The Natural Superiority of Women (28 page)

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Authors: Ashley Montagu

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

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it, perhaps, a little more understandable. Certainly there have been highly sexed men who have managed not to be sexual gadflies or erotosauri, but who have exercised their claim to being called human by respecting themselves as much as they have other people, including women.
The promiscuous male is not destined by biology to be so, but is largely the result of an inadequate education in the meaning of human relations and a puritanical conception of sex. The biological drives require satisfaction, and they appear to have a much greater pressor effect and a lower excitation threshold in the male than in the female. We must learn to understand this and enable the male to order his drives in a more satisfactory manner than he has, for the most part, succeeded in doing in Western culture.
For the male in our culture, the satisfaction of the sexual drive is too often identified and confused with the conventional spurious conception of love. The female rarely falls into such error. Yet the tragedy of our culture's sex relationships, in the broad sense, is that the male fails to understand what sex means to the female, and assumes that it means little more to her than it does to him. Women marry, as Kinsey points out, to establish a home and a long-term relationship with a spouse and to have children. Men only too often marry in order to assure themselves an easy source for the satisfaction of their sexual needs. Though they may rationalize their needs in terms more acceptable to themselves, their wives, and their societies, it is probable, as Kinsey states, "that few males would marry if they did not anticipate that they would have an opportunity to have coitus regularly with their wives. This is the one aspect of marriage which few males would forgo."

6

From an anthropological study published a few weeks after the appearance of the Kinsey report we learn that "throughout Brazil the idea is commonly held that men do not wish to marry. Several people explained that a young man does not willingly take on the heavy responsibilities of a permanent union and renounce the pleasures of sexual adventure."
7
We are not surprisedwith sufficient encouragement men would everywhere take the same view. The fact is, however, that from the point of view of the biological and social health of a society such encouragement would have unfavorable results. Premarital

 

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sexual license is one thing, but the unwillingness to marry and become responsible for one's own family is quite another. It is here, too, that the pull of women to legalize illicit unions, to drag the unwilling male to the altar, has from the earliest times exercised a beneficial effect upon human society.
Women have been aware of the waywardness of the errant male, doubtless from the earliest times, and they have been caused thus to resort to every possible device in order to make themselves attractive to the male and to maintain their attractiveness in order to preserve the interest of this roving creature. Hence, the powders and the pomade, the paint and the pulchritude, and the equation in the male's mind (and in the minds of some women) of sex with love. The female's much higher threshold of sexual excitability, the ease with which she is distracted, even during intercourse, from what is for the male the focus of all his attention, led some readers of the Kinsey report to conclude that women are not very interested in sex. This is but one example of the dangerous kind of conclusions, and utterly erroneous ones, which could be drawn from Kinsey's data. By comparison with women, men are more superficially interested in sex and make up in quantitative activity what they fail to experience qualitatively. On the contrary, the female is more profoundly interested in sex, and the quality of her interest is very much more sensitively and passionately developed than that of the average male. Hence, the male's crass sexual approaches to the female are unlikely to elicit her happiest responses.
It is, however, doubtful that with the most continuous of perfect approaches the female would, on the average, ever respond as continuously as the male does to superficial psychosexual stimulation. The male can, as it were, turn the faucet of sex on at a moment's notice; it takes somewhat more than a moment in the average female.
For the female, sex is a human relationship; for the male, relationships with women tend to be largely sexual. Sex, without love is empty for most women, and it is the satisfaction of a chronic irritation for most men. Even the professional prostitute has one kind of sex for her customers and another kind for her lover. Most men, however, in their approach to sex, think of doing something to a woman that affords them relief and pleasure. These

 

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are not the words usually used; other less printable words are, and they convey the thought that the male satisfied himself on his quarry. Few women ever describe a sexual relationship with a man in such terms. Her relationship is with the man, and not with an adversary or victim. Today one has "relationships" without commitment.
In the sex relationship, as in other connections, women tend to humanize men. In the sex relationship what above all else they require from the male is tenderness, the tenderness which they so seldom receive. In this, too, the female, generally surpasses the male. The extraordinary thing is that in our culture there is a tabu on tenderness, a tabu which is customarily taught boys as a discipline, the emphasis being on masculinity. Tenderness and gentleness are looked upon as behavior fit only for a "sissy." Men have a great deal to learn about the nature of being human, and women have a great deal to teach them. Will they succeed? It is a consummation that will have to be more than devoutly wished. It would be greatly helpful if men began to understand the problem and commenced to cooperate with women.
By virtue of her gentle reticences woman is on the side of morality and the proprieties; in these respects, also, she is therefore very much more advanced than the male. The female seems to come by these qualities naturally, although there can be small doubt that social influences play a considerable role in determining what she will consider moral and proper. The male will always, obviously, have a harder time behaving himself, but that he can learn to keep himself happily in check has fortunately been many times demonstrated. The proper education in human relations will enable the healthy minded male to adjust himself to himself and to other human beings as he ought. It is time that we realized that the improvement he must make in the conduct of his sexual life will not be brought about through better sex education but through better education in human relations, for sex behavior is merely an aspect of human relations, of one's personal attitudes toward other human beings. It is possible that when the male of the future comes to look back upon the history of his sex he will perceive that its failure was in the realm of human relations.
Kinsey interestingly and conclusively demonstrated that while the male's sexual drives are at their peak in his early teens and

 

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shortly thereafter begin to decline, the female, on the other hand, develops her sexual urges much more slowly, and it is not until the late teens or early twenties that she really begins to mature sexually. Furthermore, Kinsey showed that the female never reaches an abrupt peak of sexuality, as does the male, but that she develops more slowly and steadily, and that while the male's sexual powers are waning hers are maintaining their steady level well into her fifties or sixties and even beyond.
Men have prided themselves on their sexual athleticism, but this is as nothing compared with what women are capable. Men may be able to muster a few orgasms at most in one session, but women can literally enjoy scores! The clitoris is a vastly more sensitive organ than the penis. Indeed, the penis has a very poor nerve supply, and compared to the clitoris it is much less sensitive. Men have tended to claim that with the menopause woman's interest in sex declines. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is at this time that most women experience a strong resurgence of sexual interest. That this is not merely mental is borne out by the fact that there is often an increase in estrogen, the female sex hormone. Hence, the menopause has been described as "the pause that refreshes." While the female's ability to experience multiple orgasms continues unfailingly into old age, the male's ability to manage more than one or two declines very markedly. In brief, the duration of the female's reproductive capacities is shorter than that of the male, but her sexual abilities are much greater and considerably outlast those of the male. It is the male sex, it should be noted, that is the impotent sex. Woman's frigidity is more often than not the product of an incompetent male.
Whatever may eventually be held accountable for these differences, the conclusion is obvious: In the duration of their sexual ardor women outlast men by a considerable margin. "There is little evidence," writes Kinsey, "of any aging in the sexual capacities of the female until late in her life."

8

It may now be apparent to the reader what we have meant by sexual superiority throughout this chapter. Perhaps a definition may be acceptable on the basis of our findings. By sexual superiority we mean sexual behavior of a kind that confers survival benefits upon all who participate in it, as well as creative benefits upon all who come within the orbit of its influence. The

 

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female enjoys this sexual superiority by fiat, as it were, of nature, but there is absolutely no reason why the male cannot learn to adjust himself harmoniously to the differences which exist between female and male and acquire by second nature those controls with which the female has for the most part been endowed by nature.
Many avoidable tragedies of marriage are directly traceable to the ignorance which prevails concerning the fundamental differences that exist in the development of the sexual drives of female and male. In early marriage the male desires more coitus than his wife. In later life she wants more than he is able to provide, but she isn't anywhere nearly as concerned as the male is in the early years of marriage, when he finds that his wife isn't as frequently accessible as he thinks she ought to be. With deeper understanding of the facts of life it will be possible for both women and men to adjust these differences in a mutually satisfactory manner. In marriage, as in all human relations, happiness is necessarily reciprocal and is found only in being given. Success in marriage does not depend so much on finding the right person, as on
being
the right person.
The biologically based differences between the sexes insofar as behavior is concerned do not need to be changed; what needs to be changed is our traditional way of dealing with those differences. In short, it is not human nature that needs to be changed, but human nurture. Here the sexes can cooperatively work together to find a better
modus vivendi
than most of us have thus far been able to work out. It may be suggested that the best prescription for bringing about happier sex relations between the sexes is to begin with oneself, to set oneself in order as a basis for practicing good human relations, for if we are to live in an ordered world we must first put order in ourselves.

 

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7
Are Women More Emotional than Men?
Are women more emotional than men? Of course they are! And in this, too, they show their superiority. Women, unlike men, are not afraid to exhibit their feelings; they have not been trained to believe that it is unwomanly to display their emotions as men have been conditioned to believe that it is unmanly to reveal theirs. Women are not crippled as men are by an inability to express their feelings. As a consequence women are far greater realists than men. Men are the specialists in repression of feelings and what is unpleasant to them and call it "control." Women tend to permit their emotions to perform the functions they are designed to serve, the expression of feeling. Women know that without emotion nothing matters.
The function of the myth that women are emotionally weaker than men has been to maintain the prejudice that while man is the supremely rational and intelligent creature, woman is the creature of her emotions. When a family tragedy strikes, the strong silent man stands by with stiff upper lip and a face rendered immobile by a trained incapacity for emotional expression, and thus marmoreally ministers to the deep need for sympathy and support of his wife.
The interesting thing is that prior to 1945 the rates for virtually every emotional disturbance were greater among men

 

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