the Female Body GOVERNING

288
ingrid holme
no evolutionary reason to expect differential expression of paternally
and maternally inherited genes that affect the fi tness of grand-offspring
through maternal care behavior.” The article concludes by pointing out
that other issues must be drawn on to explain imprinting of genes that
infl uence maternal care (p. 1167a).
The fi ndings of both these imprinting examples related to the size
of the offspring and the idea of nurturing having a genetic “cause,” and
are clearly politically and emotionally powerful. The genetic confl ict
theory views the “genetic battle” in terms of having evolved to control
sex-specifi c gene expression in early embryos, and some researchers have
expanded its impact to later developmental stages where the offspring
is still reliant on parental protection.
What the story about imprinting tells us is how new biological knowledge
easily gets interpreted in terms of old social tropes, such as the
“battle between the sexes.” The idea that paternal imprinting aims to
render the fetus large or female fetuses nurturing is culturally appealing
because it conforms to a cultural idea of “what men want” as well as
the populist idea of genetics and evolution in terms of “selfi sh” genes
propagated by Richard Dawkins (2006). However, imprinting can also
be seen as a molecular process that enables diploid cells to express
only one copy of a gene, where the expression of both copies would
have resulted in overabundance of the gene product. This indicates a
mutually benefi cial outcome for both paternal and maternal points of
view. Furthermore, what is interesting about imprinting is that it, again,
highlights that DNA sequences tell us only part of the story because cells
do not use all their genes all the time and that the way they use their
genes varies among tissues and during the organism’s life cycle. Thus,
the truly novel idea of viewing the meaning and role of genes not as
part of a stand-alone blueprint, but as pieces of the genetic and cellular
processes, becomes lost in the rather stale stories about sex wars and
weaponry.
From Genetic Sex to Living Sex
In the end, new genomic knowledge that might challenge old notions of
sex determination is seemingly interpreted within old social discourses
underpinned by the binary sex model. Perhaps new metaphors are
required to replace the existing ones, such as “switching on and off” and
“silencing” or “battle between the sexes.” Porta (2003) has suggested
that rather than describe DNA in terms of blueprint we should think
of it as a “jazz score,” which rather than determine performance leaves