“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Physically speaking, you would have no males or females unless first you had individuals. You are each individuals first of all, then. After this, you are individuals of a specific sex, biologically speaking. The particular kind of focus that you have is responsible for the great significance you place upon male and female. Your hand and your foot have different functions. If you wanted to focus upon the differences in their behavior, you could build an entire culture based upon their diverse capabilities, functions and characteristics. Hands and feet are obviously equipment belonging to both sexes, however. Still, on another level the analogy is quite valid.

(Long pause, one of many.) The challenges and problems of the species were different from those of others. It needed additional safeguards. The more flexible mating pattern was one. With this came a greater diversity in individual characteristics and behavior, so that no individual was bound to a strictly biological role. If that were true, the species never would have been concerned beyond the issues of physical survival, and such is not the case. The species could have survived quite well physically without philosophy, the arts, politics, religion, or even structured language. It could have followed completely different paths, those tied strictly to biological orientation.

For that matter, there is far greater leeway in the behavior of animals than you understand, for you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs. You interpret the past history of your species in the same manner. It seems to you that the female always tended to the offspring, for example, nursing them, that she was forced to remain close to home while the male fought off enemies or hunted for food. The ranging male, therefore, appears to have been much more curious and aggressive. There was instead a different kind of situation. Children do not come in litters. The family of the caveman was a far more “democratic” group than you suppose — men and women working side by side, children learning to hunt with both parents, women stopping to nurse a child along the way, the species standing apart from others because it was not ritualized in sexual behavior.

Even the animals, however, understand without words or language the importance of their sexual behavior. Early man was hardly more ignorant. The male knew what he was doing even without textbooks that outlined the entire procedure. The female understood the connections between the child born and the sexual act.