According to the United State Census Bureau, Census 2000 enumerated 143,368,343 female Americans-50.9 percent of the U.S. population.

(Source: Table DP-1, "Profiles of General Demographic Characteristics: 2000," The United States Census Bureau, May 2001, www.census.gov.)

"The United States is a country that cherishes religious tolerance, political democracy and equality between men and women."

(Source: John Ashcroft, in David Johnston, "Lindh Coerced After Capture, Lawyers Assert, The New York Times, 6 February 2002.)

Some of the ideologues now trying to engineer a gender-neutral future for America may find themselves running up against the ineluctable constraints of biology.  To understand the biological constraints on gender roles, sociologist J. Richard Udry recently probed the effects of hormones on male and female behavior.  His findings-published in the American Sociological Review--illumine the ways in which "sex differences in hormone experience from gestation to adulthood shape gendered behavior."  

Since Udry's data show that "prenatal hormone experience continues to influence the trajectories of . . . gendered behavior during adulthood," it seems impossible to accept the view (promulgated by some feminists) that gender roles reflect merely social conditioning.   Rather, it would appear that "gendered social structure is a universal accommodation to this biological fact." And although Udry professes himself neutral as to "whether it is morally good to reduce sex differences," he sees clear evidence that such reduction can come only one way.  Since their hormones make men "highly immunized against feminine socialization," reducing sex differences almost inevitably means "changing female behavior to more closely coincide with the present behavior of males."  However, Udry warns that if any societies "depart too far from the underlying sex-dimorphism of biological predispositions, they will generate social malaise and social pressures to drift back toward closer alignment with biology.  A social engineering program to degender society would require a Maoist approach: continuous renewal of revolutionary resolve and a tolerance for conflict."

It speaks volumes about the current tenor of American intellectual life that Udry's article provoked not one, not two, but three hostile critiques from furious feminists.  These irate critics poured scorn on the notion that biology places limits on gender-role engineering and impugned the judgment of the editors of the American Sociological Review for allowing Udry to publish such a claim in their pages.    It would appear that a Maoist crusade is already well under way to suppress all views not in harmony with the orthodoxy of complete gender plasticity.

(Source:  J. Richard Udry, "Biological Limits of Gender Construction," American Sociological Review 65[2000]: 443-457;  see also Eleanor M. Miller et al., "Comments and Replies," American Sociological Review 66[2001]: 592-623.)