THE MECHANICS OF THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE
It needs a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it puzzled
the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a source of deepest
excitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarre
customs, astounding cruelties and incomprehensible stupidities of
the race. Men and women, as soon as they have done with their usual
business of keeping themselves free of disagreeable sensations,
hunger, cold, fear of enemies, betake themselves to it as a primary
interest all over the world. The most advanced psychologists of the
day link the sex impulse with the windings and twistings of all human
activity.
Yet the Homer of sex through the ages is still to come. But at all
times the mystery evoked speculation and attempt at explanation.
Acting upon their theories as to the nature and function of sex, men
have, ever since the passing of the primeval matriarchates, segregated
women, equalized them, worshipped them, or enslaved them. Opinions
have varied from ancient national aphorisms to the effect that
women have no souls to the most ultramodern utterances of
biologist-publicists that the differences between men and women are
the differences between two species. There are other epigrams, vast
sweeping generalities, extant concerning the nature of sex, and women
particularly. All partake of the complexity of truth and therefore own
a certain validity. Still, since as a matter of fact, these items have
been based upon superficial observations colored by the tradition and
verbiage of the milieu, they are valuable more as human documents, as
material for the psychologist, than as scientifically obtained data,
able to stand unblinking before the rays of the critical searchlights.
SCIENCE VS. ART
Not that all the vast accumulation needs to be thrown pell-mell,
higgledy-piggledy into the discard. The love lyrics of the poet, the
magic of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with their
marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with
important information. They are the facts of the sex life, as much as
the song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoo
pursued by its mate. So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take only
two samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction. The
erotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive in
life, with all of its vagaries, delusions, confusions, ecstasies and
suffering.
We have had concerning sex not knowledge, but a series of attitudes,
the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude of
good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude of
the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not
an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex,
biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that
immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate we
should undoubtedly hear of the Eternal Masculine. Each leaves one as
unenlightened as the other. A rough and ready code of life attributes
certain grossly characteristic qualities of mind and body to each
sex. This is supposed to be enough for common sense. Beyond that the
mystery has been wrapped in cotton wool. That perhaps explains the
enormous popularity of contemporary pornographic and so-called sex
literature.
There are bound up with sex feeling and sex knowledge many customs,
beliefs and habits, many legal statutes and social institutions, in
the complex that is called sentiment, to which science looms as the
sacrilegious ogre who devours romance. Without spending space upon the
ravages of the sentimental idealist, certainly responsible for as much
human disaster as the brutal realist, it is manifest that a revolution
in sex standards and relations is inevitable as soon as the new
doctrines filter down as matters of fact to the levels of the common
intelligence. And surely, nothing else could be wished for in the
world desired by all of us, the world ruled by intelligence, and
intelligent good will.
SEX CHEMISTRY
A few general statements may be put down outright as material to go
upon before we proceed to details.
1. Femininity and masculinity have a definite chemical basis in the
reactions of the internal secretions of which they are the expression.
That is to say, that just as a precipitate of chalk is formed when one
throws some carbonate of soda into lime water, so the masculine
and the feminine are to be looked upon as precipitates and
crystallizations of a long series of linked chemical reactions in
the fluids of the body, in which the internal secretions play a
determining part.
2. Femininity and masculinity are expressions of the interplay of all
the internal secretions. It used to be said by smart cats and accepted
by the tabby cats, that a woman was a woman because of her ovaries
alone. It is being said by some great discoverers of the day that man
is a man because of his testes alone. Neither of these dogmas is true.
There are individuals with ovaries who show every deviation from the
feminine and there are individuals with testes who exhibit every
variation from the masculine. The other endocrine glands are of equal
importance.
3. There is no absolute masculine or absolute feminine. The ideals
of the Manly Man and the Womanly Woman were erected by the blind
ignorance of the nineteenth century illusionists, and a line drawn to
cleave them. But indeed biologically there exists every transition
between the masculine and the feminine. The explanation of these
different sex types consists in the different admixtures of the
internal secretions possible and actual. When we speak of the feminine
we really mean the predominantly feminine. And when we speak of
the masculine, we mean the mainly masculine. Between, all sorts of
transitions are possible and occur.
Man in relation to the internal secretions we have considered in
reviewing the interstitial cells. To him, we shall return later. Let
us turn now to that fascinating subject of the ages, Woman. What
produces and maintains the Feminine?
THE CAUSE OF SEX
To all appearances, that inscrutable simplest of living things, the
fertilized ovum, beginning of the human, starts bisexual, double
sexed, both masculine and feminine, or perhaps neither masculine nor
feminine. Then a form develops. Then within that form a patch of cells
arise which the microscopist recognizes as the forerunners of the male
or the female reproductive cells. Then some more development. And at
birth, sex is definitely settled, as far as the reproductive organs
are concerned.
Our knowledge here, as everywhere, is still fragmentary. Statistical
reviews seem to show that in times of stress, war, famine, pestilence,
more boys are born than girls. But that is neither here nor there. It
sheds no further light on the subject. Monosexuality is a distinction
of the human species: the sexes are pretty clearly differentiated.
In some animals, such as some worms, there is a bisexuality of the
individual. There are present the reproductive organs of both sexes,
capable of impregnating other individuals as well as of being
impregnated. In some of these, even self-impregnation may occur. This
is the condition of hermaphroditism.
But the higher up one goes in the scale of evolution, the greater
becomes the distinction between the sexes. Anatomic hermaphroditism
becomes a rare anomaly. Life appears to have perfected this trick of
separate sexes, sex specialization, in short, for the sake of the
efficiency which goes with specialization.
When a germ cell divides, its nuclear material breaks up into segments
known as chromosomes. Now it has been found, for example in the case
of the common squash bug, anasa tristis, that there are 22 chromosomes
in the female, and 21 in the male. In the female two of these are
visibly different from the rest, while in the male there is one odd
one, the remaining 20 being like the corresponding 20 of the female.
Before the germ cell becomes fit to mix with a germ cell of opposite
sex, in the process of fertilization, it must lose one half of these.
So the number of chromosomes for the species is kept the same or
constant. This is the process of maturation. In the process, when the
chromosome number is halved among the females, 11 go into each mature
egg. But among the males, the odd chromosome, also known as the
X-chromosome, can perforce go only into half of the sperm cells,
leaving the others without it. So the sperm are formed in equal
numbers of 10 and 11 chromosomes respectively.
When fertilization occurs, and the sperm cell fuses with the egg, the
following may take place: (1) a ten chromosome sperm may unite with
the eleven chromosome egg, and produce a twenty-one chromosome
individual or (2) an eleven chromosome sperm may unite with an eleven
chromosome egg producing a twenty-two chromosome individual. It has
been found that the twenty-two chromosome individual invariably
develops into a female, and the twenty-one into a male. Therefore,
femaleness is a positive quality, dependent upon the action of the
X-chromosome, and maleness an absence of femaleness, due to lack
of the extra, odd chromosome. In man, two X-chromosomes have been
discovered, half the sperm containing 12, and the other half
containing only 10 chromosomes. The number of chromosomes in human
cells consequently is 22 in the male and 24 in the female.
The X-chromosome is the bearer of sex destiny. There still remains the
work to be done on the actual control of sex by man, apart from its
natural determination. For the time being, let the feminists glory in
the fact that they have two more chromosomes to each cell than
their opponents. Certainly there can be no talk here of a natural
inferiority of women.
THE SECONDARY OR ENDOCRINE SEX TRAITS
Yet the matter is after all not so simple as this would make it out
to be. All that can be safely laid down is that the character of the
reproductive organs is determined by the extra chromosomes. And though
these reproductive organs have a good deal to do with the masculine or
feminine quality of the organism as a whole, through their internal
secretions, they are not alone. All the other internal secretions have
their say in the final outcome, determining what may be called the
dominant sex quality, but leaving inherent the latent soil of the
other sex. This may become active and dominant in its turn, under
certain conditions of stimulation, abnormality, or disease, dependent
upon a rearrangement of status and influence among the ductless
glands. Bisexuality preceded monosexuality in the animal pedigree, and
co-exists with it even at the highest points of the genealogical tree.
While from the standpoint of the species, the criterion of the sex
classification of its members will depend upon their capacity to
fertilize or to be fertilized, a quality that may, therefore, be
spoken of as the primary sex character, a number of other traits have
been evolved by sexual selection, the secondary sex traits. They have
come to be just as important, to the individual, as far as his or her
consciousness of sex attitudes and reactions to it are concerned. The
terms primary and secondary sex characteristics, though inapt, must be
allowed to stand.
These accessory sex-serving traits undoubtedly survived because of
their usefulness in external adornment for attracting attention in
courtship, in the metabolic requirements of sex combat and the sex
act, and in the necessities of caring for the young, until well-grown.
The rooster's comb and spurs, the male frog's claspers, the stag's
antlers, and so on, are familiarly and obviously so useful. Besides
there are fundamental differences in inner physiology. The human male
consumes more oxygen than the female per minute, since he has more red
corpuscles in his blood. In some caterpillars the blood is yellow in
the males and green in the females. W.I. Thomas has devoted an essay
of some fifty pages to a review of the organic differences between man
and woman. The ordinary criteria, employed every day by the man in the
street to distinguish man from woman may be arranged as follows:
_Man_ _Woman_
Hair on face Hairless face
Skin coarse and lean Skin fine and plump
Muscles powerful Relatively weak
Bones heavy Bones light
Aggressive--bass voice Reserved--treble voice
THE RÔLE OF THE OVARIES
While the primary sex characters, as such, are present and
distinguishable from birth, quite the opposite holds for the secondary
sex traits. During childhood they are in abeyance or at least pretty
sharply suppressed. Girls and boys who are permitted to dress alike,
to play the same games and among whom no consciousness of sex is
encouraged are often difficult to tell apart. The boys will be boys,
and most of the girls tom-boys.
With puberty comes a marked change of attitude toward the other sex.
Puberty is the time of ripening of the specific germ cells. It is
then the ovaries begin to secrete ova ripe for fertilization, and the
testes begin to secrete sperm ready to fertilize. Before this can
happen an event announced in the female by the onset of menstruation,
two conditions must be fulfilled in the endocrine history of the
individual. There must be a certain atrophy and retrogression of
the thymus gland, and there must likewise be a similar atrophy and
retirement of the pineal gland. Both of these involutions of the
glands of childhood must occur before the normal hypertrophy and
development of the sex glands and their secretions can start. Besides,
there must be a minimum activity of the thyroid, adrenal and pituitary
glands. Without them, below a certain minimum, the reproductive organs
and their secretions will remain infantile, causing a persistent
infantilism or delay of puberty.
Formerly there was ascribed to the ovaries, in a lump and without
qualification, an absolute despotism over the specifically feminine
functions of menstruation, gestation, parturition, and lactation.
Nowadays, we see its domain as a limited monarchy, if not indeed as
one sovereign state of a republic, a member equal but not superior to
the others of a board of directors. Its true business comes down to
two particular rôles: first, the production of ova, and, second, the
secretion of a hormone or hormones. Over the other functions once
supposed its monopoly, all the ductless glands rule.
What concerns us now is its internal secretion or secretions. One of
them is known as lutein and it has never been chemically isolated
in its pure form. The existence of lutein, like the existence of
electricity, is an inference, something we are sure is there because
of its effects. It originates in a remarkable part of the ovary, the
corpus luteum. Besides, there are the products of the interstitial
cells, the creations of a special layer of cells around the ovum, the
membrana granulosa. They produce a substance tonic to the uterus.
When the ovaries are removed, there occurs an atrophy of the womb
muscle, due to loss of this tonic substance. This atrophy, accompanied
by an abolition of the normal periodic uterine contraction, makes
conditions unfavorable to pregnancy. It has been claimed that the
secretion of the corpus luteum is necessary for the complete progress
of a pregnancy. Cases are on record, however, of ovaries taken out
soon after the onset of pregnancy, without interference with the
gestation.
Castration is comparable in every way with the menopause or the
time of cessation of sexual life, a process that might be called
self-castration. It produces certain general constitutional effects.
Adiposity often develops, undoubtedly associated with underfunction of
the thyroid and pituitary glands. The woman breathes less oxygen per
minute and burns up less food and tissue. There is some disturbance
of the lime balance with an increased excitability of the vegetative
nervous system. Concomitant is the release of some brake upon the
blood pressure mechanisms, so that a family tendency to high blood
pressure will flare up. Some women are rendered unstable by the
process, others are completely transformed, and still others adapt
themselves, with little or no discomfort, to the new situation. The
response to the revolution in the cell-republic of the castrate by
the other endocrines, the thyroid, the pituitary, and the adrenals,
determines which it is to be.
For normally, with feminine puberty, there is an increased activity of
the thyroid, the posterior pituitary and the adrenal medulla. These
changes indeed constitute the formula of normal feminization. In the
male, the ripening of the testes is accompanied or perhaps preceded by
augmented function of the adrenal cortex and the anterior pituitary.
This difference in biochemistry accounts for the contrast between the
sexes in the skin, hair, fat, cartilage (voice) and bone changes.
Ovary and adrenal medulla and posterior pituitary and thyroid
predominance constitute the feminine formula. Testis and adrenal
cortex and anterior pituitary predominance comprise the masculine
endocrine directorate.
THE REACTIONS OF THE OTHER GLANDS
As in so many other aspects, the facts about the various influences
exerted by the endocrine glands upon the reproductive system are
complicated and disjointed. A chink of light has been let in upon a
dark cave, and slowly the chink will widen. But the gross effects are
clear.
Around the ovary and the uterus, the endocrines gyrate as the planets
around the sun. The ovary is the organ for the preservation and
maturation of the germ plasm, that treasure which the body is built
but to cherish and hand on as a sacred heirloom. The ova, the female
egg cells, are the fundamental concern of the ovary. Secondarily, it
secretes its messengers to keep the rest of the body, and particularly
the other endocrines, in touch with the necessities of the adventures
of these ova. It is thus enabled to bend every force and power at its
command to the service of the reproductive instinct.
In learning their rôle so well in the course of evolution, the
thyroid, the pituitary and the suprarenal have become indispensable
stimulants (in various degrees peculiar to the individual), to the
primary function of the ovary. As a consequence, to hold the sex
stimulating glands in check, there had to appear others, restraining
them and so preventing sex precocity. These are the thymus and pineal.
So closely are they all related that insufficient action of the
thyroid, pituitary or adrenals may cause atrophy of the ovaries
and uterus, with abolition of genital function. If the sex glands
themselves fail, as occurs usually in most women sometime in the
forties, the thyroid-pituitary-adrenal association must readjust
itself to the new development. The adaptation evokes the phenomena of
the transition to a new life, the climacteric.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PUBERTY
Tracing the development of sex life there is a certain order of events
in a normal history. Before puberty, the ova have lain asleep, as it
were, in a cocoon state. Now with puberty they awaken. And with them
all those profound mechanisms and inventions that have to do with
their nutrition up to ripening. Then revolve the cycles that are
translated as menstruation, the propulsion, fertilization and
implantation of the ova in the uterus,--the full development of the
fetus,--its birth, and feeding after birth--all of which are ductless
gland controlled.
Samuel Butler once noted that:
"All our limbs and sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and life,
are but an accretion round and a fostering of the spermatozoa. They
are the real "He." A man's eyes, ears, tongue, nose, legs and arms
are but so many organs and tools that minister to the protection,
education, increased intelligence and multiplication of the
spermatozoa, so that our whole life is in reality a series of complex
efforts in respect of these, conscious or unconscious according
to their comparative commonness. They are the central fact in our
existence, the point towards which all effort is directed."
Nothing could be said more truly of Woman, and the ova she carries.
All that transpires during pubescence is symptomatic of the underlying
tidal stir in the cells. The uterus becomes gorged with blood
periodically, to provide an enriched soil for the perhaps to be
fertilized ovum to plant itself. The breasts grow, and fat is
deposited in particular places as reserve material for the making of
milk. The qualities which are to appeal to the eye and ear and even
nostrils of the male appear. Instincts dawn, an independence of spirit
germinates, emulsified with a curious shyness and coyness and a
desperate loneliness and secrecy. And all because there have been let
loose in the blood from the glands of internal secretion the chemical
substances that set going the clockwork of sequential incidents
elaborated and repeated through countless aeons of time.
FEMININE PRECOCITY
Ordinarily, in the north temperate climate, puberty begins about
the fourteenth year, but may begin anywhere from the tenth to the
sixteenth. Feeding and environment indirectly, the state of the
internal secretions as a whole directly, determine this. In girls,
those definite signs, menstruation and the growth of the breasts,
before the age of ten, mean premature awakening of the ovaries and a
concomitant co-reaction of the other endocrines, creating the ensemble
of maturity.
In females, the primary stimulus, the initial spark of femininity,
must originate in the ovary. There are other forms of precocity in the
female, dependent upon stimulations of other glands, but these forms
are masculinisms, a masculinization of the personality, and not a
true awakening of the feminine constitution. So one must distinguish
sharply between a precocity by masculinization and precocity of
premature feminization. The latter always implies the touch of the
fairy's wand upon the sleeping ovaries. Sexual precocity in boys may
be produced by a premature overactivity not only of the specific
reproductive organs: the testes, but also by an early excess of
secretion on the part of the cortex of the adrenal gland or the
pituitary gland, or by a too early involution of the pineal or thymus.
When such abnormalities of adrenal, pituitary, thymus or pineal occur
in girls, it is the masculine streak in the hastening of growth that
is made manifest. All this emphasizes the relative bisexuality of
every normal, no matter how pronounced, when superficially viewed, his
or her form of predominating sex may be. Under the right conditions
recession of the most marked virility or femininity becomes
conceivable, and occurs.
THE SECRET OF THE MASCULINE
Masculinization having entered upon the scene, one may well ask: what
truly (which means chemically) lies behind all these differences
and divergences between male and female? What is the secret of the
variable internal secretion admixtures? You can tell us that the
recipes are different, the ingredients different, the results
different as a Nesselrode pudding is from, say, a rice pudding. But
what is the inner mechanism of the process? Since the masculine and
the feminine are but expressions of certain relative capacities and
potentialities, some single principle must run through the making of
both.
Recognizing of course the qualifications inherent in so broad a
statement the answer is: the handling of the lime salts. Life
originated, or at least lived and worked for long ages in sea water.
During these eras the salts of the sea have come to play a dominant
rôle in its being. The lime salts, because of their peculiar
properties of dissolving or precipitating themselves according to
electrical conditions in their medium, have come to occupy a
central position in all the processes of growth, metabolism and sex
differentiation. So it is that masculinity may be described as a
stable, constant state in the organism of lime salts, and the feminine
as an unstable, variable state of lime salts. The male skeleton
contrasts with the female as the stronger, larger, heavier and
straighter because it is an expression of a greater capacity to
utilize, store and keep lime in the system. Women throughout their
reproductive period are liable to rapid and pendulum-like fluctuations
of their lime content.
Menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, all draw upon the stores of lime,
sometimes depleting them to the point of softening of the bones and
wrecking the whole skeleton. The endocrines control the transport,
and course, combinations and permutations in the history of lime's
progress among the cells, and are in turn themselves affected by it.
Man is relatively free of these liabilities, and so remains man by
his freedom from the recurrent crises involving the lime salt reserve
which constitute the essence of the life story of woman.
THE SEX INDEX
It follows from these considerations that when it becomes necessary
to size the sex composition of a man or woman, a measurement becomes
establishable which may be spoken of as the sex index. To be able to
say of Mr. Llewylln Jones that he is sixty per cent masculine and
forty per cent feminine, or of Mrs. Worthington that she is seventy
per cent feminine and thirty per cent masculine would be of the utmost
value under all kinds of circumstances. Unfortunately, lacking as we
do the exact figures of an advanced blood chemistry (yet in its most
infantile infancy) a direct indexing of the sort is impossible. But it
is certainly conceivable, along the lines of measurement suggested
by the Binet tests and others, that a scale of evaluation of the
secondary sex traits may be elaborated, which would turn out as
valuable in understanding the frictions of the individual, and more
concretely, that aspect of it to which pathologists of the mind are
tracing so much needless misery and suffering: maladjusted sexuality,
expressed and suppressed. Nothing will contribute more to harmonious
adjustment for these sufferers than recognition of the fact that we
are all, more or less, partial hermaphrodites.
THE FUNCTIONAL HERMAPHRODITE
The complete or total hermaphrodite we define as the individual who
possesses the reproductive organs of the male and the female, both
testes and ovaries. So rare is such a combination in man that for a
long time its occurrence was doubted, descriptions of it regarded as
myth. However, undoubted cases are on record, examined by the most
careful of observers, of ovo-testis or mixed reproductive organs.
Strangely enough, the history of these cases, shows that at one time
the masculine set, and at another the feminine set, will hold sway
over the sex traits and functions. Blending does not happen.
Rare though the true hermaphrodite may be, the partial hermaphrodite
is relatively frequent. The mixed ensemble of the directly contrasting
type, such as the concomitance of testes with feminine secondary sex
traits, or of ovaries with masculine sex traits, have been described
from time immemorial as freaks. Occurring even more frequently is the
mixed sex ensemble, in which the type of reproductive organs and of
secondary sex traits run roughly parallel, emulsified with certain
traits of the opposite sex. Physical features of one sex, instincts
and mental attitudes of the other co-exist in the same individual by
reason of an excess in one direction or a deficiency in another of the
internal secretions. The degree of masculine trend in a woman is a
crude measure of adrenal domination, the degree of feminine deviation
in a man is roughly proportional to the amount of pituitary influences
in his make-up.
Whether one or the other sex tendency will dominate depends upon the
quantity of sex hormone divergence from the ideal normal. But also
determinant are the environment stimuli provoking excessive or
deficient secretory reactions from the other endocrines involved,
through the vegetative nervous system. Such especially are the
associates of the mixed sex individual. Ordinarily the combative male
and the submissive female are differentiated by contrasts of skin
and hair, fat and bone structure. The combative male is built as a
fighting machine, the submissive female as an organism of attractive
grace and beauty for impregnation and parturition. When one sees the
fragile woman aggressive, the masculinoid woman submissive, one
may infer an education of experience that has brought the usually
recessive glands into the foreground, and by their hyperactivity
imposed a bisexuality of function upon a unisexual anatomic structure.
A man apparently as formidable as a tyrannosaurus, may be ruled by
his wife for the same reason. These combinations of a single organic
sexuality with a functional bisexuality, based upon internal secretion
disturbances, are frequent, and merit the name of functional
hermaphrodites or mixed sex types.
MIXED SEX AND THE FAMILY
The psychology of the family in its relation to the endocrine traits
of its members is something that still remains to be thoroughly worked
out as a problem of tremendous importance. Particularly are the
reactions of the mixed sex types to be carefully considered. For,
since the family is fundamentally a sex institution, devised to
satisfy the sex needs, all the way from companionship to parenthood,
it is apparent that the mixed sex types will be tried the hardest by
its inexorable conditions. It is in relation to the mother (or nurse)
first, the father next, and other associates in proportion to their
proximity, that the primary endocrine-vegetative mechanisms, the germs
of the growing soul, become established. These are superimposed upon
the hereditary instinct apparatus.
Fear, rage and love reactions develop first in association with the
suckling reflex, and the accompaniments, the mother's smile and voice,
the color of her hair, eyes and skin, her breasts and odors. Each time
the babe reacts to a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus, there is an
outpouring of certain internal secretions, a cessation of others, a
tingling of certain vegetative nerves and organs, a hushing of others.
The ensemble of reactions tends to be repeated around the same
stimulus, until the whole becomes automatic. One may observe the same
process in the lower animals. Offer a piece of meat to a dog and his
mouth waters. Ring a bell before offering the meat. Repeat this a
number of times, and after a while the mere ringing of the bell,
without the presence of the meat, will cause his mouth to water. This
associated vegetative secretion reflex is the most fundamental to
grasp in an understanding of the deepest strata of personality.
Now there are, besides the associated vegetative-endocrine reactions,
certain inborn automatic processes in the vegetative system and in
the internal secretion system, which work automatically to produce
increased intravisceral pressures. The reduction of these pressures
below the point of their intrusion upon consciousness, their relief,
as we say, also form the centers of constellations around feelings
of satisfaction or love. Such, for example, are the voiding of
excretions. Sooner or later, these automatic reactions, and the
associated reflexes formed around the mother, father and other
associates, come into conflict. Inhibitions or prohibitions of the
automatic act at certain times or moments are imposed by somebody.
And so there occurs a pitting of the automatic mechanism against the
associated reflex. Conflict with adjustment by suppression must occur.
Thus a sense of self as active wisher (for the automatically pleasant
experience), and punishable suppressor (of the same in favor of the
acquired associated reflex) develops.
So far, so good. Compromise by regulation from above, from the
brain, of the automatic reactions follows, as training. No absolute
repression is forced, no absolute encouragement is indorsed.
Harmonious equilibrium, or normality, continues. But now there come
upon the scene the unconscious fears.
In the paleontology of character, these fears are the deepest strata,
the eocene era, so to speak, of the soul. They are the hardest to get
at and the most silent, as well as the most dominant of the influences
which guide conduct. In Sir Walter Raleigh's words:
"Passions are best likened to streams and floods.
The shallows murmur, the deeps are dumb."
During the first period of childhood, up to five or six, the primary
fears group themselves around the taboos and secrets of its life.
Though we have every reason for believing that the sex glands are
acting in some way upon the organism during this time, nothing
definite is known. Yet, as the numerous studies of the subconscious
recently made prove, sex curiosity like the other curiosities,
flowers. More than about the automatic visceral reactions, these
curiosities evoke the repressive imperatives of the associates, the
mother and father especially. These repressive influences may be
and often are the effects of ignorance, prudishness, vulgarity, or
homosexuality, or the sex perversions that are known as sadism and
masochism. But by the necessities of the case, the sex wishes become
overlayed by reflexes associated with the mother and father and close
associates as love. This might be termed the oligocene. As the circle
of acquaintance widens, other loved objects usher in the miocene
phases of the development. With these become interspersed various
hates and detestations, deliberately cultivated and accepted by the
consciousness. So we have a cross-slice of the personality in the
first five or six years of childhood.
But now, with the onset of the second dentition, a subtle change
begins in the endocrine equations of the body. The second dentition
itself is an expression of a certain internal secretion wave passing
through the cells, an increase of action of some hormones, a decrease
of others. And a consciousness of physical sexuality appears, while
the outlines of character, hitherto mere tracings, become firmer,
heavier, quasi-indelible lines. That there is some activity on the
part of the internal secretions of the sex glands, the ovaries and
testes, can be demonstrated by accurately charting the behaviour of a
boy or girl after this time. It will be found that there is a cyclic
variation of health and conduct, more or less marked of course in each
case. A cold may appear periodically at the end of each month, an
increase of irritability and waywardness may be observed, or, on the
contrary, a decrease of the regular restless playfulness. The ghost of
sex begins to haunt the scene.
Now all kinds of possibilities of conflict emerge. The child is still
a bisexual, growing into a mixed sex type, depending upon the nature
and amount of its internal secretions. The influencing adult of the
family, the most important of the external factors encouraging or
depressing the tendencies of the child, possesses a fairly fixed ideal
of monosexuality which he or she, generally quite unconsciously, seeks
to impose upon it. A doting feminine mother will make her son as much
as possible like her husband: if she dislikes her husband, as much as
possible like her father or grandfather. A masculinized mother will
tend to make a sex object out of the son, however, which means his
feminization. But, on the internal secretion side, the boy may be
definitely masculine. That is, after adolescence he would be strongly
masculine, _if the vegetative-endocrine mechanisms created by the
mother's personality had not slipped into the inside track_, so to
speak. As a consequence, continual subconscious conflict between the
two sets of sex reaction will, sooner or later, disturb, perhaps
disrupt and ruin his life.
So an infant may start life with a fairly balanced endocrine
equipment, with its wake of a normal life (barring accidents and
infections), and yet he may end as an inferior, insane, criminal, or
failure directly because of establishment of conflict between himself
as one sort of sex type, and his obligatory associates of another
sort of mixed sex type. This applies also to the mother-daughter, the
father-son, and the father-daughter relationship.
Male and female created He them, is a bald misstatement of the facts.
Male and female emerge as final by-products of endocrine heredity,
environmental treatment and adaptation. Often the male-female,
the female-male, persist anatomically, or are forced to persist
functionally. Society, constructed upon the Biblical dogmas of man as
a fallen angel, and absolute sex, is responsible for much misery and
suffering meted out to the functional hermaphrodite, as we shall see
later in an analysis of the endocrine character of Oscar Wilde. The
privileges and powers of sex relationship, marriage and parenthood,
should be safeguarded for the mixed sex type, the man or woman with
the variable sex index. For there are no tragedies in life more
pitiful than those in which an aggressive masculinely built type is
forced to assume a submissive, receptive, passive, feminine rôle and
vice versa, the tragedy of compelled homosexuality, because of wrong
associates.
MASOCHISM AND SADISM
The functional hermaphrodite enables us, too, to understand the
phenomena of masochism and sadism, to a certain extent, on the
chemical side. The masculine personality, the combination of
masculine, e.g., adrenal cortex and gonad internal secretion
predominance, is built for aggression. The feminine personality,
the union of feminine, e.g. thyroid and ovarian superiority, is
constructed for submission. Reverse the possibilities, or confuse
them, as occurs in the functional hermaphrodite, and the attitudes
become reversed or perverted. So a masculinoid personality in woman
will make for sadism, a feminoid personality in a man for masochism.
Variants and refinements of these perversions will often be found
in the functional hermaphrodite who must satisfy two doubly flowing
streams of visceral pressure within himself. Persistence of the thymus
or pineal gland tends to a prolongation of the infantile and child
types, that will be taken advantage of.