| Male and Female Sexuality key points. |
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Male and Female Sexuality key points:
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.
- "....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.
"sexuality is distributed over the whole body of both sexes,"
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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