THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN WOMEN.
A special and detailed study of the normal characters of the sexual
impulse in men seems unnecessary. I have elsewhere discussed various
aspects of the male sexual impulse, and others remain for later
discussion. But to deal with it broadly as a whole seems unnecessary, if
only because it is predominantly open and aggressive. Moreover, since the
constitution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature
of the sexual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and
unwritten codes of social law. The sexual instinct in women is much more
elusive. This, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic
psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena
of modesty and courting. The same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery,
meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the
sexual impulse in women. Nor is it easy to find any full and authentic
record of a social state clearly founded in sexual matters on the demands
of woman's nature.
An illustration of our ignorance and bias in these matters is
furnished by the relationship of marriage, celibacy, and divorce
to suicide in the two sexes. There can be no doubt that the
sexual emotions of women have a profound influence in determining
suicide. This is indicated, among other facts, by a comparison of
the suicide-rate in the sexes according to age; while in men the
frequency of suicide increases progressively throughout life, in
women there is an arrest after the age of 30; that is to say,
when the period of most intense sexual emotion has been passed.
This phenomenon is witnessed among peoples so unlike as the
French, the Prussians, and the Italians. Now, how do marriage and
divorce affect the sexual liability to suicide? We are always
accustomed to say that marriage protects women, and it is even
asserted that men have self-sacrificingly maintained the
institution of marriage mainly for the benefit of women.
Professor Durkheim, however, who has studied suicide elaborately
from the sociological standpoint, so far as possible eliminating
fallacies, has in recent years thrown considerable doubt on the
current assumption. He shows that if we take the tendency to
suicide as a test, and eliminate the influence of children, who
are an undoubted protection to women, it is not women, but men,
who are protected by marriage, and that the protection of women
from suicide increases regularly as divorces increase. After
discussing these points exhaustively, "we reach a conclusion," he
states, "considerably removed from the current view of marriage
and the part it plays. It is regarded as having been instituted
for the sake of the wife and to protect her weakness against
masculine caprices. Monogamy, especially, is very often presented
as a sacrifice of man's polygamous instincts, made in order to
ameliorate the condition of woman in marriage. In reality,
whatever may have been the historical causes which determined
this restriction, it is man who has profited most. The liberty
which he has thus renounced could only have been a source of
torment to him. Woman had not the same reasons for abandoning
freedom, and from this point of view we may say that in
submitting to the same rule it is she who has made the
sacrifice." (E. Durkheim, Le Suicide, 1897, pp. 186-214,
289-311.)
There is possibly some significance in the varying incidence of
insanity in unmarried men and unmarried women as compared with
the married. At Erlangen, for example, Hagen found that among
insane women the preponderance of the single over the married is
not nearly so great as among insane men, marriage appearing to
exert a much more marked prophylactic influence in the case of
men than of women. (F. W. Hagen, Statistische Untersuchungen über
Geisteskrankheiten, 1876, p. 153.) The phenomena are here,
however, highly complex, and, as Hagen himself points out, the
prophylactic influence of marriage, while very probable, is not
the only or even the chief factor at work.
It is worth noting that exactly the same sexual difference may be
traced in England. It appears that, in ratio to similar groups in
the general population (taking the years 1876-1900, inclusive),
the number of admissions to asylums is the same for both sexes
among married people (i.e., 8.5), but for the single it is
larger among the men (4.8 to 4.5), as also it is among the
widowed (17.9 to 13.9) (Fifty-sixth Annual Report of the
Commissioners in Lunacy, England and Wales, 1902, p. 141). This
would seem to indicate that when living apart from men the
tendency to insanity is less in women, but is raised to the male
level when the sexes live together in marriage.
Much the same seems to hold true of criminality. It was long
since noted by Horsley that in England marriage decidedly
increases the tendency to crime in women, though it decidedly
decreases it in men. Prinzing has shown (Zeitschrift für
Sozialwissenschaft, Bd. ii, 1899) that this is also the case in
Germany.
Similarly marriage decreases the tendency of men to become
habitual drunkards and increases that of women. Notwithstanding
the fact that the average age of the men is greater than that of
the women, the majority of the men admitted to the inebriate
reformatories under the English Inebriates Acts are single; the
majority of the women are married; of 865 women so admitted 32
per cent, were single, 50 per cent, married, and 18 per cent,
widows. (British Medical Journal, Sept. 2, 1911, p. 518.)
It thus happens that even the elementary characters of the sexual impulse
in women still arouse, even among the most competent physiological and
medical authorities,—not least so when they are themselves women,—the
most divergent opinions. Its very existence even may be said to be
questioned. It would generally be agreed that among men the strength of
the sexual impulse varies within a considerable range, but that it is very
rarely altogether absent, such total absence being abnormal and probably
more or less pathological. But if applied to women, this statement is by
no means always accepted. By many, sexual anesthesia is considered natural
in women, some even declaring that any other opinion would be degrading to
women; even by those who do not hold this opinion it is believed that
there is an unnatural prevalence of sexual frigidity among civilized
women. On these grounds it is desirable to deal generally with this and
other elementary questions of allied character.
|
