Male and Female Sexuality
"Woman does not betray her secret."
Kant
"From a woman you can learn nothing of women."
Nietzsche.
By psychology, as a whole, we generally understand the psychology of the
psychologists, and these are exclusively men! Never since human history began
have we heard of a female psychology! None the less the psychology of woman
constitutes a chapter as important with regard to general psychology as that
of the child. And inasmuch as the psychology of man has always been written
with unconscious but definite reference to man, general psychology has become
simply the psychology of men, and the problem of the psychology of the sexes
will be raised as soon as the existence of a separate psychology of women has
been realised. Kant said that in anthropology the peculiarities of the female
were more a study for the philosopher than those of the male, and it may be
that the psychology of the sexes will disappear in a psychology of the female.
None the less the psychology of women will have to be written by men. It is
easy to suggest that such an attempt is foredoomed to failure, inasmuch as the
conclusions must be drawn from an alien sex and cannot be verified by
introspection. Granted the possibility that woman could describe herself with
sufficient exactness, it by no means follows that she would be interested in
the sides of her character that would interest us. Moreover, even if she could
and would explore herself fully, it is doubtful if she could bring herself to
talk about herself. I shall show that these three improbabilities spring from
the same source in the nature of woman.
This investigation, therefore, lays itself open to the charge that no one who
is not female can be in a position to make accurate statements about women. In
the meantime the objection must stand, although, later, I shall have more to
say of it. I will say only this much - up to now, and is this only a
consequence of man's suppression? - we have no account from a pregnant woman
of her sensations and feelings, neither in poetry nor in memories, nor even in
a gyneacological treatise. This cannot be on account of excessive modesty,
for, as Schopenhauer rightly pointed out, there is nothing so far removed from
a pregnant woman as shame as to her condition. Besides, there would still
remain to them the possibility of, after the birth, confessing from memory the
psychical life during the time; if a sense of shame had prevented them from
such communication during the time, it would be gone afterwards, and the
varied interests of such a disclosure ought to have induced some one to break
silence. But this has not been done. Just as we have always been indebted to
men for really trustworthy expositions of the psychical side of women, so also
it is to men that we owe descriptions of the sensations of pregnant women.
What is the meaning of this?
Although in recent times we have had revelations of the psychical life of
half-women and three-quarter women, it is practically only about the male side
of them that they have written. We have really only one clue; we have to rely
upon the female element in men. The principle of sexually intermediate forms
is the authority for what wek know about women through men. I shall define and
complete the application of this principle later on. In its indefinite form,
the principle would seem to imply that the most womanish man would be best
able to describe woman, and that the description might be completed by the
real woman. This, however, is extremely doubtful. I must point out that a man
can have a considerable proportion of femaleness in him without necessarily,
to the same extent, being able to portray intermediate forms. It is the more
remarkable that the male can give a faithful account of the nature of the
female; since, indeed, it must be admitted from the extreme maleness of
successful portrayers of women that we cannot dispute the existence of this
capacity in the abstract male; this power of the male over the female is a
most remarkable problem, and we shall have to consider it later. For the
present we must take it as a fact, and proceed to inquire in what lies the
actual psychological difference between male and female.
It has been sought to attribute the fundamental difference of the sexes to the
existence of a stronger sexual impulse in man, and to derive everything else
from that. Apart from the question as to whether the phrase "sexual instinct"
denotes a simple and real thing, it is to be doubted if there is proof of such
a difference. It is not more probable than the ancient theories as to the
influence of the "unsatisfied womb" in the female, or the "semen retentum" in
men, and we have to be on guard against the current tendency to refer nearly
everything to sublimated sexual instinct. No systematic theory could be
founded on a generalisation so vague. It is most improbable that the greater
or lesser strength of the sexual impulse determines other qualities.
As a matter of fact, the statements that men have stronger sexual impulses
than women, or that women have them stronger than men, are false. The strength
of the sexual impulse in a man does not depend upon the proportion of
masculinity in his composition, and in the same way the degree of femininity
of a woman does not determine her sexual impulse. These differences in mankind
still await classification.
Contrary to the general opinion, there is no difference in the total sexual
impulses of the sexes. However, if we examine the matter in respect to the two
component forces into which Albert Moll analysed the impulse, we shall find
that a difference does exist. These forces may be termed the "liberating" and
the "uniting" impulses. The first appears in the form of the discomfort caused
by the accumulation of ripe sexual cells; the second is the desire of the ripe
individual for sexual completion. Both impulses are possessed by the male; in
the female only the latter is present. The anatomy and the physiological
processes of the sexes bear out the distinction.
In this connection it may be noted that only the most male youths are addicted
to masturbation, and although it is often disputed, I believe that similar
vices occur only among the maler of women, and are absent from the female
nature.
I must now discuss the "uniting" impulse of women, for that plays the chief,
if not the sole part in her sexuality. But it must not be supposed that this
is greater in one sex than the other. Any such idea comes from a confusion
between the desire for a thing and the stimulus towards the active part in
securing what is desired. Throughout the animal and plant kingdom, the male
reproductive cells are the motile, active agents, which move through space to
seek out the passive female cells, and this physiological difference is
sometimes confused with the actual wish for, or stimulus to, sexual union. And
to add to the confusion, it happens, in the animal kingdom particularly, that
the male, in addition to the directly sexual stimulus, has the instinct to
pursue and bodily capture the female, whilst the latter has only the passive
part to be taken possession of. These differences of habit must not be
mistaken for real differences of desire.
It can be shown, moreover, that woman is sexually much more excitable (not
more sensitive) physiologically than man.
The condition of sexual excitement is the supreme moment of a woman's life.
The woman is devoted wholly to sexual matters, that is to say, to the spheres
of begetting and of reproduction. Her relations to her husband and children
complete her life, whereas the male is something more than sexual. In this
respect, rather than in the relative strength of the sexual impulses, there is
a real difference between the sexes. It is important to distinguish between
the intensity with which sexual matters are pursued and the proportion of the
total activities of life that are devoted to them and to their accessory
cares. The greater absorption of the human female by the sphere of sexual
activities is the most significant difference between the sexes.
The female, moreover, is completely occupied and content with sexual matters,
whilst men are interested in much else, in war and sport, in social affairs
and feasting, in philosophy and science, in business and politics, in religion
and art. I do not mean to imply that this difference has always existed, as I
do not think that important. As in the case of the Jewish question, it may be
said that the Jews have their present character because it has been forced
upon them, and that at one time they were different. It is now impossible to
prove this, and we may leave it to those who believe in the modification by
the environment to accept it. The historical evidence is equivocal on the
point. In the question of women, we have to take people as they exist today.
If, however, we happen to come on attributes that could not possibly have been
grafted on them from without, we may believe that such have always been with
them. Of contemporary women at least one thing is certain. Apart from an
exception to be noted in chap. xii, it is certain that when the female
occupies herself with matters outside the interests of sex, it is for the man
that she loves or by whom she wishes to be loved. She takes no real interest
in things themselves. It may happen that a real female learns Latin; if so, it
is for some such purpose as to help her son who is at school. Desire for a
subject and ability for it, interest in it, and the facility for acquiring it,
are usually proportional. He who has slight muscles has no desire to wield an
axe; those without the faculty for mathematics do not desire to study that
subject. Talent seems to be rare and feeble in the real female (although
possibly it is merely that the dominant sexuality prevents its development),
with the result that woman has no power of forming the combinations which,
although they do not actually make the individuality, certainly shape it.
Corresponding to true women, there are extremely female men who are to be
found always in the apartments of the women, and who are interested in nothing
but love and sexual matters. Such men, however, are not the Don Juans.
The female principle is, then, nothing more than sexuality; the male principle
is sexual and something more. This difference is notable in the different way
in which men and women enter the period of puberty. In the case of the male
the onset of puberty is a crisis; he feels that something new and strange has
come into his being, that something has been added to his powers and feelings
independently of his will. The physiological stimulus to sexual activity
appears to come from outside his being, to be independent of his will, and
many men remember the disturbing event throughout their after lives. The
woman, on the other hand, not only is not disturbed by the onset of puberty,
but feels that her importance has been increased by it. The male, as a youth,
has no longing for the onset of sexual maturity; the female, from the time
when she is still quite a young girl, looks forward to that time as one from
which everything is to be expected. Man's arrival at maturity is frequently
accompanied by feelings of repulsion and disgust; the young female watches the
development of her body at the approach of puberty with excitement and
impatient delight. It seems as if the onset of puberty were a side path in the
normal development of man, whereas in the case of woman it is the direct
conclusion. There are few boys approaching puberty to whom the idea that they
would marry (in the general sense, not a particular girl) would not appear
ridiculous, whilst the smallest girl is almost invariably excited and
interested in the question of her future marriage. For such reasons a woman
assigns positive value only to her period of maturity in her own case and that
of other women; in childhood, as in old age, she has no real relation to the
world. The thought of her childhood is for her, later on, only the remembrance
of her stupidity; she faces the approach of old age with dislike and
abhorrence. The only real memories of her childhood are connected with sex,
and these fade away in the intensely greater significance of her maturity. The
passage of a woman from virginity is the great dividing point of her life,
whilst the corresponding event in the case of a male has very little relation
to the course of his life.
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