to stop the experimentation.

YES, I have. I took a shortcut to explain a point. Despite their lack of intelligence, genes often default to "selfish" ways, because the other ways tend to result in their inexistence.

They take a random walk. If that random walk does not bring them through a place where the experimentation stops, it doesn't stop, because they are stuck with the mechanic handed down to them.

Yes. And in this case they're not "doing it for the species" - that was your personification which I was shooting down.

Again, assertion is not proof. Show me a fully functional vertibrate hermaphrodite, or evidence of one. Otherwise, your suggestion is just that - a suggestion without support.

I can still say it's naive of you to suggest that that particular experiment was never tried.

Also, "somewhere down the line" is not adequate. If you go far enough back down the line, the situation becomes different enough to be irrelevant. What didn't work then may or may not work now.

Your argument that it probably never happened isn't adequate either.

So called "hermaphrodism" among humans is generally the result of chromasomal anomaly, rather than gene mutation. The same anomalies that causes a human to have ovarian and testicular tissue in one individual also ensures that the rest of the reproductive system is non-functional.

Notice another thing - most all of the genetic ingredients are already hanging around. That makes the possibility of a mutation into a fertile hermaphrodite all the stronger - perhaps not with humans, but somewhere along their line of ancestors.

I'm saying that having two sexes is as much a spandel as having a skeletal system. Species are not free to abandon their ancestral traits willy-nilly. They are generally stuck with the basics of their ancestral form, upon which they can make some modifications. You are stuck with a skeletal system, four limbs, and two sexes in your species, simply because changing them is too darned unlikely or difficult.

No, they're not free to abandon them "willy nilly", but given enough time you can make some major changes - gender characteristics included.

Games theory and competition don't enter the picture before the trait exists. It is naive to simply assume that the trait automatically has come to pass merely because you imagine it. Nature has limits that your imagination does not.

It's also naive to assume that hermaphrodites haven't been tried and failed, and instead just assume that they've probably never come into existence, which is why they don't exist. Hermaphrodites and circumstantial sex changes and part-time sex, part-time asex are OLD, OLD, OLD inventions in the evolutionary arsenal. To assume that they've never been tried and been found wanting at some signficant evolutionary turning point in the human ancestor species family tree (going back to proto-mammals, or probably even long before, "large land-dwelling creatures", who knows) is probably wishful thinking.

There's a major problem with games theory. It assumes you know all the rules. The rules for a simple system are occasionally tractable.

The sexual mating game is a simple system. A impregnates or fertilises B. Half each of A's and B's genes survive to the next generation in each offspring so produced, and it proceeds from there as a sort of tree.

For complex systems, it's generally impossible to know all the rules, making games theory analyses weak. Earthworms are behaviorally simple things. Vertebrates are not. Mammals even less so. Humans (or fantasy humanoids) have the most complex and flexible behavior patterns ever seen. Unless you're Hari Seldon, you don't have a games theory solution for humans

I'm not Hari Seldon, but I'll present one to you in a few hours.