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 memoirs, nor even in a gynæcological 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 we 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 of 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 woman, 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 kingdoms, 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 the male is 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 to-day. 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 the things for 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 in
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.
When in the second chapter of Part I., I explained that sexuality is
distributed over the whole body in 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, and I must take a long _détour_
to consider it.