1 result for (book:notp AND session:770 AND stemmed:speci)
[... 8 paragraphs ...]
Puberty comes at a certain time, triggered by deep mechanisms that are related to the state of the natural world, the condition of the species, and those cultural beliefs that in a certain sense you transpose upon the natural world. In other respects, your cultural environment is of course natural. The time that puberty comes varies, then, and afterwards it is possible to parent a child. A time then comes when the period is over. During what is called the sexually active time; the larger dimensions of personhood become strictly narrowed into sexually stereotyped roles — and all aspects of identity that do not fit are ignored or denied. The fact is that few people fit those roles. They are largely the result of the interpretations of religion as conventionally understood. And the scientists, for all their seeming independence, often simply found new intellectually acceptable reasons for unconsciously held emotional beliefs.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
In times of overpopulation, this mechanism is hardly desirable, but it is a part of the species held in abeyance now, representing nature’s capabilities. In some areas of your world, isolated peoples live on past a hundred years, vital and strong, because they are untouched by your beliefs, and because they live in sympathy and accord with the world as they know and understand it. Occasionally such second puberties happen then, with resulting childbirth, as a small group attempts to maintain its own biological stance.
(10:18.) Usually the second puberty follows the same sexual orientation as the first, but not always — for it is quite possible for the new affiliation to be the opposite of the first. This is even rarer — but so does the species protect itself.
[... 26 paragraphs ...]