The Natural Superiority of Women (27 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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has maintained the myth of feminine weakness until the present day. But it is not woman who is weak; it is man, and in more senses than one. But the last thing on earth we want to do is give the male a feeling of inferiority. On the contrary, we consider it a wise thing for man to be aware of his limitations and his weaknesses, for being aware of them, he may learn how to make himself strong. The truth concerning the sexes will not only serve to set women free, it will also serve to set men free; for if women have been the slaves of men, men have been the slaves of their own prejudices against women, and this has worked to the disadvantage of both.

 

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6
The Sexual Superiority of the Female
There exists an old and widespread belief in Western societies that women are preoccupied with sex. This idea was somewhat stridently expressed in a book published in the summer of 1903 entitled
Geschlecht und Charakter,
in English translation
Sex and Character,
written by Otto Weininger, a brilliant Viennese young man who was in his early twenties when the book was published. He was "therefore," like other men, an "expert" on the subject of women and sex. The book created something of a sensation, and was widely read throughout Europe. In it Weininger proclaimed that "man possess sex, woman is possessed by it."
Every man is, of course, an authority on sex, and every man, of course, knows that beauty parlors, permanent waves, cosmetics, women's clothes, miniskirts, women's arts, and practically everything about women constitute abundant testimony to their greater preoccupation with sex. Men shave, comb their hair, and wear comparatively drab clothes. They are interested in sex, of course, but their interest is as nothing compared with the interest of women in sex, and by
interest
men usually mean
preoccupation .
So goes the myth, a myth which Kinsey and his co-workers were the first to demolish in
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female;

1
the myth was finally scuttled with a much smaller sample of subjects by Masters and Johnson in their

 

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book,
Human Sexual Response .

2
The Kinsey workers found their women subjects to be sexually superior in every way, except in the sexual athleticism of a multiplicity of partners upon which the male so overcompensatingly prides himself.

Since definitions are so much more meaningful at the end of an inquiry than they can possibly be at the beginning of one, let us postpone our account and definition of what we mean by sexual superiority until it has become so obvious to the reader in evaluating the facts that the formal definition becomes doubly meaningful.
Under the heading, "Psychologic Factors in Sexual Response," the Kinsey workers reported the following:
In general, males are more often conditioned by their sexual experience, and by a greater variety of associated factors, than females. While there is great individual variation in this respect among both females and males, there is considerable evidence that the sexual responses and behavior of the average male are, on the whole, more often determined by the male's previous experience, by his association with objects that were connected with his previous sexual experience, by his vicarious sharing of another individual's sexual experience, and by his sympathetic reactions to the sexual responses of other individuals. The average female is less often affected by such psychologic factors. It is highly significant to find that there are evidences of such differences between the females and males of infra-human mammalian species, as well as between human females and males.
3
Kinsey might have said not only infra-human mammalian species but for almost the whole of the animal kingdom. It has long been known that in almost all sexual species of animals the female is likely to be the more quiescent and the male the more active creature. This idea was explicitly stated by Geddes and Thomson in their famous book,
The Evolution of Sex:
"It is generally true that the males are more active, energetic, eager, passionate, and variable; the females more passive, conservative, sluggish, and stable."
4
Undoubtedly there is a profound phylogenetic basis for this difference between the sexes. Geddes and Thomson were the first to offer the hypothesis that the female organism is characterized by a predominance of constructive utilization of energy, by
anabolism,
the process of synthesizing

 

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simple substances into complex materials, as compared with
catabolism,
or the metabolic change of complex into simple molecules. This hypothesis has been widely adopted. It is a useful and an interesting hypothesis, but actually it doesn't go far enough in explaining the differences between the sexes with reference to the differences in the ends which they function to serve.
The ends which both sexes serve is reproduction of the species. But reproduction of the species is not enough; the species must be maintained. And this is where the difference between the sexes expresses itself, for while it is the function of the male to initiate conception, it is the function of the female to maintain the conceptus, and see it through not only to successful birth but through infancy and childhood. With comparatively few exceptions this is true of the whole animal kingdom. One may readily see, then, why the female is likely to be anabolic and the male catabolic. From the standpoint of survival the female is vastly more important biologically than the male, and it is therefore important that she be the creator of energy rather than the reducer of energy. As Tinbergen has pointed out:
Since the female carries the eggs for some time, often even after fertilization, and since in so many species the female takes a larger share than the male in feeding and protecting the young, she is the more valuable part of the species' capital. Also, one male can often fertilize more than one female, an additional reason why individual males are biologically less valuable than females. It is therefore not surprising that the female needs persuasion more than the male, and this may be the main reason why courtship is so often the concern of the male.

5

The overall biological superiority of the female lies, then, in the fact that she is "the more valuable part," as Tinbergen puts it, "of the species' capital" because she is the principal preserver and protector of the species during children's most tender periods of development. In this fact is also to be found the explanation of the difference in sexual interest between female and male. When, then, Kinsey records these differences in psychosexual response in as great detail as he does, he is probably quite right in seeing some significant connection between such differences in human beings and similar differences in infra-human mammalian species.

 

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What are these psychologic factors in sexual response which Kinsey investigated? They are such factors as observing the opposite sex, nude figures, one's own sex, erotic art, genitalia, exhibitionism, movies, burlesque strippers and floor shows, sexual activities, portrayals of sexual activities, animals in coitus, peeping and voyeurism, preferences for light or dark, fantasies concerning sex, sex dreams, diversion during coitus, stimulation by literary materials, erotic stories, writing and drawing, wall inscriptions, graffiti, discussions of sex, and the like. Altogether there were thirty-three such factors investigated, and it was only in respect of three itemsmovies, reading romantic literature, and being bittenthat as many females or more females than males seem to have been affected. In respect of twenty-nine of the thirty-three items, fewer females than males were affected.
While there can be little doubt that social conditioning plays a considerable role in influencing patterns of sexual response, and that the male in this respect seems to be much more conditionable than the female in our culture, there can be equally little doubt that there is a profound biological difference between the sexes in this respect. The male seems to be in a chronic state of sexual irritation. The woman who in a letter to Kinsey described the race of males as ''a herd of prancing leering goats" was not far from the truth. It is the male who is preoccupied with sex, and his preoccupation with sex, in our culture at any rate, is at a very superficial level of sensitivity. The male of the Western world is the gadfly of sex; hell mate with virtually any woman he encounters. The female, on the other hand, is much less occupied with sex than the male. She is not in a chronic state of sexual irritation; she is not like the male in a state of continuous rut. Sexual response in the female has to be aroused, and it cannot be aroused by superficial stimulation. Sex means a great deal more to the female that it does to the male, and except for the highly abnormal instance of prostitution, she will not mate with just any male she encounters.
These differences seem to be biologically based, and from every point of view they confer superiority upon the female biological, moral, social, and aesthetic. The fact that these differences are biologically based does not, however, mean that the male's behavior is either excusable or unalterable. It makes

 

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