The Dean of Anthropology Is Writing a . . . What?

Everything’s up to date on Oxymoron.

No wars on the little two-mooned planet halfway across the universe. No strife. No jealousy, no power struggles, no family wrangling, no pecking order.

Mainly because, on Oxymoron, there are no sexes.

Oh, there is sex, to be sure, but they don’t call it that. It’s hard to have “sex” without sexes. The Oxies call it “hibiscating,” and it’s terrific. You can do it with anybody, anytime, without a hint of hang-up. It’s not promiscuous, either, not in the context.

“Promiscuous” doesn’t apply here. It’s a Terran word, after all, a Terran concept , like “guilt” and “macho” and “women’s work” and “homosexuality”--all based on the overriding reality of Earth being divided into two sexes.

So too, the Terran words (and concepts of) “love” and “romance” and “motherhood” and even “dating.” They don’t exist on Oxymoron either. You can’t have everything.

Prof. Paul Bohannon, who is writing a science-fiction novel, “Orgy on Oxymoron,” in order to better understand his own wayward species, is not particularly sorry for the Oxies. After decades of study and field work, he knows better than to apply the value systems of one society to another.

“It’s not that they miss romance, or the child/parent relationship, or any of the joys--and horrors--of a two-sex society,” he says. “It’s just that they lack them. There’s a world, or a planet, of difference.”

One of the basic premises of human life is that there are two sexes; so basic, Bohannon says, that we take it for granted.

“Our whole psychological identification grows out of the fact that we are of one sex or another,” he says, “and if you don’t have this, what in hell is left?

“The answer is, ‘Not much, really.’ But only if you’re looking at it from a Terran point of view. It’s obviously possible to live a rewarding and dignified life on Oxymoron, without sexes.

“The second question is, what have they got that I haven’t got. I must confess that I’m not sure yet.

“The problem is, there’s nobody to ask.”

Dr. Bohannon, 66, full-time god of Oxymoron (modestly, he prefers “creator”) and part-time dean of anthropology and communications at USC, came to his planet the long way around:

“For more years than I can count I have been writing books--anthropology books, history books, stuff like that. I got to the point, frankly, where I was bored with it; tired of footnoting stuff, of having to be right in the sense that I could prove where I got everything I know.

“I got to thinking the most sensible thing I could do would be to apply anthropological questions to a non-world, something you could look at without being hemmed in by the data. . . . “

“I think the time has come that I can learn a helluva lot more this way than I can by going out and studying another set of yahoos, about whom nobody gives a tinker’s dam anyhow.”

Bohannon began by wondering what life would be like with no division of tasks, no division of “how one experiences life. So logically, you have to dream up a society where there are no men or women.”

Hence Oxymoron. Hence: “I’m learning so much about anthropology you wouldn’t believe it.”

Obviously, a species must reproduce or roll over. Just as obviously, the Oxies have no “sexual” appendages as such.

What they have is an organ that resembles a hibiscus in the position where their belly buttons would be. (No navels on Oxymoron, of course. For that matter, no navel warfare.)

“They do maintain the whole business of erotism,” Bohannon hastens to add. “Who would want to give that up?”

The Oxies hibiscate whenever the spirit moves, exchanging genetic material in the process--another requisite of species survival. For story purposes, hisbiscating also rejuvenates. (“Among humans,” Bohannon remarks, “sex gives you the illusion of being younger. Alas, it’s only an illusion.”)

During regular rituals, based on juxtaposition of their moons, mature Oxies gather to hibiscate for reasons beyond pleasure. “Egg-like things” are formed, between but out of the participants’ bodies. The eggs are borne off and tended by specialists, until they are mature enough to enter society, at a future ritual. . . .

At what point is an Oxy--and by extension, a child--mature enough to take his/her/its place in society?

“Age is irrelevant. It’s based on intellectual development,” Bohannon says, conceding, with a sigh, “Eggheads will be eggheads.”

“My feeling,” the professor says, “is that everybody knows when the ‘child’ is ready. That is true in our own society. People know .”

The topic segues, as it will with anthropologists.

“No,” Bohannon says, “I don’t think that human parents know for their children. Parents never know anything .

“If they could truly focus on their children. . . . But they don’t. They have great difficulty in seeing their children separate from themselves. They are not very good judges of their children, of the kids’ readiness to do anything.

“I have nothing but scorn for the people who say, ‘I am going to teach my children sex education at home. When they are 9 they will learn this; when they are 10. . . . ‘

“This is in total disregard of the real world. Children learn about sex in their peer groups. They always have and they always will.

“Some societies--in Africa, in the Pacific, in an Indian tribe called the Muria--are very good at getting correct and adequate and indeed loving information into the peer groups. We are not. You cannot be sexually puritanical and do this at all.

“So most parents make mistakes--of course. But kids get over their parents’ mistakes--of course.”

On Oxymoron there are no parental hang-ups. On the other hand, there is none of the ineffable, instinctive joy of the parent/child relationship. On the third hand (anything is possible on Oxymoron), there is no blame, on either side.

All things considered, why can’t humans have our children reared elsewhere?

“We can,” Bohannon says. “It’s called a kibbutz.

“But it doesn’t eliminate the problem. When the kids get to the stage that they begin to question their elders, they say, ‘I’ve got this problem because I was raised on a kibbutz.’ Other kids say, ‘I’ve got this problem because I was raised by my parents.’ You can’t win. Why on Earth one needs somebody else to blame his own problems on is one of the great human questions.”

On Oxymoron, the question is begged, and beautifully: “They emerge when they’re ready to take life roles and work roles in the society.”

Ah, work roles. No hang-ups here, either. Nobody to say “That’s a man’s job” or, somehow more scornfully, “That’s women’s work.”

Up there, they’ve perfected the “general fabricator”--”If you want something, you figure out what’s in it and go make make it, by means of computers and robots.

“When you get to the point where you’re running machinery by pushing a button, it couldn’t matter less whether the person pushing the button is male or female. . . . “

“The more primitive the society, the more likely it is to be sexist,” Bohannon says. “I think we’re beginning to get over it in America.

“I suppose it was necessary to go through that androgynous phase, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but personally, I think that’s nonsense.

“On Earth, people are not just people. They’re either male or female people. Some parents, for a while, tried to convince their kids that gender doesn’t matter. That’s nonsense. But that doesn’t imply that one sex is superior.”

All other things being equal, though, isn’t man superior to woman by virtue of his superior physical strength?

“True,” Bohannon says. “Males can lift more, so at that level, strength makes a difference. But there are so many other qualities that women have and men don’t.”

Still, if Strong and Weak are locked in a room, won’t Strong take charge?

“Only if Weak allows it. If you’re stronger, you’ll be in charge--until I get you.

“If you want me to fetch the water, I’m going to resist you. Eventually, I’ll have to get it, but I’m going to spill it all over you too.

“You’re going to spend all your energy getting me to get the water and I’m going to spend all mine resisting you. We’re never going to get anyplace.

“That’s called Human Society.”

One of the few males who appreciated the inherent social advantage of the weaker side, Bohannon says, was Gandhi.

“He understood--as many women do--that in a struggle, the person in the ‘one-down’ position has all the options.

“The guy in the top-dog position spends all his life remaining top dog. He has no options., The moment he turns his back--whammo!”

Which, of course, is the story of a male-female relationship. . . . “

For reasons of plot, Bohannon has introduced an Earthman to the hitherto halcyon society of Oxymoron.

The man, no fool, has opted for the simple operation that will provide him with his own hibiscus.

The man’s own sexual organs--no longer relevant but still sort of there --continue to produce testosterone. The testosterone, a source of aggression, is naturally introduced around and about through the exchange of genetic materials involved in hibiscating. Something like the measles.

The Oxies are woefully unequipped to deal with aggression.

Trouble in Paradise.

Bohannon, as reasonable as he is learned, refuses to place exclusive blame for human warfare on either of the sexes.

He is, of course, familiar with the hoary but still provocative rationale for armed conflict: “Why do the men go to war?” “Because the women are watching.”

“It’s probably been repeated since early Sanskrit times,” he says “and of course it’s pertinent. One needs audiences. But although going off to war is one way of showing off, it’s not solely for the women. Men form a very important part of the audience for other men’s aggression.

“Yes, we men still go out and thump our chests, like the great apes do, for women and position--the two are irrevocably intertwined. The top baboon, after all, gets all the females, all the power.”

Nor are woman, by and large, permitted much thumping of their own. “Look at the attitude men have toward women going to war,” Bohannon says, “and carry it further:

“In most societies, women are never allowed to deal out death, under any circumstances. When is the last time you saw a female butcher?

“Women are in charge of birth and life; men are in charge of death.

“Robert Hertz, the French sociologist/anthropologist, was one of the first to realize that the world is divided--into left and right, night and day, male and female. And in almost all societies, left, dark and female are equated. The right-hand side is power, male, light. . . . “

There is a social structure on peaceful Oxymoron, but no social order as such, no hierarchy, real or imagined, of the sexes.

There is a general regard, close to affection, for the entire species. And “because of the fact that they, like us, need close and deep relationships, they form them. Sometimes the relationships are associated with hibiscation, but more often it’s a mentor relationship, or a strong bonding based not on physical attraction but on the emotional and the intellectual--like a good marriage.”

Bohannon, not so incidentally, was obliged to rethink his own attitudes on homosexuality--manifestly irrelevant on Oxymoron--while studying his new race.

“In our society, those of us who are straight don’t pay much attention to the physical attractions of our own sex. We know they are there, but we don’t erotize them any more than the Oxies do. When you do erotize them, on Earth, it’s a problem, but more a problem of social acceptance. . . . “

Bohannon is right: The examination of a society without sexes poses enough questions about our own two-sex circus to . . . fill a book.

Consideration of the conundrum begins at USC, spills over to another day at Bohannon’s Pasadena home, and opens more cans of worms than a pier-fishing party.

The professor is a polymath, with literally a shelf full of books to his credit. He has studied economics, psychoanalysis, obscure African languages, and taught a course in criminology at Princeton. On his wall is a Certificate of Appreciation from the National Commission on Space. On a table is a book, “The Promise of Democracy,” by Paul Bohannon. On his lips are questions, questions, questions--and a fair share of answers:

“The male is a delicate creature compared to the female. Men are the strong ones, but women are the tough ones.”

“What does ‘aggressive’ really mean in a two-sex society? A man has to hit you before he’s called ‘aggressive.’ All a woman has to do it put you on hold.”

“There’s never been a female-dominated society. A true matriarchy has never been discovered. It’s a popular myth. There’s no evidence for it. Of course, there have been females who’ve dominated a lot of societies. . . . “

Finally: “I haven’t gotten into how the young are brought up on Oxymoron, and I’m not going to. I’m not going to force more than one novel on the world.”

Don’t bet your hibiscus on it.