Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Iii Part 13

From very early times it seems possible to trace two streams of opinion regarding women: on the one hand, a tendency to regard women as a supernatural element in life, more or less superior to men, and, on the other hand, a tendency to regard women as especially embodying the s.e.xual instinct and as peculiarly p.r.o.ne to exhibit its manifestations.

In the most primitive societies, indeed, the two views seem to be to some extent amalgamated; or, it should rather be said, they have not yet been differentiated; and, as in such societies it is usual to venerate the generative principle of nature and its embodiments in the human body and in human functions, such a co-ordination of ideas is entirely rational. But with the development of culture the tendency is for this h.o.m.ogeneous conception to be split up into two inharmonious tendencies. Even apart from Christianity and before its advent this may be noted. It was, however, to Christianity and the Christian ascetic spirit that we owe the complete differentiation and extreme development which these opposing views have reached. The condemnation of s.e.xuality involved the glorification of the virgin; and indifference, even contempt, was felt for the woman who exercised s.e.xual functions. It remained open to anyone, according to his own temperament, to identify the typical average woman with the one or with the other type; all the fund of latent s.e.xual emotion which no ascetic rule can crush out of the human heart a.s.sured the picturesque idealization alike of the angelic and the diabolic types of woman. We may trace the same influence subtly lurking even in the most would-be scientific statements of anthropologists and physicians today.[156]

It may not be out of place to recall at this point, once more, the fact, fairly obvious indeed, that the judgments of men concerning women are very rarely matters of cold scientific observation, but are colored both by their own s.e.xual emotions and by their own moral att.i.tude toward the s.e.xual impulse. The ascetic who is unsuccessfully warring with his own carnal impulses may (like the voluptuary) see nothing in women but incarnations of s.e.xual impulse; the ascetic who has subdued his own carnal impulses may see no elements of s.e.x in women at all. Thus the opinions regarding this matter are not only tinged by elements of primitive culture, but by elements of individual disposition. Statements about the s.e.xual impulses of women often tell us less about women than about the persons who make them.

The curious manner in which for men women become incarnations of the s.e.xual impulse is shown by the tendency of both general and personal names for women to become applicable to prost.i.tutes only. This is the case with the words "garce" and "fille" in French, "Madchen" and "Dirne" in German, as well as with the French "catin" (Catherine) and the German "Metze" (Mathilde). (See, e.g., R. Kleinpaul, Die Rathsel der Sprache, 1890, pp. 197-198.)

At the same time, though we have to recognize the presence of elements which color and distort in various ways the judgments of men regarding women, it must not be hastily a.s.sumed that these elements render discussion of the question altogether unprofitable. In most cases such prejudices lead chiefly to a one-sided solution of facts, against which we can guard.

While, however, these two opposing currents of opinion are of very ancient origin, it is only within quite recent times, and only in two or three countries, that they have led to any marked difference of opinion regarding the s.e.xual apt.i.tude of women. In ancient times men blamed women for concupiscence or praised them for chast.i.ty, but it seems to have been reserved for the nineteenth century to state that women are apt to be congenitally incapable of experiencing complete s.e.xual satisfaction, and peculiarly liable to s.e.xual anesthesia. This idea appears to have been almost unknown to the eighteenth century. During the last century, however, and more especially in England, Germany, and Italy, this opinion has been frequently set down, sometimes even as a matter of course, with a tincture of contempt or pity for any woman afflicted with s.e.xual emotions.

In the treatise On Generation (chapter v), which until recent times was commonly ascribed to Hippocrates, it is stated that men have greater pleasure in coitus than women, though the pleasure of women lasts longer, and this opinion, though not usually accepted, was treated with great respect by medical authors down to the end of the seventeenth century. Thus A. Laurentius (Du Laurens), after a long discussion, decides that men have stronger s.e.xual desire and greater pleasure in coitus than women. (Historia Anatomica Humani Corporis, 1599, lib. viii, quest, ii and vii.)

About half a century ago a book ent.i.tled Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, by W. Acton, a surgeon, pa.s.sed through many editions and was popularly regarded as a standard authority on the subjects with which it deals. This extraordinary book is almost solely concerned with men; the author evidently regards the function of reproduction as almost exclusively appertaining to men. Women, if "well brought up," are, and should be, he states, in England, absolutely ignorant of all matters concerning it. "I should say," this author again remarks, "that the majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with s.e.xual feeling of any kind." The supposition that women do possess s.e.xual feelings he considers "a vile aspersion."

In the article "Generation," contained in another medical work belonging to the middle of the nineteenth century,-Rees's Cyclopedia,-we find the following statement: "That a mucous fluid is sometimes found in coition from the internal organs and v.a.g.i.n.a is undoubted; but this only happens in lascivious women, or such as live luxuriously."

Gall had stated decisively that the s.e.xual desires of men are stronger and more imperious than those of women. (Fonctions du Cerveau, 1825, vol. iii, pp. 241-271.)

Raciborski declared that three-fourths of women merely endure the approaches of men. (De la p.u.b.erte chez la Femme, 1844, p. 486.)

"When the question is carefully inquired into and without prejudice," said Lawson Tait, "it is found that women have their s.e.xual appet.i.tes far less developed than men." (Lawson Tait, "Remote Effects of Removal of the Uterine Appendages," Provincial Medical Journal, May, 1891.) "The s.e.xual instinct is very powerful in man and comparatively weak in women," he stated elsewhere (Diseases of Women, 1889, p. 60).

Hammond stated that, leaving prost.i.tutes out of consideration, it is doubtful if in one-tenth of the instances of intercourse they [women] experience the slightest pleasurable sensation from first to last (Hammond, s.e.xual Impotence, p. 300), and he considered (p. 281) that this condition was sometimes congenital.

Lombroso and Ferrero consider that s.e.xual sensibility, as well as all other forms of sensibility, is less p.r.o.nounced in women, and they bring forward various facts and opinions which seem to them to point in the same direction. "Woman is naturally and organically frigid." At the same time they consider that, while erethism is less, s.e.xuality is greater than in men. (Lombroso and Ferrero, La Donna Delinquente, la Prost.i.tuta, e la Donna Normale, 1893, pp. 54-58.)

"It is an altogether false idea," Fehling declared, in his rectorial address at the University of Basel in 1891, "that a young woman has just as strong an impulse to the opposite s.e.x as a young man.... The appearance of the s.e.xual side in the love of a young girl is pathological." (H. Fehling, Die Bestimmung der Frau, 1892, p. 18.) In his Lehrbuch der Frauenkrankheiten the same gynecological authority states his belief that half of all women are not s.e.xually excitable.

Krafft-Ebing was of opinion that women require less s.e.xual satisfaction than men, being less sensual. (Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen und Psychosen durch s.e.xuelle Abstinenz," Jahrbucher fur Psychiatrie, 1888, Bd. viii, ht. I and 2.)

"In the normal woman, especially of the higher social cla.s.ses," states Windscheid, "the s.e.xual instinct is acquired, not inborn; when it is inborn, or awakes by itself, there is abnormality. Since women do not know this instinct before marriage, they do not miss it when they have no occasion in life to learn it." (F. Windscheid, "Die Beziehungen zwischen Gynakologie und Neurologie," Zentralblatt fur Gynakologie, 1896, No. 22; quoted by. Moll, Libido s.e.xualis, Bd. i, p. 271.)

"The sensuality of men," Moll states, "is in my opinion very much greater than that of women." (A. Moll, Die Kontrare s.e.xualempfindung, third edition, 1899, p. 592.)

"Women are, in general, less sensual than men," remarks Nacke, "notwithstanding the alleged greater nervous supply of their s.e.xual organs." (P. Nacke, "Kritisches zum Kapitel der s.e.xualitat," Archiv fur Psychiatrie, 1899, p. 341.)

Lowenfeld states that in normal young girls the specifically s.e.xual feelings are absolutely unknown; so that desire cannot exist in them. Putting aside the not inconsiderable proportion of women in whom this absence of desire may persist and be permanent, even after s.e.xual relationships have begun, thus const.i.tuting absolute frigidity, in a still larger number desire remains extremely moderate, const.i.tuting a state of relative frigidity. He adds that he cannot unconditionally support the view of Furbringer, who is inclined to ascribe s.e.xual coldness to the majority of German married women. (L. Lowenfeld, s.e.xualleben und Nervenleiden, 1899, second edition, p. 11.)

Adler, who discusses the question at some length, decides that the s.e.xual needs of women are less than those of men, though in some cases the o.r.g.a.s.m in quant.i.ty and quality greatly exceeds that of men. He believes, not only that the s.e.xual impulse in women is absolutely less than in men, and requires stronger stimulation to arouse it, but that also it suffers from a latency due to inhibition, which acts like a foreign body in the brain (a.n.a.logous to the psychic trauma of Breuer and Freud in hysteria), and demands great skill in the man who is to awaken the woman to love. (O. Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, 1904, pp. 47, 126 et seq.; also enlarged second edition, 1911; id., "Die Frigide Frau," s.e.xual-Probleme, Jan., 1912.)

It must not, however, be supposed that this view of the natural tendency of women to frigidity has everywhere found acceptance. It is not only an opinion of very recent growth, but is confined, on the whole, to a few countries.

"Turn to history," wrote Brierre de Boismont, "and on every page you will be able to recognize the predominance of erotic ideas in women." It is the same today, he adds, and he attributes it to the fact that men are more easily able to gratify their s.e.xual impulses. (Des Hallucinations, 1862, p. 431.)

The laws of Manu attribute to women concupiscence and anger, the love of bed and of adornment.

The Jews attributed to women greater s.e.xual desire than to men. This is ill.u.s.trated, according to k.n.o.bel (as quoted by Dillmann), by Genesis, chapter iii, v. 16.

In Greek antiquity the romance and sentiment of love were mainly felt toward persons of the same s.e.x, and were divorced from the more purely s.e.xual feelings felt for persons of opposite s.e.x. Theognis compared marriage to cattle-breeding. In love between men and women the latter were nearly always regarded as taking the more active part. In all Greek love-stories of early date the woman falls in love with the man, and never the reverse. aeschylus makes even a father a.s.sume that his daughters will misbehave if left to themselves. Euripides emphasized the importance of women; "The Euripidean woman who 'falls in love' thinks first of all: 'How can I seduce the man I love?"' (E. F. M. Benecke, Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek Poetry, 1896, pp. 34, 54.)

The most famous pa.s.sage in Latin literature as to the question of whether men or women obtain greater pleasure from s.e.xual intercourse is that in which Ovid narrates the legend of Tiresias (Metamorphoses, iii, 317-333). Tiresias, having been both a man and a woman, decided in favor of women. This pa.s.sage was frequently quoted down to the eighteenth century.

In a pa.s.sage quoted from a lost work of Galen by the Arabian biographer, Abu-l-Faraj, that great physician says of the Christians "that they practice celibacy, that even many of their women do so." So that in Galen's opinion it was more difficult for a woman than for a man to be continent.

The same view is widely prevalent among Arabic authors, and there is an Arabic saying that "The longing of the woman for the p.e.n.i.s is greater than that of the man for the v.u.l.v.a."

In China, remarks Dr. Coltman, "when an old gentleman of my acquaintance was visiting me my little daughter, 5 years old, ran into the room, and, climbing upon my knee, kissed me. My visitor expressed his surprise, and remarked: 'We never kiss our daughters when they are so large; we may when they are very small, but not after they are 3 years old,' said he, 'because it is apt to excite in them bad emotions.'" (Coltman, The Chinese, 1900, p. 99.)

The early Christian Fathers clearly show that they regard women as more inclined to s.e.xual enjoyment than men. That was, for instance, the opinion of Tertullian (De Virginibus Velandis, chapter x), and it is clearly implied in some of St. Jerome's epistles.

Notwithstanding the influence of Christianity, among the vigorous barbarian races of medieval Europe, the existence of s.e.xual appet.i.te in women was not considered to be, as it later became, a matter to be concealed or denied. Thus in 1068 the ecclesiastical historian, Ordericus Vitalis (himself half Norman and half English), narrates that the wives of the Norman knights who had accompanied William the Conqueror to England two years earlier sent over to their husbands to say that they were consumed by the fierce names of desire ("saeva libidinis face urebantur"), and that if their husbands failed to return very shortly they proposed to take other husbands. It is added that this threat brought a few husbands back to their wanton ladies ("lascivis dominabus suis").

During the medieval period in Europe, largely in consequence, no doubt, of the predominance of ascetic ideals set up by men who naturally regarded woman as the symbol of s.e.x, the doctrine of the incontinence of woman became firmly fixed, and it is unnecessary and unprofitable to quote examples. It is sufficient to mention the very comprehensive statement of Jean de Meung (in the Roman de la Rose, 9903):-

"Toutes estes, seres, ou futes De fait ou de volunte putes."

The satirical Jean de Meung was, however, a somewhat extreme and untypical representative of his age, and the fourteenth century Johannes de Sancto Amando (Jean de St. Amand) gives a somewhat more scientifically based opinion (quoted by Pagel, Neue litterarische Beitrage zur Mittelalterlichen Medicin, 1896, p. 30) that s.e.xual desire is stronger in women than in men.

Humanism and the spread of the Renaissance movement brought in a spirit more sympathetic to women. Soon after, especially in Italy and France, we begin to find attempts at a.n.a.lyzing the s.e.xual emotions, which are not always without a certain subtlety. In the seventeenth century a book of this kind was written by Venette. In matters of love, Venette declared, "men are but children compared to women. In these matters women have a more lively imagination, and they usually have more leisure to think of love. Women are much more lascivious and amorous than men." This is the conclusion reached in a chapter devoted to the question whether men or women are the more amorous. In a subsequent chapter, dealing with the question whether men or women receive more pleasure from the s.e.xual embrace, Venette concludes, after admitting the great difficulty of the question, that man's pleasure is greater, but woman's lasts longer. (N. Venette, De la Generation de l'Homme ou Tableau de l'Amour Conjugal, Amsterdam, 1688.)

At a much earlier date, however, Montaigne had discussed this matter with his usual wisdom, and, while pointing out that men have imposed their own rule of life on women and their own ideals, and have demanded from them opposite and contradictory virtues,-a statement not yet antiquated,-he argues that women are incomparably more apt and more ardent in love than men are, and that in this matter they always know far more than men can teach them, for "it is a discipline that is born in their veins." (Montaigne, Essais, book iii, chapter v.)

The old physiologists generally mentioned the appearance of s.e.xual desire in girls as one of the normal signs of p.u.b.erty. This may be seen in the numerous quotations brought together by Schurig, in his Parthenologia, cap. ii.

A long succession of distinguished physicians throughout the seventeenth century discussed at more or less length the relative amount of s.e.xual desire in men and women, and the relative degree of their pleasure in coitus. It is remarkable that, although they usually attach great weight to the supposed opinion of Hippocrates in the opposite sense, most of them decide that both desire and pleasure are greater in women.

Plazzonus decides that women have more sources of pleasure in coitus than men because of the larger extent of surface excited; and if it were not so, he adds, women would not be induced to incur the pains and risks of pregnancy and childbirth. (Plazzonus, De Partibus Generationi Inservientibus, 1621, lib. ii, cap. xiii.)

"Without doubt," says Ferrand, "woman is more pa.s.sionate than man, and more often torn by the evils of love." (Ferrand, De la Maladie d'Amour, 1623, chapter ii.)

Zacchia, mainly on a priori grounds, concludes that women have more pleasure in coitus than men. (Zacchia, Quaestiones Medico-legales, 1630, lib. iii, quest, vii.)

Sinibaldus, discussing whether men or women have more salacity, decides in favor of women. (J. B. Sinibaldus, Geneanthropeia, 1642, lib. ii, tract. ii, cap. v.)

Hornius believed that women have greater s.e.xual pleasure than men, though he mainly supported his opinion by the authority of cla.s.sical poets. (Hornius, Historic Naturalis, 1670, lib. iii, cap. i.)

Nenter describes what we may now call women's affectability, and considers that it makes them more p.r.o.ne than men to the s.e.xual emotions, as is shown by the fact that, notwithstanding their modesty, they sometimes make s.e.xual advances. This greater p.r.o.neness of women to the s.e.xual impulse is, he remarks, entirely natural and right, for the work of generation is mainly carried on by women, and love is its basis: "generationis fundamentum est amor." (G. P. Nenter, Theoria Hominis Sani, 1714, cap. v, memb. ii.)

The above opinions of seventeenth-century physicians are quoted from the original sources. Schurig, in his Gynaecologia, (pp. 46-50 and 71-81), quotes a number of pa.s.sages on this subject from medical authorities of the same period, on which I have not drawn.

Senancour, in his fine and suggestive book on love, first published in 1806, asks: "Has s.e.xual pleasure the same power on the s.e.x which less loudly demands it? It has more, at all events in some respects. The very vigor and laboriousness of men may lead them to neglect love, but the constant cares of maternity make women feel how important it must ever be to them. We must remember also that in men the special emotions of love only have a single focus, while in women the organs of lactation are united to those of conception. Our feelings are all determined by these material causes." (Senancour, De l'Amour, fourth edition, 1834, vol. i, p. 68.) A later psychologist of love, this time a woman, Ellen Key, states that woman's erotic demands, though more silent than man's, are stronger. (Ellen Key, Ueber Liebe und Ehe, p. 138.)

Michael Ryan considered that s.e.xual enjoyment "is more delicious and protracted" in women, and ascribed this to a more sensitive nervous system, a finer and more delicate skin, more acute feelings, and the fact that in women the mammae are the seat of a vivid sensibility in sympathy with the uterus. (M. Ryan, Philosophy of Marriage, 1837, p. 153.)

Busch was inclined to think women have greater s.e.xual pleasure than men. (D. W. H. Busch, Das Geschlechtsleben des Weibes, 1839, vol. i, p. 69.) Kobelt held that the anatomical conformation of the s.e.xual organs in women led to the conclusion that this must be the case.

Guttceit, speaking of his thirty years' medical experience in Russia, says: "In Russia at all events, a girl, as very many have acknowledged to me, cannot resist the ever stronger impulses of s.e.x beyond the twenty-second or twenty-third year. And if she cannot do so in natural ways she adopts artificial ways. The belief that the feminine s.e.x feels the stimulus of s.e.x less than the male is quite false." (Guttceit, Dreissig Jahre Praxis, 1873, theil i, p. 313.)