Some thoughts on sex

I loved you, just not enough to find out what sex you were. How many of us find ourselves saying that, after enjoying a relationship? You are not alone.

I said “sex” and not “gender”. I’m talking about moments like these:
Standing in front of the ante-natal ward that used to be your hamster cage, astounded that Spike turned out to be concealing feminine curves beneath his crusty exterior.
Taking your beloved cat Clooney or Rooney to the vet for deworming after a few years, and discovering she is more Brangelina than Brad.
Finding out that those are not tumours on your ladydog’s underside, but testes.
Staring hopefully at the nether regions of a goldfish or snake or rat or Madagascan Hissing Cockroach, and not being able to discern anything even vaguely resembling your concept of a penis, and thinking, what the heck, I’ll decide what it is based on its’ character traits.

Sometimes you only find out after your pet has passed away, maybe as you took him to the vet to aid his departure, and the vet says “She was old, and terribly ill”. That doesn’t help the grieving process.

Perhaps that’s why teenagers like to make sure that they really, really are what they’ve been told they are, often several times a day. In a world of uncertainty, it’s good to have a sense of what gender you are, so then you can fret about how you are supposed to deal with the other gender, and feel insecure when comparing yourself to others of the same gender.

But don’t feel bad about the end of a relationship- A single-celled organism begins every relationship by splitting up. The glorious amoeba- for whom life is a cycle of singlehood and splitting. Bet an Amoeba Agony Aunt is kept busy. No comment here about till death I do part…

Do hermaphroditic creatures struggle with sexual identity? If they upset each other in bars, does it still have the same impact when they snarl “Go fork yourself”?

These are important questions to wrestle with from day to day. You need to be prepared to answer things like this at any time: If you closed the cloaca of a newt, would it be neutered? And, Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (The answer to which, as we all know, is too much champagne and the romance of the full moon).