The Natural Superiority of Women (9 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, for millennia, women have been the "inferior race" of the masculine world, their legitimate claims to being valued at their true worth can no longer be dismissed with a contemptuous shrug or with mordant humor consigned to the collection of more cranky notions entertained by women and their defenders. Prejudice and ignorance have too long complicated the relations between the sexes. The times call for greater understanding based on knowledge. I have in this book, attempted to provide both.
In 1968, for the preface to the second edition of this book, I wrote that "the liberation of women will also mean the liberation of men." While the language and focus of the women's movement may have changed since then, its strength and indeed its diversity continue to constitute a happy augury for the future. Toward that end this book is once again offered as a modest contribution.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
JANUARY, 1999

 

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Preface to the First Edition
I have been thinking about the theme of this book for some thirty years. For an equal number of years, I have discussed it, on and off, with various friends. However, it was not until I talked about my ideas with Norman Cousins, editor of the
Saturday Review,
that, upon his urging, I set them down in an article bearing the same title as this book. This was published in the March 1, 1952, issue of the
Saturday Review .
The response to that article was extraordinary and gratifying. The
Saturday Evening Post
asked to reprint it, and it appeared in July 1952 in its pages.
Because it was Norman Cousins who suggested the writing of this book, it is a very real pleasure to be able to express my thanks to him both for his interest and for his enthusiasm. I am also obliged to Mr. Jack Cominsky, publisher of the
Saturday Review,
for many courtesies. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Marjorie Child Husted for her continued interest in this volume, It has been a pleasure to work with Mr. George Platt Brett, Jr., president of the Macmillan Company, and with my gentle editor, Miss Eleanor Daniels. To my wife I owe deepest thanks for her helpful readings of the manuscript and for being all that a naturally superior person should be.
1952

 

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Prologue
The idea of "superiority" has quite rightly troubled many people, especially women. Genuinely superior persons don't think of themselves as such, and refuse any attempt to describe them as being so. It is only those people who are insecure about themselves who feel compelled to announce their view of themselves to the world. This is the well-known inferiority complex, defined as the repressed fear and resentment of being inferior. We have, indeed, had altogether too much of such things as "superior races" and "inferior races," for there are, in fact, no such entities. Such terms represent the expression of myths the function of which is to keep people, as the expression goes, "in their proper place." Racism is the most blatant expression of that policy. Long ago I wrote in my book
Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race,
"If some groups of humanity are culturally more advanced than others, it is because their opportunities have been greater, and not because of some supposed innate superiority. No group of human beings is of less value in the scale of humanity than any other, for all groups of human beings possess the potentialities for development which, under the proper environmental stimulation, would enable them to contribute maximally to the achievement of humanity.''
In the world of humanity, of humankind, it is not so much groups, whether they be called national, "racial," ethnic, or sexual, that matter, as the person, the human being. Educability is the outstanding characteristic of the human species, and the variability both in physical and mental traits is so great that no two persons (with the possible exception of some so-called identical twins) will ever be alike. It is in the combination of these traits that the great riches of humanity lies. The strength of America is rooted in its diversity, and it is because you are different from me that you are precious to me. Not only are human beings capable of doing the

 

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things that humans have anywhere done, but also, in response to the challenges of the environment, continually to create and invent anew. From this the principle follows that every human being, regardless of group membership, has the right to fulfill his or her potentialities to the optimum.
Anyone who stands in the way of another's development, and compounds the wrong by denying or limiting their political or social rights, commits the greatest of all offenses against humanity. Yet this is the kind of malefaction that civilized peoples have committed not alone against other peoples, but have unrestrainedly felt free to commit against distinguishable groups within their own people. This is precisely how civilized men have been behaving toward women for millennia with the aid of the myth of masculine superiority. The Hellenic Greeks went so far as to deny biological maternity to the so-called mother of a child. As Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) wrote in the
Eumenides,
"She who is called the mother of the child
Is not its parent, but the nurse of seed
Implanted in the beginning."
In the present book the mythology of female inferiority is challenged and dismantled on the basis of the scientific facts. My many years of work and research as a biological and social anthropologist have made it abundantly clear to me that from an evolutionary and biological standpoint, the female is more advanced and constitutionally more richly endowed than the male. It seemed to me important to make facts clear. Those are the provable facts. Women, as biological organisms, are superior to men. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary, let them state it. The scientific attitude of mind is not one of either belief or disbelief, but of a desire to discover what is and to state it, no matter what traditional beliefs may be challenged or outraged in the process.
To return to the term
superiority,
I do not think it is the label under which women will want to travel. It is enough to know what the biological facts are concerning the endowments of male and female, and where precisely the term superiority belongs. That is why the term must remain, in this book at least, for there is no substitute for it, even though it is something that every woman already knows, but will rarely speak of. Anna Quindlen in one of her delightful columns in the
New York Times,
unequivocally declared her belief in the inherent superiority of

 

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women; refering to a friend who said to her, "Have you ever noticed that what passes for a terrific man would only be an adequate woman?" "A Roman candle went off in my head," wrote Ms. Quindlen, adding that her friend was ''absolutely right,"

1
That is essentially the fact presented in this book.

This book is designed to bring the sexes closer together, not to declare the supremacy of one to the other. If in these pages the natural superiority of women is emphasized, it is because the fact has thus far received far too little attention, and the time is long overdue that both men and women become aware of it and fully understand its meaning. sNatural superiority does not imply social inequality; on the other hand, the plea of this book is for more mutual love and understanding and complete social equality of the sexes. The plea is for the recovery of a sense of values that will enhance the appreciation of the sexes for each other. As Tennyson wrote long ago, "The woman's cause is man's. They rise or fall together." The idea that women are biologically superior to men will probably be new to most people. There have been several books in the past that have made such a claim, but these use grounds very different from those discussed in the present study. These works came to my attention some time after the publication of my own ideas on the subject. Scott Nearing wrote me that many years ago he and Nellie Seeds published a book entitled
Women and Social Progress
in which certain similar claims were made for women. It has also been pointed out to me that in 1917, H. L. Mencken published a book entitled
In Defense of Women,
maintaining similar views. Also, Mr. Samuel Chugerman has drawn my attention to the fact that the founder of American sociology, Lester F. Ward (1841-1913), "the American Aristotle," in several of his books set out his gynacocentric theory of the priority and superiority of the female. Ward had the great advantage of being a distinguished natural scientist who in the latter part of his life became a social scientist. Ward's ideas, late in coming to my attention, gratifyingly bring strong support to my own.

 

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1
The Natural Superiority of Women
"Superiority: The quality or condition of being higher, greater, or better in some respect, or of having some attribute in a higher degree, than something else,"
the Oxford English Dictionary.
"Natural: Inherent in the very constitution of a person or thing,"
the Oxford English Dictionary
.
"Oh, no!" I can hear you say, "Not superior, but equal, partners, complementary, different, but not superior. What an idea!" Men will mostly smile, while women, alarmed, will rush to the defense of men, as women always have and always will. I hope that what I have to say in this book will make women even more willing to do so, for men need their help more than they sometimes seem to know.
Certainly there have been those who have cogently, if not altogether convincingly, argued that women are as good as men; but I do not know, nor have I read, of anyone who has provided the evidence that women are more richly endowed than, or superior to, men. The case has been argued, and often stated, but how, indeed, could one successfully argue such a case in the face of all the evidence to the contrary? Is it not a fact that by far the largest number of geniuses, painters, poets, philosophers,

 

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