When I was off in the West Virginian Italian festival looking at all of the MILF's (Mothers I'd Like to Fuck) and stuff, I got thinking about human sexuality. Specifically, the wop fest made me wonder how our lives would be changed if our biological sexual habits were slightly different. Who would have thought that the Dagopalooza would have actually made me think? Actually, this is something I'd been considering for some time, but the hick-o-rama made me think about it more.
Sex is obviously a big part of our culture. If you haven't picked up on that and you're not Helen Keller, please shoot yourself now. (I wonder if Helen Keller ever got laid?) Therefore, if we, as a species, had developed with different sexual characteristics, our culture would be profoundly different.
Let's start with an easy scenario. What if we used external fertilization like fish or frogs, where the guy shoots his wad into a pile of eggs? Contraception would be a breeze, that's for sure, but on the other hand, so would masterbation.
What if we had a specific mating season? What if people only became horny one month out of the year? You can bet nothing would get done on the whole planet in that month, and that would be bad news for the contraceptive and tampon industries. On the other hand, having all of your kids born in the same few weeks would have to make things easier for somebody. Actually maybe not. The seasonality of it all would make life difficult, what with the once-a-year rush in the maternity ward and baby things. Having all of the birthdays at the same time would be worse than Christmas.
What if...what if we had more than two genders? What would that do to our pronouns? How would a third gender affect single's night? Who would get maternity leave? How the hell would our plumbing work? What about PORN?? Technically, there could be up to 26 genders, each depositing a chromosome, but we'll stay away from that mind-numbing concept. So for all of the bitching I hear about how tough relationships are, think about how damn hard it COULD be.
Of course, we could also be asexual and just divide.