The Natural Superiority of Women (18 page)

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Authors: Ashley Montagu

Tags: #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Women's Studies, #test

BOOK: The Natural Superiority of Women
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If, as a consequence of the possession of greater size and muscular power, one is better able to pull and move heavy loads, run faster, and better accomplish all those things that minister to the survival of the person and the group, then it should be plain that men are in these respects superior to women. But while men have, in part, used their size and greater muscular power in a manner calculated to confer survival benefits upon themselves and upon the group, they have also misused these qualities in such a manner as to confer negative survival benefits upon themselves and upon the group. The muscle man likes to feel his bumps and is, therefore, inclined to be bumptious, to fall back upon brawn, when brain is indicated. His size inclines him to throw his weight around, and not only to persuade his woman that he loves her most when he is showing his fellows in the pecking order that he is not to be trifled with. Since there are likely to be other men around who feel much the same way, trouble is inevitable. Such conflicts that arise within the group in this way make no contribution to its greater chances of survival. Many a good and valuable man has been unnecessarily lost to the group by relying upon his muscles rather than upon his mind, and the group has suffered. Vendettas and internecine conflicts are socialized masculine activities, and the most pathological form that such activities take, namely war, is exclusively a masculine invention and iniquity. Such activities do not contribute to the survival of the individual or of the group.
Since greater size and physical power are overt evidences of masculinity, boys are in most cultures of the Western world encouraged to demonstrate their superior masculinity by indulging in so-called games or sports. Sports such as football, baseball, ice hockey (otherwise known as "war on ice"), boxing, wrestling, rugby, and similar activities, are calculated to underscore the inferior power of girls. And this occurs at a time when girls may be, at the same chronologic ages, larger in size and physically more powerful than boys! Boys are encouraged to be tough and rough, to play with guns and other weapons of destruction and indulge in sports that are rugged. In addition, because boys are supposed to be able to endure more pain than girls, boys may be corporeally punished (and so unconsciously encouraged in the development of additional hostilities), whereas girls are usually punished by deprivation or by the assignment to uncongenial tasks.

 

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It should be clear, then, that the greater size and power of the male may constitute biological advantages or sociobiological disadvantages, depending upon the response to them.
In a society in which the ''strong" tend to be destructive even to the point of destroying themselves, it is obvious an advantage not be inclined to muscular aggressiveness. Here we are concerned with the relation of the male's greater size and physical power to the comparatively lesser size and physical potency of the female. Because muscles account for 42 percent of the total body weight in the male and only 36 percent in the female, the male is able to implement his commands and to enforce his will by the misguided exercise of his muscular powers. Obedience is commanded in this way when it can be in no other. The long training of men in securing obedience through the use of force is almost certainly related to the ease in which they fall back upon this means of compelling attention and securing obedience. As the distinguished zoologist Professor Jon Berrill of McGill University has said, "Men and boys are troublesome creatures, but being larger, stronger, and louder than the females, they have succeeded in putting over the biggest bluff the earth has ever seen." And perhaps not altogether with tongue in cheek Professor Berrill adds, "For when you come to the point, what use are males apart from keeping some sweet young things happy and keeping other males at bay?"

2

I am not writing an unapologetic indictment of man. I am writing part of the story of the origins of masculine tyranny. Men have been perplexed and scared for a long time, and like most scared and confused creatures conscious of their physical superiority to the opposite sex or to members of their own sex, they are likely to take on something of the character of the bully. Men have browbeaten and physically and mentally abused women for ages, and one of the subtlest of the ways in which they have accomplished this has been through the development of elaborate codes of chivalry and etiquette. The forms of chivalry and etiquette, though they may have been and may continue to be valued by women, were originally not really intended as friendly acts. They really represent ritualized performances by Henry the Eighth (who cut off the heads of two of his wives), a patronizing superior who, in effect, is saying: "As your superior, I am called upon to give you my support and make things easier

 

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for you. You, as an inferior person, are in all respects less capable than I; and as long as you continue to recognize the facts and remain submissive and dependent, I will continue to show you the respect you believe you deserve." Chivalry was thus a kind of fictitious benevolence, the gloss put by good manners on selfishness, self-conceit, and contempt for the rights of women. In other words, a putdown.
Observe how chivalry and the ordinary rules of politeness break down as soon as women begin to compete with men on their own home ground. Men no longer offer their seats to women in conveyances, "Don't get up," I have heard men say, "they're just as strong as we are." In short, when one could keep women in their "proper" place, chivalry was a useful device, but when women begin to assert themselves as equals chivalry is no longer deemed to serve a useful purpose. This is not to deny, however, that the chivalry of many men has been a genuine unconscious or conscious recognition of the value and quality of women, and the debt of men to women.
Because by virtue of his greater physical power, man has been able to determine the fate and development of woman, men and women have come to assume that it was natural for men to do so, and both have come to mistake their prejudices for Nature's law. That men may bully women into a state of subservience is not a biological fact but a cultural sleight of hand, a cultural misuse of a physical dominance. This is a very different thing from saying that women are biologically designed to occupy a subservient relationship to men, and that the male is biologically determined to keep the female in such a subservient position. Female subservience is a culturally, not biologically, created condition. It is one of the consequences of the misuse of masculine power. As the insightful Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The stronger sex imposes on the weaker. It is civilization alone which replaces women in their enjoyment of their natural equality."

3

At this juncture it may be useful to list some of the presumed social consequences of the biological differences between the sexes, thereby enabling us to perceive at a glance some of the biological pegs upon which men have hung the cultural disabilities of women. Looking at the table that follows, we see that there are quite a number of biological sex differences and their social consequences which we have not yet considered.

 

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BIOLOGICAL SEX
FUNCTIONAL
SOCIAL
DIFFERENCES
EXPRESSION
EXPRESSION
Men bigger, more
Greater capacity for heavy
Dominance of males
powerful
labor
Women bear children,
Movements impeded, kept
Different jobs, roles,
nurse them
closer to home
assigned each sex; in
anticipation, different
training given to each
Greater muscular
Urge to physical exertion,
Greater interest of male in
development
greater pride in it
sports,
etc.
Male's larger size, higher
Need for more food, more
Greater drive in work,
metabolism, greater
expenditure of energy
achievement
activity
Lesser strength of female
Inability to cope with male
"Feminine" devices to
physically
achieve ends
Male's clumsiness
Tendency of men to treat
Codes of chivalry, etiquette
women gently
Differences in genitalia
Garments adjusted dif-
Differences in dress, styles
and body
ferently for comfort, utility
Earlier puberty in girls
Ready for mating earlier
Girls permitted to marry;
reach "age of consent"
earlier
Menstruation
Effects on body, mind,
Taboos on women,
consciousness of blood issue,
psychological and social
other symptoms
restraint
Chronic sex drive
Women can have intercourse
Prostitution confined largely
without desire; men cannot
to women, rape to men
Pregnancy in women
Greater risk in sexual
"Double standard" of
relationships, uncertainty of
conduct, stricter codes of
paternity
behavior for unmarried girls
and women
Menopause in women
Reproductive capacity ends
Men's marriage chances
much earlier than men's
continue beyond women's
Female more resistant to
Her life span longer; surplus
Threat to monogamous
disease, bodily upsets
of women increasing
marriage system, problems of
spinsterhood and widowhood
Based on a table in Amram Scheinfeld's
Women and Men (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1944).

 

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It has been said that the larger size and higher metabolism of the male finds functional expression in his greater need for food and a greater expenditure of energy. One of the presumed social consequences of these differences is the male's greater drive in work and in achievement. As we have already noted, it is extremely doubtful whether the physiological differences in metabolism and their functional expression have any real connection with the male's alleged greater drive in work and achievement.
I am not the first to suggest, and I am sure I shall not be the last, that the male's drive in work and achievement may actually be the consequence of his recognition of his biological inferiority with respect to the female's creative capacity to conceive and create human beings. One of the ways in which the male may compensate for this biological inferiority is by work and achievement. By keeping the means of making a livelihood almost exclusively a masculine prerogative, men have unconsciously, as well as consciously, been able to satisfy themselves that they are by nature the "breadwinners," the pillars of society, the guarantors of the species. Hence, the great opposition to women when they begin to enter into competition with men in earning a living.
Married men, in particular, frequently object to their wives' working, considering it a reflection upon themselves. These men fear it will be said that they are unable to support their family. "My wife doesn't have to work. Why should she?" The arguments will be familiar to the reader, whether married or not. But the fact is that today the wife, faced with the high cost of living, must work in order to help support the family.
Many women enjoy being in the workaday world, even though in general they do not yet receive the same payment for the same work. Let men honestly ask themselves why they object to women working, particularly their wives, even though they may be largely free of those domestic duties that would otherwise keep them at home. Some quite illuminating answers might begin to break through the barrier of the unconscious. A wife, or almost any woman, working for a living, particularly in a field considered the special preserve of the male, is held by many males to constitute a challenge to their masculinity. When the question arises relating to the employment of a woman in some position that has hitherto been filled by a male, masculine

 

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