Tuesday, January 8, 2008
The euro and the History of Previous Currency Unions
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
I. The History of Monetary Unions
"Before long, all Europe, save England, will have one money". This
was written by William Bagehot, the Editor of "The Economist", the
renowned British magazine, 120 years ago when Britain, even then,
was heatedly debating whether to adopt a single European Currency or
not.
A century later, the euro is finally here (though without British
participation). Having braved numerous doomsayers and Cassandras,
the currency - though much depreciated against the dollar and
reviled in certain quarters (especially in Britain) - is now in use
in both the eurozone and in eastern and southeastern Europe (the
Balkan). In most countries in transition, it has already replaced
its much sought-after predecessor, the Deutschmark. The euro still
feels like a novelty - but it is not. It was preceded by quite a few
monetary unions in both Europe and outside it.
What lessons does history teach us? What pitfalls should we avoid
and what features should we embrace?
People felt the need to create a uniform medium of exchange as early
as in Ancient Greece and Medieval Europe. Those proto-unions did not
have a central monetary authority or monetary policy, yet they
functioned surprisingly well in the uncomplicated economies of the
time.
The first truly modern example would be the monetary union of
Colonial New England.
The four kinds of paper money printed by the New England colonies
(Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire and Rhode Island)
were legal tender in all four until 1750. The governments of the
colonies even accepted them for tax payments. Massachusetts - by far
the dominant economy of the quartet - sustained this arrangement for
almost a century. The other colonies became so envious that they
began to print additional notes outside the union. Massachusetts -
facing a threat of devaluation and inflation - redeemed for silver
its share of the paper money in 1751. It then retired from the
union, instituted its own, silver-standard (mono-metallic), currency
and never looked back.
A far more important attempt was the Latin Monetary Union (LMU). It
was dreamt up by the French, obsessed, as usual, by their declining
geopolitical fortunes and monetary prowess. Belgium already adopted
the French franc when it became independent in 1830. The LMU was a
natural extension of this franc zone and, as the two teamed up with
Switzerland in 1848, they encouraged others to join them. Italy
followed suit in 1861. When Greece and Bulgaria acceded in 1867, the
members established a currency union based on a bimetallic (silver
and gold) standard.
The LMU was considered sufficiently serious to be able to flirt with
Austria and Spain when its Foundation Treaty was officially signed
in 1865 in Paris. This despite the fact that its French-inspired
rules seemed often to sacrifice the economic to the politically
expedient, or to the grandiose.
The LMU was an official subset of an unofficial "franc area"
(monetary union based on the French franc). This is similar to the
use of the US dollar or the euro in many countries today. At its
peak, eighteen countries adopted the Gold franc as their legal
tender (or peg). Four of them (the founding members of the LMU:
France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland) agreed on a gold to silver
conversion rate and minted gold and silver coins which were legal
tender in all of them. They voluntarily limited their money supply
by adopting a rule which forbade them to print more than 6 franc
coins per capita.
Europe (especially Germany and the United Kingdom) was gradually
switching at the time to the gold standard. But the members of the
Latin Monetary Union paid no attention to its emergence. They
printed ever increasing quantities of gold and silver coins, which
constituted legal tender across the Union. Smaller denomination
(token) silver coins, minted in limited quantity, were legal tender
only in the issuing country (because they had a lower silver content
than the Union coins).
The LMU had no single currency (akin to the euro). The national
currencies of its member countries were at parity with each other.
The cost of conversion was limited to an exchange commission of
1.25%.
Government offices and municipalities were obliged to accept up to
100 Francs of non-convertible and low intrinsic value tokens per
transaction. People lined to convert low metal content silver coins
(100 Francs per transaction each time) to buy higher metal content
ones.
With the exception of the above-mentioned per capita coinage
restriction, the LMU had no uniform money supply policies or
management. The amount of money in circulation was determined by the
markets. The central banks of the member countries pledged to freely
convert gold and silver to coins and, thus, were forced to maintain
a fixed exchange rate between the two metals (15 to 1) ignoring
fluctuating market prices.
Even at its apex, the LMU was unable to move the world prices of
these metals. When silver became overvalued, it was exported (at
times smuggled) within the Union, in violation of its rules. The
Union had to suspend silver convertibility and thus accept a
humiliating de facto gold standard. Silver coins and tokens remained
legal tender, though. The unprecedented financing needs of the Union
members - a result of the First World War - delivered the coup de
grace. The LMU was officially dismantled in 1926 - but expired long
before that.
The LMU had a common currency but this did not guarantee its
survival. It lacked a common monetary policy monitored and enforced
by a common Central Bank - and these deficiencies proved fatal.
In 1867, twenty countries debated the introduction of a global
currency in the International Monetary Conference. They decided to
adopt the gold standard (already used by Britain and the USA)
following a period of transition. They came up with an ingenious
scheme. They selected three "hard" currencies, with equal gold
content so as to render them interchangeable, as their legal tender.
Regrettably for students of the dismal science, the plan came to
naught.
Another failed experiment was the Scandinavian Monetary Union (SMU),
formed by Sweden (1873), Denmark (1873) and Norway (1875). It was a
by-now familiar scheme. All three recognized each others' gold
coinage as well as token coins as legal tender. The daring
innovation was to accept the members' banknotes (1900) as well.
As Scandinavian schemes go, this one worked too perfectly. No one
wanted to convert one currency to another. Between 1905 and 1924, no
exchange rates among the three currencies were available. When
Norway became independent, the irate Swedes dismantled the moribund
Union in an act of monetary tit-for-tat.
The SMU had an unofficial central bank with pooled reserves. It
extended credit lines to each of the three member countries. As long
as gold supply was limited, the Scandinavian Kronor held its ground.
Then governments started to finance their deficits by dumping gold
during World War I (and thus erode their debts by fostering
inflation through a string of inane devaluations). In an
unparalleled act of arbitrage, central banks then turned around and
used the depreciated currencies to scoop up gold at official (cheap)
rates.
When Sweden refused to continue to sell its gold at the officially
fixed price - the other members declared effective economic war.
They forced Sweden to purchase enormous quantities of their token
coins. The proceeds were used to buy the much stronger Swedish
currency at an ever cheaper price (as the price of gold collapsed).
Sweden found itself subsidizing an arbitrage against its own
economy. It inevitably reacted by ending the import of other
members' tokens. The Union thus ended. The price of gold was no
longer fixed and token coins were no more convertible.
The East African Currency Area is a fairly recent debacle. An
equivalent experiment, involving the CFA franc, is still going on in
the Francophile part of Africa.
The parts of East Africa ruled by the British (Kenya, Uganda and
Tanganyika and, in 1936, Zanzibar) adopted in 1922 a single common
currency, the East African shilling. The newly independent countries
of East Africa remained part of the Sterling Area (i.e., the local
currencies were fully and freely convertible into British Pounds).
Misplaced imperial pride coupled with outmoded strategic thinking
led the British to infuse these emerging economies with inordinate
amounts of money. Despite all this, the resulting monetary union was
surprisingly resilient. It easily absorbed the new currencies of
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in 1966, making them legal tender in all
three and convertible to Pounds.
Ironically, it was the Pound which gave way. Its relentless
depreciation in the late 60s and early 70s, led to the
disintegration of the Sterling Area in 1972. The strict monetary
discipline which characterized the union - evaporated. The
currencies diverged - a result of a divergence of inflation targets
and interest rates. The East African Currency Area was formally
ended in 1977.
Not all monetary unions ended so tragically. Arguably, the most
famous of the successful ones is the Zollverein (German Customs
Union).
The nascent German Federation was composed, at the beginning of the
19th century, of 39 independent political units. They all busily
minted coins (gold, silver) and had their own - distinct - standard
weights and measures. The decisions of the much lauded Congress of
Vienna (1815) did wonders for labour mobility in Europe but not so
for trade. The baffling number of (mostly non-convertible) different
currencies did not help.
The German principalities formed a customs union as early as 1818.
The three regional groupings (the Northern, Central and Southern)
were united in 1833. In 1828, Prussia harmonized its customs tariffs
with the other members of the Federation, making it possible to pay
duties in gold or silver. Some members hesitantly experimented with
new fixed exchange rate convertible currencies. But, in practice,
the union already had a single currency: the Vereinsmunze.
The Zollverein (Customs Union) was established in 1834 to facilitate
trade by reducing its costs. This was done by compelling most of the
members to choose between two monetary standards (the Thaler and the
Gulden) in 1838. Much as the Bundesbank was to Europe in the second
half of the twentieth century, the Prussian central bank became the
effective Central Bank of the Federation from 1847 on. Prussia was
by far the dominant member of the union, as it comprised 70% of the
population and land mass of the future Germany.
The North German Thaler was fixed at 1.75 to the South German Gulden
and, in 1856 (when Austria became informally associated with the
Union), at 1.5 Austrian Florins. This last collaboration was to be a
short lived affair, Prussia and Austria having declared war on each
other in 1866.
Bismarck (Prussia) united Germany (Bavarian objections
notwithstanding) in 1871. He founded the Reichsbank in 1875 and
charged it with issuing the crisp new Reichsmark. Bismarck forced
the Germans to accept the new currency as the only legal tender
throughout the first German Reich. Germany's new single currency was
in effect a monetary union. It survived two World Wars, a
devastating bout of inflation in 1923, and a monetary meltdown after
the Second World War. The stolid and trustworthy Bundesbank
succeeded the Reichsmark and the Union was finally vanquished only
by the bureaucracy in Brussels and its euro.
This is the only case in history of a successful monetary union not
preceded by a political one. But it is hardly representative.
Prussia was the regional bully and never shied away from enforcing
strict compliance on the other members of the Federation. It
understood the paramount importance of a stable currency and sought
to preserve it by introducing various consistent metallic standards.
Politically motivated inflation and devaluation were ruled out, for
the first time. Modern monetary management was born.
Another, perhaps equally successful, and still on-going union - is
the CFA franc Zone.
The CFA (stands for French African Community in French) franc has
been in use in the French colonies of West and Central Africa (and,
curiously, in one formerly Spanish colony) since 1945. It is pegged
to the French franc. The French Treasury explicitly guarantees its
conversion to the French franc (65% of the reserves of the member
states are kept in the safes of the French Central Bank). France
often openly imposes monetary discipline (that it sometimes lacks at
home!) directly and through its generous financial assistance.
Foreign reserves must always equal 20% of short term deposits in
commercial banks. All this made the CFA an attractive option in the
colonies even after they attained independence.
The CFA franc zone is remarkably diverse ethnically, lingually,
culturally, politically, and economically. The currency survived
devaluations (as large as 100% vis a vis the French Franc), changes
of regimes (from colonial to independent), the existence of two
groups of members, each with its own central bank (the West African
Economic and Monetary Union and the Central African Economic and
Monetary Community), controls of trade and capital flows - not to
mention a host of natural and man made catastrophes.
The euro has indirectly affected the CFA as well. "The Economist"
reported recently a shortage of small denomination CFA franc
notes. "Recently the printer (of CFA francs) has been too busy
producing euros for the market back home" - complained the West
African central bank in Dakar. But this is the minor problem. The
CFA franc is at risk due to internal imbalances among the economies
of the zone. Their growth rates differ markedly. There are mounting
pressures by some members to devalue the common currency. Others
sternly resist it.
"The Economist" reports that the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) - eight CFA countries plus Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea,
the Gambia, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone, and Liberia - is considering
its own monetary union. Many of the prospective members of this
union fancy the CFA franc even less than the EU fancies their
capricious and graft-ridden economies. But an ECOWAS monetary union
could constitute a serious - and more economically coherent -
alternative to the CFA franc zone.
A neglected monetary union is the one between Belgium and
Luxembourg. Both maintain their idiosyncratic currencies - but these
are at parity and serve as legal tender in both countries since
1921. The monetary policy of both countries is dictated by the
Belgian Central Bank and exchange regulations are overseen by a
joint agency. The two were close to dismantling the union at least
twice (in 1982 and 1993) - but relented.
II. The Lessons
Europe has had more than its share of botched and of successful
currency unions. The Snake, the EMS, the ERM, on the one hand - and
the British Pound, the Deutschmark, and the ECU, on the other.
The currency unions which made it have all survived because they
relied on a single monetary authority for managing the currency.
Counter-intuitively, single currencies are often associated with
complex political entities which occupy vast swathes of land and
incorporate previously distinct -and often politically, socially,
and economically disparate - units. The USA is a monetary union, as
was the late USSR.
All single currencies encountered opposition on both ideological and
pragmatic grounds when they were first introduced.
The American constitution, for instance, did not provide for a
central bank. Many of the Founding Fathers (e.g., Madison and
Jefferson) refused to countenance one. It took the nascent USA two
decades to come up with a semblance of a central monetary
institution in 1791. It was modeled after the successful Bank of
England. When Madison became President, he purposefully let its
concession expire in 1811. In the forthcoming half century, it
revived (for instance, in 1816) and expired a few times.
The United States became a monetary union only following its
traumatic Civil War. Similarly, Europe's monetary union is a belated
outcome of two European civil wars (the two World Wars). America
instituted bank regulation and supervision only in 1863 and, for the
first time, banks were classified as either national or state-level.
This classification was necessary because by the end of the Civil
War, notes - legal and illegal tender - were being issued by no less
than 1562 private banks - up from only 25 in 1800. A similar process
occurred in the principalities which were later to constitute
Germany. In the decade between 1847 and 1857, twenty five private
banks were established there for the express purpose of printing
banknotes to circulate as legal tender. Seventy (!) different types
of currency (mostly foreign) were being used in the Rhineland alone
in 1816.
The Federal Reserve System was founded only following a tidal wave
of banking crises in 1908. Not until 1960 did it gain a full
monopoly of nation-wide money printing. The monetary union in the
USA - the US dollar as a single legal tender printed exclusively by
a central monetary authority - is, therefore, a fairly recent thing,
not much older than the euro.
It is common to confuse the logistics of a monetary union with its
underpinnings. European bigwigs gloated over the smooth introduction
of the physical notes and coins of their new currency. But having a
single currency with free and guaranteed convertibility is only the
manifestation of a monetary union - not one of its economic pillars.
History teaches us that for a monetary union to succeed, the
exchange rate of the single currency must be realistic (for
instance, reflect the purchasing power parity) and, thus, not
susceptible to speculative attacks. Additionally, the members of the
union must adhere to one monetary policy.
Surprisingly, history demonstrates that a monetary union is not
necessarily predicated on the existence of a single currency. A
monetary union could incorporate "several currencies, fully and
permanently convertible into one another at irrevocably fixed
exchange rates". This would be like having a single currency with
various denominations, each printed by another member of the Union.
What really matters are the economic inter-relationships and power
plays among union members and between the union and other currency
zones and currencies (as expressed through the exchange rate).
Usually the single currency of the Union is convertible at given
(though floating) exchange rates subject to a uniform exchange rate
policy. This applies to all the territory of the single currency. It
is intended to prevent arbitrage (buying the single currency in one
place and selling it in another). Rampant arbitrage - ask anyone in
Asia - often leads to the need to impose exchange controls, thus
eliminating convertibility and inducing panic.
Monetary unions in the past failed because they allowed variable
exchange rates, (often depending on where - in which part of the
monetary union - the conversion took place).
A uniform exchange rate policy is only one of the concessions
members of a monetary union must make. Joining always means giving
up independent monetary policy and, with it, a sizeable slice of
national sovereignty. Members relegate the regulation of their money
supply, inflation, interest rates, and foreign exchange rates to a
central monetary authority (e.g., the European Central Bank in the
eurozone).
The need for central monetary management arises because, in economic
theory, a currency is never just a currency. It is thought of as a
transmission mechanism of economic signals (information) and
expectations (often through monetary policy and its outcomes).
It is often argued that a single fiscal policy is not only
unnecessary, but potentially harmful. A monetary union means the
surrender of sovereign monetary policy instruments. It may be
advisable to let the members of the union apply fiscal policy
instruments autonomously in order to counter the business cycle, or
cope with asymmetric shocks, goes the argument. As long as there is
no implicit or explicit guarantee of the whole union for the
indebtedness of its members - profligate individual states are
likely to be punished by the market, discriminately.
But, in a monetary union with mutual guarantees among the members
(even if it is only implicit as is the case in the eurozone), fiscal
profligacy, even of one or two large players, may force the central
monetary authority to raise interest rates in order to pre-empt
inflationary pressures.
Interest rates have to be raised because the effects of one member's
fiscal decisions are communicated to other members through the
common currency. The currency is the medium of exchange of
information regarding the present and future health of the economies
involved. Hence the notorious "EU Stability Pact", recently so
flagrantly abandoned in the face of German budget deficits.
Monetary unions which did not follow the path of fiscal rectitude
are no longer with us.
In an article I published in 1997 ("The History of Previous European
Currency Unions"), I identified five paramount lessons from the
short and brutish life of previous - now invariably defunct -
monetary unions:
1.. To prevail, a monetary union must be founded by one or two
economically dominant countries ("economic locomotives"). Such
driving forces must be geopolitically important, maintain political
solidarity with other members, be willing to exercise their clout,
and be economically involved in (or even dependent on) the economies
of the other members.
2.. Central institutions must be set up to monitor and enforce
monetary, fiscal, and other economic policies, to coordinate
activities of the member states, to implement political and
technical decisions, to control the money aggregates and seigniorage
(i.e., rents accruing due to money printing), to determine the legal
tender and the rules governing the issuance of money.
3.. It is better if a monetary union is preceded by a political
one (consider the examples of the USA, the USSR, the UK, and
Germany).
4.. Wage and price flexibility are sine qua non. Their absence is
a threat to the continued existence of any union. Unilateral
transfers from rich areas to poor are a partial and short-lived
remedy. Transfers also call for a clear and consistent fiscal policy
regarding taxation and expenditures. Problems like unemployment and
collapses in demand often plague rigid monetary unions. The works of
Mundell and McKinnon (optimal currency areas) prove it decisively
(and separately).
5.. Clear convergence criteria and monetary convergence targets.
The current European Monetary Union is far from heeding the lessons
of its ill fated predecessors. Europe's labour and capital markets,
though recently marginally liberalized, are still more rigid than
150 years ago. The euro was not preceded by an "ever closer
(political or constitutional) union". It relies too heavily on
fiscal redistribution without the benefit of either a coherent
monetary or a consistent fiscal area-wide policy. The euro is not
built to cope either with asymmetrical economic shocks (affecting
only some members, but not others), or with the vicissitudes of the
business cycle.
This does not bode well. This union might well become yet another
footnote in the annals of economic history.
==============================================================
AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review,
PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International
(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health
and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and
Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com
Sex or Gender
Sex or Gender
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
In nature, male and female are distinct. She-elephants are
gregarious, he-elephants solitary. Male zebra finches are
loquacious - the females mute. Female green spoon worms are 200,000
times larger than their male mates. These striking differences are
biological - yet they lead to differentiation in social roles and
skill acquisition.
Alan Pease, author of a book titled "Why Men Don't Listen and Women
Can't Read Maps", believes that women are spatially-challenged
compared to men. The British firm, Admiral Insurance, conducted a
study of half a million claims. They found that "women were almost
twice as likely as men to have a collision in a car park, 23 percent
more likely to hit a stationary car, and 15 percent more likely to
reverse into another vehicle" (Reuters).
Yet gender "differences" are often the outcomes of bad scholarship.
Consider Admiral insurance's data. As Britain's Automobile
Association (AA) correctly pointed out - women drivers tend to make
more short journeys around towns and shopping centers and these
involve frequent parking. Hence their ubiquity in certain kinds of
claims. Regarding women's alleged spatial deficiency, in Britain,
girls have been outperforming boys in scholastic aptitude tests -
including geometry and maths - since 1988.
In an Op-Ed published by the New York Times on January 23, 2005,
Olivia Judson cited this example
"Beliefs that men are intrinsically better at this or that have
repeatedly led to discrimination and prejudice, and then they've
been proved to be nonsense. Women were thought not to be world-class
musicians. But when American symphony orchestras introduced blind
auditions in the 1970's - the musician plays behind a screen so that
his or her gender is invisible to those listening - the number of
women offered jobs in professional orchestras increased. Similarly,
in science, studies of the ways that grant applications are
evaluated have shown that women are more likely to get financing
when those reading the applications do not know the sex of the
applicant."
On the other wing of the divide, Anthony Clare, a British
psychiatrist and author of "On Men" wrote:
"At the beginning of the 21st century it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that men are in serious trouble. Throughout the world,
developed and developing, antisocial behavior is essentially male.
Violence, sexual abuse of children, illicit drug use, alcohol
misuse, gambling, all are overwhelmingly male activities. The courts
and prisons bulge with men. When it comes to aggression, delinquent
behavior, risk taking and social mayhem, men win gold."
Men also mature later, die earlier, are more susceptible to
infections and most types of cancer, are more likely to be dyslexic,
to suffer from a host of mental health disorders, such as Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and to commit suicide.
In her book, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man", Susan
Faludi describes a crisis of masculinity following the breakdown of
manhood models and work and family structures in the last five
decades. In the film "Boys don't Cry", a teenage girl binds her
breasts and acts the male in a caricatural relish of stereotypes of
virility. Being a man is merely a state of mind, the movie implies.
But what does it really mean to be a "male" or a "female"? Are
gender identity and sexual preferences genetically determined? Can
they be reduced to one's sex? Or are they amalgams of biological,
social, and psychological factors in constant interaction? Are they
immutable lifelong features or dynamically evolving frames of self-
reference?
In the aforementioned New York Times Op-Ed, Olivia Judson opines:
"Many sex differences are not, therefore, the result of his having
one gene while she has another. Rather, they are attributable to the
way particular genes behave when they find themselves in him instead
of her. The magnificent difference between male and female green
spoon worms, for example, has nothing to do with their having
different genes: each green spoon worm larva could go either way.
Which sex it becomes depends on whether it meets a female during its
first three weeks of life. If it meets a female, it becomes male and
prepares to regurgitate; if it doesn't, it becomes female and
settles into a crack on the sea floor."
Yet, certain traits attributed to one's sex are surely better
accounted for by the demands of one's environment, by cultural
factors, the process of socialization, gender roles, and what George
Devereux called "ethnopsychiatry" in "Basic Problems of
Ethnopsychiatry" (University of Chicago Press, 1980). He suggested
to divide the unconscious into the id (the part that was always
instinctual and unconscious) and the "ethnic unconscious" (repressed
material that was once conscious). The latter is mostly molded by
prevailing cultural mores and includes all our defense mechanisms
and most of the superego.
So, how can we tell whether our sexual role is mostly in our blood
or in our brains?
The scrutiny of borderline cases of human sexuality - notably the
transgendered or intersexed - can yield clues as to the distribution
and relative weights of biological, social, and psychological
determinants of gender identity formation.
The results of a study conducted by Uwe Hartmann, Hinnerk Becker,
and Claudia Rueffer-Hesse in 1997 and titled "Self and Gender:
Narcissistic Pathology and Personality Factors in Gender Dysphoric
Patients", published in the "International Journal of
Transgenderism", "indicate significant psychopathological aspects
and narcissistic dysregulation in a substantial proportion of
patients." Are these "psychopathological aspects" merely reactions
to underlying physiological realities and changes? Could social
ostracism and labeling have induced them in the "patients"?
The authors conclude:
"The cumulative evidence of our study ... is consistent with the
view that gender dysphoria is a disorder of the sense of self as has
been proposed by Beitel (1985) or Pfäfflin (1993). The central
problem in our patients is about identity and the self in general
and the transsexual wish seems to be an attempt at reassuring and
stabilizing the self-coherence which in turn can lead to a further
destabilization if the self is already too fragile. In this view the
body is instrumentalized to create a sense of identity and the
splitting symbolized in the hiatus between the rejected body-self
and other parts of the self is more between good and bad objects
than between masculine and feminine."
Freud, Kraft-Ebbing, and Fliess suggested that we are all bisexual
to a certain degree. As early as 1910, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld argued,
in Berlin, that absolute genders are "abstractions, invented
extremes". The consensus today is that one's sexuality is, mostly, a
psychological construct which reflects gender role orientation.
Joanne Meyerowitz, a professor of history at Indiana University and
the editor of The Journal of American History observes, in her
recently published tome, "How Sex Changed: A History of
Transsexuality in the United States", that the very meaning of
masculinity and femininity is in constant flux.
Transgender activists, says Meyerowitz, insist that gender and
sexuality represent "distinct analytical categories". The New York
Times wrote in its review of the book: "Some male-to-female
transsexuals have sex with men and call themselves homosexuals. Some
female-to-male transsexuals have sex with women and call themselves
lesbians. Some transsexuals call themselves asexual."
So, it is all in the mind, you see.
This would be taking it too far. A large body of scientific evidence
points to the genetic and biological underpinnings of sexual
behavior and preferences.
The German science magazine, "Geo", reported recently that the males
of the fruit fly "drosophila melanogaster" switched from
heterosexuality to homosexuality as the temperature in the lab was
increased from 19 to 30 degrees Celsius. They reverted to chasing
females as it was lowered.
The brain structures of homosexual sheep are different to those of
straight sheep, a study conducted recently by the Oregon Health &
Science University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Sheep
Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, revealed. Similar differences
were found between gay men and straight ones in 1995 in Holland and
elsewhere. The preoptic area of the hypothalamus was larger in
heterosexual men than in both homosexual men and straight women.
According an article, titled "When Sexual Development Goes Awry", by
Suzanne Miller, published in the September 2000 issue of the "World
and I", various medical conditions give rise to sexual ambiguity.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), involving excessive androgen
production by the adrenal cortex, results in mixed genitalia. A
person with the complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) has a
vagina, external female genitalia and functioning, androgen-
producing, testes - but no uterus or fallopian tubes.
People with the rare 5-alpha reductase deficiency syndrome are born
with ambiguous genitalia. They appear at first to be girls. At
puberty, such a person develops testicles and his clitoris swells
and becomes a penis. Hermaphrodites possess both ovaries and
testicles (both, in most cases, rather undeveloped). Sometimes the
ovaries and testicles are combined into a chimera called ovotestis.
Most of these individuals have the chromosomal composition of a
woman together with traces of the Y, male, chromosome. All
hermaphrodites have a sizable penis, though rarely generate sperm.
Some hermaphrodites develop breasts during puberty and menstruate.
Very few even get pregnant and give birth.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, a developmental geneticist, professor of
medical science at Brown University, and author of "Sexing the
Body", postulated, in 1993, a continuum of 5 sexes to supplant the
current dimorphism: males, merms (male pseudohermaphrodites), herms
(true hermaphrodites), ferms (female pseudohermaphrodites), and
females.
Intersexuality (hermpahroditism) is a natural human state. We are
all conceived with the potential to develop into either sex. The
embryonic developmental default is female. A series of triggers
during the first weeks of pregnancy places the fetus on the path to
maleness.
In rare cases, some women have a male's genetic makeup (XY
chromosomes) and vice versa. But, in the vast majority of cases, one
of the sexes is clearly selected. Relics of the stifled sex remain,
though. Women have the clitoris as a kind of symbolic penis. Men
have breasts (mammary glands) and nipples.
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition describes the formation of
ovaries and testes thus:
"In the young embryo a pair of gonads develop that are indifferent
or neutral, showing no indication whether they are destined to
develop into testes or ovaries. There are also two different duct
systems, one of which can develop into the female system of oviducts
and related apparatus and the other into the male sperm duct system.
As development of the embryo proceeds, either the male or the female
reproductive tissue differentiates in the originally neutral gonad
of the mammal."
Yet, sexual preferences, genitalia and even secondary sex
characteristics, such as facial and pubic hair are first order
phenomena. Can genetics and biology account for male and female
behavior patterns and social interactions ("gender identity")? Can
the multi-tiered complexity and richness of human masculinity and
femininity arise from simpler, deterministic, building blocks?
Sociobiologists would have us think so.
For instance: the fact that we are mammals is astonishingly often
overlooked. Most mammalian families are composed of mother and
offspring. Males are peripatetic absentees. Arguably, high rates of
divorce and birth out of wedlock coupled with rising promiscuity
merely reinstate this natural "default mode", observes Lionel Tiger,
a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
That three quarters of all divorces are initiated by women tends to
support this view.
Furthermore, gender identity is determined during gestation, claim
some scholars.
Milton Diamond of the University of Hawaii and Dr. Keith Sigmundson,
a practicing psychiatrist, studied the much-celebrated John/Joan
case. An accidentally castrated normal male was surgically modified
to look female, and raised as a girl but to no avail. He reverted to
being a male at puberty.
His gender identity seems to have been inborn (assuming he was not
subjected to conflicting cues from his human environment). The case
is extensively described in John Colapinto's tome "As Nature Made
Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl".
HealthScoutNews cited a study published in the November 2002 issue
of "Child Development". The researchers, from City University of
London, found that the level of maternal testosterone during
pregnancy affects the behavior of neonatal girls and renders it more
masculine. "High testosterone" girls "enjoy activities typically
considered male behavior, like playing with trucks or guns". Boys'
behavior remains unaltered, according to the study.
Yet, other scholars, like John Money, insist that newborns are
a "blank slate" as far as their gender identity is concerned. This
is also the prevailing view. Gender and sex-role identities, we are
taught, are fully formed in a process of socialization which ends by
the third year of life. The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition
sums it up thus:
"Like an individual's concept of his or her sex role, gender
identity develops by means of parental example, social
reinforcement, and language. Parents teach sex-appropriate behavior
to their children from an early age, and this behavior is reinforced
as the child grows older and enters a wider social world. As the
child acquires language, he also learns very early the distinction
between "he" and "she" and understands which pertains to him- or
herself."
So, which is it - nature or nurture? There is no disputing the fact
that our sexual physiology and, in all probability, our sexual
preferences are determined in the womb. Men and women are different -
physiologically and, as a result, also psychologically.
Society, through its agents - foremost amongst which are family,
peers, and teachers - represses or encourages these genetic
propensities. It does so by propagating "gender roles" - gender-
specific lists of alleged traits, permissible behavior patterns, and
prescriptive morals and norms. Our "gender identity" or "sex role"
is shorthand for the way we make use of our natural genotypic-
phenotypic endowments in conformity with social-cultural "gender
roles".
Inevitably as the composition and bias of these lists change, so
does the meaning of being "male" or "female". Gender roles are
constantly redefined by tectonic shifts in the definition and
functioning of basic social units, such as the nuclear family and
the workplace. The cross-fertilization of gender-related cultural
memes renders "masculinity" and "femininity" fluid concepts.
One's sex equals one's bodily equipment, an objective, finite, and,
usually, immutable inventory. But our endowments can be put to many
uses, in different cognitive and affective contexts, and subject to
varying exegetic frameworks. As opposed to "sex" - "gender" is,
therefore, a socio-cultural narrative. Both heterosexual and
homosexual men ejaculate. Both straight and lesbian women climax.
What distinguishes them from each other are subjective introjects of
socio-cultural conventions, not objective, immutable "facts".
In "The New Gender Wars", published in the November/December 2000
issue of "Psychology Today", Sarah Blustain sums up the "bio-social"
model proposed by Mice Eagly, a professor of psychology at
Northwestern University and a former student of his, Wendy Wood, now
a professor at the Texas A&M University:
"Like (the evolutionary psychologists), Eagly and Wood reject social
constructionist notions that all gender differences are created by
culture. But to the question of where they come from, they answer
differently: not our genes but our roles in society. This narrative
focuses on how societies respond to the basic biological
differences - men's strength and women's reproductive capabilities -
and how they encourage men and women to follow certain patterns.
'If you're spending a lot of time nursing your kid', explains
Wood, 'then you don't have the opportunity to devote large amounts
of time to developing specialized skills and engaging tasks outside
of the home'. And, adds Eagly, 'if women are charged with caring for
infants, what happens is that women are more nurturing. Societies
have to make the adult system work [so] socialization of girls is
arranged to give them experience in nurturing'.
According to this interpretation, as the environment changes, so
will the range and texture of gender differences. At a time in
Western countries when female reproduction is extremely low, nursing
is totally optional, childcare alternatives are many, and
mechanization lessens the importance of male size and strength,
women are no longer restricted as much by their smaller size and by
child-bearing. That means, argue Eagly and Wood, that role
structures for men and women will change and, not surprisingly, the
way we socialize people in these new roles will change too. (Indeed,
says Wood, 'sex differences seem to be reduced in societies where
men and women have similar status,' she says. If you're looking to
live in more gender-neutral environment, try Scandinavia.)"
==============================================================
AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review,
PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International
(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health
and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and
Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com
How Much Cash Does James Bond Carry?
How Much Cash Does James Bond Carry?
Copyright © 2004-2005 Paul Kyriazi
Author of "Live the James Bond Lifestyle"
http://www.bondlife.com/
First let's start with how much cash Americans carry.
Under $ 20 ....... 32%
$ 21--$ 50 ....... 43%
$ 51--$100 ....... 18%
$101--$500 ....... 6%
$501--$999 ....... .6%
$1,000+ .......... .5%
So, if you want to be in the rare 6%, just carry over a hundred
bucks in your money clip and wallet. But that's not even enough
to take care of a sudden overnight trip.
"My name is Bond, James Bond. If you'll wait for me to find an
ATM machine, I'll take you to dinner." Sound strange? That's
right. Bond would have the cash and credit cards in his wallet
to do whatever he needed to do. But some places don't take
credit cards, or the right ones.
And what about emergency's? Such as your car breaking down on a
trip. You don't want to have your family sitting in the car at
midnight on a lonely road.
Many will say that they are worried about being robbed, so they
don't carry much cash. But anyone that's been robbed will tell
you that he was glad to give something to the robber. Robbers
have said that they work up so much energy before they mug
someone, that if the person has nothing to give them, they get
very angry and violent.
On the lighter side, Wayne Newton told the story about a date
he was on at Denny's in New York and he didn't have enough cash
to pay the bill. So he kept telling the girl to order more and
secretly called his brother to bring him some cash. It took an
hour because it turned out that there were four Denny's on that
corner, all with three floors. Wayne's brother had to search
every one of them. So Wayne had to really sweat it out until
his brother arrived with the face saving cash. This sound funny,
but not when you're in that situation yourself.
So now, How much cash does Bond carry? Enough to get any sudden
job or entertainment done without checking to see if the place
he's going to takes credit cards.
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Paul Kyriazi - Live the James Bond Lifestyle
http://www.BondLife.com
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