Male and Female Sexuality key points:
Woman is only sexual, man is partly sexual, and this difference reveals
itself
in various ways. The parts of the male body by stimulation of which
sexuality
is excited are limited in area, and are strongly localised, whilst in the case
of the woman, they are diffused over her whole body, so that stimulation
may
take place almost from any part. When in the second chapter of Part I., I
explained that sexuality is distributed over the whole body of both sexes, I
did not mean that, therefore, the sense organs, through which the definite
impulses are stimulated, were equally distributed. There are, certainly,
areas
of greater excitability, even in the case of the woman, but there is not, as
in the man, a sharp division between the sexual areas and the body
generally.
The morphological isolation of the sexual area from the rest of the body in
the case of man, may be taken as symbolical of the relation of sex to his
whole nature. Just as there is a contrast between the sexual and the
sexless
parts of a man's body, so there is a time-change in his sexuality. The
female
is always sexual, the male is sexual only intermittently. The sexual instinct
is always active in woman (as to the apparent exceptions to this sexuality of
women, I shall have to speak later on), whilst in man it is at rest from time
to time. And thus it happens that the sexual impulse of the male is eruptive
in character and so appears stronger. The real difference between the
sexes is
that in the male the desire is periodical, in the female continuous.
This exclusive and persisting sexuality of the female has important physical
and psychical consequences. As the sexuality of the male is an adjunct to
his
life, it is possible for him to keep it in the physiological background, and
out of his consciousness. And so a man can lay aside his sexuality and not
have to reckon with it. A woman has not her sexuality limited to periods of
time, nor to localised organs. And so it happens that a man can know
about his
sexuality, whilst a woman is unconscious of it and can in all good faith deny
it, because she is nothing but sexuality, because she is sexuality itself.
It is impossible for women, because they are only sexual to recognise their
sexuality, because recognition of anything requires duality. With man it is
not only that he is not merely sexual, but anatomically and physiologically
he
can "detach" himself from it. That is why he has the power to enter into
whatever sexual relations he desires; if he likes he can limit or increase
such relations; he can refuse or assent to them. He can play the part of a
Don
Juan or a monk. He can assume which he will. To put it bluntly, man
possesses
sexual organs; her sexual organs possess woman.
We may, therefore, deduce from the previous arguments that man has the
power
of consciousness of his sexuality and so can act against it, whilst the
woman
appears to be without this power. This implies, moreover, that there is
greater differentiation in man, as in him the sexual and the unsexual parts
of
his nature are sharply separated. The possibility or impossibility of being
aware of a particular definite object is, however, hardly a part of the
customary meaning of the word consciousness, which is generally used as
implying that if a being is conscious he can be conscious of any object.
This
brings me to consider the nature of the female consciousness.
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