ABSTRACT
Upon the ground of species unity, this chapter shows that the sexes play in a living dialectic. It describes sex as a process visible in the battle between the sexes and in mating games within the sexes. The chapter explores how sex plays to define the human social order. Family is the element of social order that most directly reconciles the division of the species into male and female to solve reproductive problems of attraction, transportation, selection, and support. The primary social order is a mammalian trait built into a body plan of reproductively central females and reproductively aspiring males. The secondary social order is a human trait tied to a suite of hominid adaptations to savannah life, including upright posture, a larger brain, an articulated vocal tract, cryptic ovulation and continuous sexuality. The tertiary social order builds upon the older primary and secondary social orders, typically to preserve and reinforce these orders.
