elusive an impulse as that of sex. At the same time I am by no
means disposed to question the existence in individuals, and even
in families or stocks, of a relatively weak sexual impulse,
which, while still enabling procreation to take place, is
accompanied by no strong attraction to the opposite sex and no
marked inclination for marriage. (Adler, op. cit., p. 168, found
such a condition transmitted from mother to daughter.) Such
persons often possess a delicate type of beauty. Even, however,
when the health is good there seems usually to be a certain lack
of vitality.

It seems to me that a state of sexual anesthesia, relative or absolute,
cannot be considered as anything but abnormal. To take even the lowest
ground, the satisfaction of the reproductive function ought to be at least
as gratifying as the evacuation of the bowels or bladder; while, if we
take, as we certainly must, higher ground than this, an act which is at
once the supreme fact and symbol of love and the supreme creative act
cannot under normal conditions be other than the most pleasurable of all
acts, or it would stand in violent opposition to all that we find in
nature.

How natural the sexual impulse is in women, whatever difficulties may
arise in regard to its complete gratification, is clearly seen when we
come to consider the frequency with which in young women we witness its
more or less instinctive manifestations. Such manifestations are liable to
occur in a specially marked manner in the years immediately following the
establishment of puberty, and are the more impressive when we remember the
comparatively passive part played by the female generally in the game of
courtship, and the immense social force working on women to compel them to
even an unnatural extension of that passive part. The manifestations to
which I allude not only occur with most frequency in young girls, but,
contrary to the common belief, they seem to occur chiefly in innocent and
unperverted girls. The more vicious are skillful enough to avoid the
necessity for any such open manifestations. We have to bear this in mind
when confronted by flagrant sexual phenomena in young girls.

"A young girl," says Hammer ("Ueber die Sinnlichkeit gesunder
Jungfrauen," _Die Neue Generation_, Aug., 1911), "who has not
previously adopted any method of self-gratification experiences
at the beginning of puberty, about the time of the first
menstruation and the sprouting of the pubic hair, in the absence
of all stimulation by a man, spontaneous sexual tendencies of
both local and psychic nature. On the psychic side there is a
feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction, a need of subjection
and of serving, and, if the opportunity has so far been absent,
the craving to see masculine nudity and to learn the facts of
procreation. Side by side with these wishes, there are at the
same time inhibitory desires, such as the wish to keep herself
pure, either for a man whom she represents to herself as the
'ideal,' or for her parents, who must not be worried, or as a
member of a chosen people in whose spirit she must live and die,
or out of love to Jesus or to some saint. On the physical side,
there is the feeling of fresh power and energy, of enterprise;
the agreeable tension of the genital regions, which easily become
moist. Then there is the feeling of overirritability and excess
of tension, and the need of relieving the tension through
pinches, blows, tight lacing, and so forth. If the girl remains
innocent of sex satisfaction, there takes place during sleep, at
regular intervals of about three days, more or less the relief
and emission of the tense glands, not corresponding to the
menstrual period, but to intercourse, and serving better than
sexual instruction to represent to her the phenomena of
intercourse. If at this period actual intercourse takes place, it
is, as a rule, free from pain, as also is the introduction of the
speculum. Without any seduction from without, the chaste girl now
frequently finds a way to relieve the excessive tension without
the aid of a man. It is self-abuse that leads gradually to the
production of pain in defloration. The menstrual phenomena
correspond to birth; self-gratification or relief during sleep to
intercourse." This statement of the matter is somewhat too
absolute and unqualified. Under the artificial conditions of
civilization the inhibitory influences of training speedily work
powerfully, and more or less successfully, in banishing sexual
phenomena into the subconscious, sometimes to work all the
mischief there which Freud attributes to them. It must also be
said (as I have pointed out in the discussion of Auto-erotism in
another volume) that sexual dreams seem to be the exception
rather than the rule in innocent girls. It remains true that
sexual phenomena in girls at puberty must not be regarded as
morbid or unnatural. There is also very good reason for believing
(even apart from the testimony of so experienced a gynecologist
as Hammer) that on the physical side sexual processes tend to be
accomplished with a facility that is often lost in later years
with prolonged chastity. This is true alike of intercourse and of
childbirth. (See vol. vi of these _Studies_, ch. xii.)

Even, however, in the case of adults the active part played by women in
real life in matters of love by no means corresponds to the conventional
ideas on these subjects. No doubt nearly every woman receives her sexual
initiation from an older and more experienced man. But, on the other hand,
nearly every man receives his first initiation through the active and
designed steps taken by an older and more experienced woman. It is too
often forgotten by those who write on these subjects that the man who
seduces a woman has usually himself in the first place been "seduced" by a
woman.

A well-known physician in Chicago tells me that on making inquiry
of 25 middle-class married men in succession be found that 16 had
been first seduced by a woman. An officer in the Indian Medical
Service writes to me as follows: "Once at a club in Burma we were
some 25 at table and the subject of first intercourse came up.
All had been led astray by servants save 2, whom their sisters'
governesses had initiated. We were all men in the 'service,' so
the facts may be taken to be typical of what occurs in our
stratum of society. All had had sexual relations with respectable
unmarried girls, and most with the wives of men known to their
fathers, in some instances these being old enough to be their
lovers' mothers. Apparently up to the age of 17 none had dared to
make the first advances, yet from the age of 13 onward all had
had ample opportunity for gratifying their sexual instincts with
women. Though all had been to public schools where homosexuality
was known to occur, yet (as I can assert from intimate knowledge)
none had given signs of inversion or perversion in Burma."

In Russia, Tchlenoff, investigating the sexual life of over 2000
Moscow students of upper and middle class (_Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, Oct.-Nov., 1908), found that in half
of them the first coitus took place between 14 and 17 years of
age; in 41 per cent, with prostitutes, in 39 per cent, with
servants, and in 10 per cent, with married women. In 41 per cent,
the young man declared that he had taken the initiative, in 25
per cent, the women took it, and in 23 per cent, the incitement
came from a comrade.

The histories I have recorded in Appendix B (as well as in the
two following volumes of these _Studies_) very well illustrate
the tendency of young girls to manifest sexual impulses when
freed from the constraint which they feel in the presence of
adult men and from the fear of consequences. These histories show
especially how very frequently nurse-maids and servant-girls
effect the sexual initiation of the young boys intrusted to them.
How common this impulse is among adolescent girls of low social
class is indicated by the fact that certainly the majority of
middle-class men can recall instances from their own childhood.
(I here leave out of account the widespread practice among nurses
of soothing very young children in their charge by manipulating
the sexual organs.)

A medical correspondent, in emphasizing this point, writes that
"many boys will tell you that, if a nurse-girl is allowed to
sleep in the same room with them, she will attempt sexual
manipulations. Either the girl gets into bed with the boy and
pulling him on to her tickles the penis and inserts it into the
vulva, making the boy imitate sexual movements, or she simply
masturbates the child, to get him excited and interested, often
showing him the female sexual opening in herself or in his
sisters, teaching him to finger it. In fact, a nurse-girl may
ruin a boy, chiefly, I think, because she has been brought up to
regard the sexual organs as a mystery, and is in utter ignorance
about them. She thus takes the opportunity of investigating the
boy's penis to find out how it works, etc., in order to satisfy
her curiosity. I know of a case in which a nurse in a fashionable
London Square garden used to collect all the boys and girls
(gentlemen's children) in a summer-house when it grew dark, and,
turning up her petticoats, invite all the boys to look at and
feel her vulva, and also incite the older boys of 12 or 14 to
have coitus with her. Girls are afraid of pregnancy, so do not
allow an adult penis to operate. I think people should take on a
far higher class of nurses, than they do."

"Children ought never to be allowed, under any circumstances
whatever," wrote Lawson Tait (_Diseases of Women_, 1889, p. 62),
"to sleep with servants. In every instance where I have found a
number of children affected [by masturbation] the contagion has
been traced to a servant." Freud has found (_Neurologisches
Centralblatt_, No. 10, 1896) that in cases of severe youthful
hysteria the starting point may frequently be traced to sexual
manipulations by servants, nurse-girls, and governesses.

"When I was about 8 or 9," a friend writes, "a servant-maid of
our family, who used to carry the candle out of my bedroom, often
drew down the bedclothes and inspected my organs. One night she
put the penis in her mouth. When I asked her why she did it her
answer was that 'sucking a boy's little dangle' cured her of
pains in her stomach. She said that she had done it to other
little boys, and declared that she liked doing it. This girl was
about 16; she had lately been 'converted.' Another maid in our
family used to kiss me warmly on the naked abdomen when I was a
small boy. But she never did more than that. I have heard of
various instances of servant-girls tampering with boys before
puberty, exciting the penis to premature erection by
manipulation, suction, and contact with their own parts." Such
overstimulation must necessarily in some cases have an injurious
influence on the boy's immature nervous system. Thus, Hutchinson
(_Archives of Surgery_, vol. iv, p. 200) describes a case of
amblyopia in a boy, developing after he had been placed to sleep
in a servant-girl's room.

Moll (_Kontraere Sexualempfindung_, third edition, 1899, p. 325)
refers to the frequency with which servant-girls (between the
ages of 18 and 30) carry on sexual practices with young boys
(between 5 and 13) committed to their care. More than a century
earlier Tissot, in his famous work on onanism, referred to the
frequency with which servant-girls corrupt boys by teaching them
to masturbate; and still earlier, in England, the author of
_Onania_ gave many such cases. We may, indeed, go back to the
time of Rabelais, who (as Dr. Kiernan reminds me) represents the
governesses of Gargantua, when he was a child, as taking pleasure
in playing with his penis till it became wet, and joking with
each other about it. (_Gargantua_, book i, chapter ix.)

The prevalence of such manifestations among servant-girls
witnesses to their prevalence among lower-class girls generally.
In judging such acts, even when they seem to be very deliberate,
it is important to remember that at this age unreasoning instinct
plays a very large part in the manifestations of the sexual
impulse. This is clearly indicated by the phenomena observed in
the insane. Thus, as we have seen (page 214), Schroeter has found
that, among girls of low social class under 20 years of age,
spontaneous periodical sexual manifestations at menstrual epochs
occurred in as large a proportion as 72 per cent. Among girls of
better social position these impulses are inhibited, or at all
events modified, by good taste or good feeling, the influences of
tradition or education; it is only to the latter that children
should be intrusted.

Hoche mentions a case in which a man was accused of repeatedly
exhibiting his sexual organs to the servant-girl at a house; she
enjoyed the spectacle (_Neurologisches Centralblatt_, 1896, No.
2). It may well be that in some cases of self-exhibition the
offender has good reason, on the ground of previous experience,
for thinking that he is giving pleasure. "When we used to go to
bathe while I was at school," writes a correspondent, "girls from
a poor quarter of the lower town (some quite 16) often followed
us and stood to watch about a hundred yards from the river. They
used to 'giggle' and 'pass remarks.' I have seen girls of this
class peeping through chinks of a palisade around a bathing-place
on the Thames." A correspondent who has given special attention
to the point tells me of the great interest displayed by young
girls of the people in Italy in the sexual organs of men.

Curiosity--whether in the form of the desire for knowledge or the
desire for sensation--is, of course, not confined to young girls
and women of lower social strata, though in them it is less often
restrained by motives of self-respect and good feeling. "At the
age of 8," writes a correspondent, "I was one day playing in a
spare room with a girl of about 12 or 13. She gave me a
penholder, and, crouching upon her hands and knees, with her
posterior toward me, invited me to introduce the instrument into
the vulva. This was the first time I had seen the female parts,
and, as I appeared to be somewhat repelled, she coaxed me to
comply with her desire. I did as she directed, and she said that
it gave her pleasure. Several times after I repeated the same act
at her request. A friend tells me that when he was 10 a girl of
16 asked him to lace up her boots. While he was kneeling at her
feet his hand touched her ankle. She asked him to put his hand
higher, and repeated 'Higher, higher,' till he touched the
pudenda, and finally, at her request, put his finger into the
vestibule. This girl was very handsome and amiable, and a
favorite of the boy's mother. No one suspected this propensity."
Again, a correspondent (a man of science) tells me of a friend
who lately, when dining out, met a girl, the daughter of a
country vicar; he was not specially attracted to her and paid her
no special attention. "A few days afterward he was astonished to
receive a call from her one afternoon (though his address is not
discoverable from any recognized source). She sat down as near to
him as she could, and rested her hand on his thigh, etc., while
talking on different subjects and drinking tea. Then without any
verbal prelude she asked him to have connection with her. Though
not exactly a Puritan, he is not the man to jump at such an offer
from a woman he is not in love with, so, after ascertaining that
the girl was _virgo intacta_, he declined and she went away. A
fortnight or so later he received a letter from her in the
country, making no reference to what had passed, but giving an
account of her work with her Sunday-school class. He did not
reply, and then came a curt note asking him to return her letter.
My friend feels sure she was devoted to auto-erotic performances,
but, having become attracted to him, came to the conclusion she
would like to try normal intercourse."

Wolbarst, studying the prevalence of gonorrhea among boys in New
York (especially, it would appear, in quarters where the
foreign-born elements--mainly Russian Jew and south Italian--are
large), states: "In my study of this subject there have been
observed 3 cases of gonorrheal urethritis, in boys aged,
respectively, 4, 10, and 12 years, which were acquired in the
usual manner, from girls ranging between 10 and 12 years of age.
In each case, according to the story told by the victim, the girl
made the first advances, and in I case, that of the 4-year-old
boy, the act was consummated in the form of an assault, by a
girl 12 years old, in which the child was threatened with injury
unless he performed his part." (A.L. Wolbarst, _Journal of the
American Medical Association_, Sept. 28, 1901.) In a further
series of cases (_Medical Record_, Oct. 29, 1910) Wolbarst
obtained similar results, though he recognizes also the frequency
of precocious sexuality in the young boys themselves.

Gibb states, concerning assaults on children by women: "It is
undeniably true that they occur much more frequently than is
generally supposed, although but few of the cases are brought to
public notice, owing to the difficulty of proving the charge."
(W.T. Gibb, article "Indecent Assaults upon Children," in A.
McLane Hamilton's _System of Legal Medicine_, vol. i, p. 651.)
Gibb's opinion carries weight, since he is medical adviser for
the New York Society for the Protection of Children, and
compelled to sift the evidence carefully in such cases.

It should be mentioned that, while a sexual curiosity exercised
on younger children is, in girls about the age of puberty, an
ill-regulated, but scarcely morbid, manifestation, in older women
it may be of pathological origin. Thus, Kisch records the case of
a refined and educated lady of 30 who had been married for nine
years, but had never experienced sexual pleasure in coitus. For a
long time past, however, she had felt a strong desire to play
with the genital organs of children of either sex, a proceeding
which gave her sexual pleasure. She sought to resist this impulse
as much as possible, but during menstruation it was often
irresistible. Examination showed an enlarged and retroflexed
uterus and anesthesia of vagina. (Kisch, _Die Sterilitaet des
Weibes_, 1886, p. 103.) The psychological mechanism by which an
anesthetic vagina leads to a feeling of repulsion for normal
coitus and normal sexual organs, and directs the sexual feelings
toward more infantile forms of sexuality, is here not difficult
to trace.

It is not often that the sexual attempts of girls and young women
on boys--notwithstanding their undoubted frequency--become of
medico-legal interest. In France in the course of ten years (1874
to 1884) only 181 women, who were mostly between 20 and 30 years
of age, were actually convicted of sexual attempts on children
below 15. (Paul Bernard, "Viols et attentats a la Pudeur,"
_Archives de l'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1887.) Lop ("Attentats
a la Pudeur commis par des Femmes sur des Petits Enfants," id.,
Aug., 1896) brings together a number of cases chiefly committed
by girls between the ages of 18 and 20. In England such
accusations against a young woman or girl may easily be
circumvented. If she is under 16 she is protected by the Criminal
Law Amendment Act and cannot be punished. In any case, when found
out, she can always easily bring the sympathy to her side by
declaring that she is not the aggressor, but the victim. Cases of
violent sexual assault upon girls, Lawson Tait remarks, while
they undoubtedly do occur, are very much rarer than the frequency
with which the charge is made would lead us to suspect. At one
time, by arrangement with the authority, 70 such charges at
Birmingham were consecutively brought before Lawson Tait. These
charges were all made under the Criminal Law Amendment Act. In
only 6 of these cases was he able to advise prosecution, in all
of which cases conviction was obtained. In 7 other cases in which
the police decided to prosecute there was either no conviction or
a very light sentence. In at least 26 cases the charge was
clearly trumped up. The average age of these girls was 12. "There
is not a piece of sexual argot that ever had before reached my
ears," remarks Mr. Tait, "but was used by these children in the
descriptions given by them of what had been done to them; and
they introduced, in addition, quite a new vocabulary on the
subject. The minute and detailed descriptions of the sexual act
given by chits of 10 and 11 would do credit to the pages of
Mirabeau. At first sight it is a puzzle to see how children so
young obtained their information." "About the use of the word
'seduced,'" the same writer remarks, "I wish to say that the
class of women from amongst whom the great bulk of these cases
are drawn seem to use it in a sense altogether different from
that generally employed. It is not with them a process in which
male villainy succeeds by various arts in overcoming female
virtue and reluctance, but simply a date at which an incident in
their lives occurs for the first time; and, according to their
use of the phrase, the ancient legend of the Sacred Scriptures,
had it ended in the more ordinary and usual way by the virtue of
Joseph yielding to the temptation offered, would have to read as
a record of the seduction of Mrs. Potiphar."

With reference to Lawson Tait's observation that violent assaults
on women, while they do occur, are very much rarer than the
frequency with which such charges are made would lead us to
believe, it may be remarked that many medico-legal authorities
are of the same opinion. (See, e.g., G. Vivian Poore's _Treatise
on Medical Jurisprudence_, 1901, p. 325. This writer also
remarks: "I hold very strongly that a woman may rape a man as
much as a man may rape a woman.") There can be little doubt that
the plea of force is very frequently seized on by women as the
easiest available weapon of defense when her connection with a
man has been revealed. She has been so permeated by the current
notion that no "respectable" woman can possibly have any sexual
impulses of her own to gratify that, in order to screen what she
feels to be regarded as an utterly shameful and wicked, as well
as foolish, act, she declares it never took place by her own will
at all. "Now, I ask you, gentlemen," I once heard an experienced
counsel address the jury in a criminal case, "as men of the
world, have you ever known or heard of a woman, a single woman,
confess that she had had sexual connection and not declare that
force had been used to compel her to such connection?" The
statement is a little sweeping, but in this matter there is some
element of truth in the "man of the world's" opinion. One may
refer to the story (told by Etienne de Bourbon, by Francisco de
Osuna in a religious work, and by Cervantes in _Don Quixote_,
part ii, ch. xlv) concerning a magistrate who, when a girl came
before him to complain of rape, ordered the accused young man
either to marry her or pay her a sum of money. The fine was paid,
and the magistrate then told the man to follow the girl and take
the money from her by force; the man obeyed, but the girl
defended herself so energetically that he could not secure the
money. Then the judge, calling the parties before him again,
ordered the fine to be returned: "Had you defended your chastity
as well as you have defended your money it could not have been
taken away from you." In most cases of "rape," in the case of
adults, there has probably been some degree of consent, though
that partial assent may have been basely secured by an appeal to
the lower nervous centers alone, with no participation of the
intelligence and will. Freud (_Zur Psychopathologie des
Alltagslebens_, p. 87) considers that on this ground the judge's
decision in _Don Quixote_ is "psychologically unjust," because in
such a case the woman's strength is paralyzed by the fact that an
unconscious instinct in herself takes her assailant's part
against her own conscious resistance. But it must be remembered
that the factor of instinct plays a large part even when no
violence is attempted.

Such facts and considerations as these tend to show that the sexual
impulse is by no means so weak in women as many would lead us to think. It
would appear that, whereas in earlier ages there was generally a tendency
to credit women with an unduly large share of the sexual impulse, there is
now a tendency to unduly minimize the sexual impulse in women.


FOOTNOTES:

[156] I have had occasion to refer to the historic evolution of male
opinion regarding women in previous volumes, as, e.g., _Man and Woman_,
chapter i, and the appendix on "The Influence of Menstruation on the
Position of Women" in the first volume of these _Studies_.

[157] The terminology proposed by Ziehen ("Zur Lehre von den
psychopathischen Konstitutionen," _Charite Annalen_, vol. xxxxiii, 1909)
is as follows: For absence of sexual feeling, _anhedonia_; for diminution
of the same, _hyphedonia_; for excess of sexual feeling, _hyperhedonia_;
for qualitative sexual perversions, _parhedonia_. "Erotic blindness" was
suggested by Nardelli.

[158] O. Adler, _Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_, 1904,
p. 146.

[159] A correspondent tells me that he knows a woman who has been a
prostitute since the age of 15, but never experienced sexual pleasure and
a real, non-simulated orgasm till she was 23; since then she has become
very sensual. In other similar cases the hitherto indifferent prostitute,
having found the man who suits her, abandons her profession, even though
she is thereby compelled to live in extreme poverty. "An insensible
woman," as La Bruyere long ago remarked in his chapter "Des Femmes," "is
merely one who has not yet seen the man she must love."

[160] Guttceit (_Dreissig Jahre Praxis_, vol. i, p. 416) pointed out that
the presence or absence of the orgasm is the only factor in "sexual
anesthesia" of which we can speak at all definitely; and he believed that
anaphrodism, in the sense of absence of the sexual impulse, never occurs
at all, many women having confided to him that they had sexual desires,
although those desires were not gratified by coitus.

[161] _Op. cit._, p. 164.

[162] Havelock Ellis, "Madame de Warens," _The Venture_, 1903.

[163] It is interesting to observe that finally even Adler admits (op.
cit., p. 155) that there is no such thing as _congenital_ lack of aptitude
for sexual sensibility.

[164] "I am not entirely satisfied with the testimony as to the alleged
sexual anesthesia," a medical correspondent writes. "The same principle
which makes the young harlot an old saint makes the repentant rake a
believer in sexual anesthesia. Most of the medical men who believe, or
claim to believe, that sexual anesthesia is so prevalent do so either to
flatter their hysterical patients or because they have the mentality of
the Hyacinthe of Zola's _Paris_."

[165] _Differences in the Nervous Organization of Man and Woman_, 1891;
chapter xiii, "Sexual Instinct in Men and Women Compared."

[166] Matthews Duncan considered that "the healthy performance of the
functions of child-bearing is surely connected with a well-regulated
condition of desire and pleasure." "Desire and pleasure," he adds, "may be
excessive, furious, overpowering, without bringing the female into the
class of maniacs; they may be temporary, healthy, and moderate; they may
be absent or dull." (Matthews Duncan, _Goulstonian Lectures on Sterility
in Woman_, pp. 91, 121.)

[167] Geoffrey Mortimer, _Chapters on Human Love_, 1898, ch. xvi.

[168] I do not, however, attach much weight to this possibility. The
sexual instinct among the lower social classes everywhere is subject to
comparatively weak inhibition, and Loewenfeld is probably right in
believing the women of the lower class do not suffer from sexual
anesthesia to anything like the same extent as upper-class women. In
England most women of the working class appear to have had sexual
intercourse at some time in their lives, notwithstanding the risks of
pregnancy, and if pregnancy occurs they refer to it calmly as an
"accident," for which they cannot be held responsible; "Well, I couldn't
help that," I have heard a young widow remark when mildly reproached for
the existence of her illegitimate child. Again, among American negresses
there seems to be no defect of sexual passion, and it is said that the
majority of negresses in the Southern States support not only their
children, but their lovers and husbands.




II.

Special Characters of the Sexual Impulse in Women--The More Passive Part
Played by Women in Courtship--This Passivity only Apparent--The Physical
Mechanism of the Sexual Process in Women More Complex--The Slower
Development of Orgasm in Women--The Sexual Impulse in Women More
Frequently Needs to be Actively Aroused--The Climax of Sexual Energy Falls
Later in Women's Lives than in Men's--Sexual Ardor in Women Increased
After the Establishment of Sexual Relationships--Women bear Sexual
Excesses better than Men--The Sexual Sphere Larger and More Diffused in
Women--The Sexual Impulse in Women Shows a Greater Tendency to Periodicity
and a Wider Range of Variation.


So far I have been discussing the question of the sexual impulse in women
on the ground upon which previous writers have usually placed it. The
question, that is, has usually presented itself to them as one concerning
the relative strength of the impulse in men and women. When so considered,
not hastily and with prepossession, as is too often the case, but with a
genuine desire to get at the real facts in all their aspects, there is no
reason, as we have seen, to conclude that, on the whole, the sexual
impulse in women is lacking in strength.

But we have to push our investigation of the matter further. In reality,
the question as to whether the sexual impulse is or is not stronger in one
sex than in the other is a somewhat crude one. To put the question in that
form is to reveal ignorance of the real facts of the matter. And in that
form, moreover, no really definite and satisfactory answer can be given.

It is necessary to put the matter on different ground. Instead of taking
more or less insolvable questions as to the strength of the sexual impulse
in the two sexes, it is more profitable to consider its differences. What
are the special characters of the sexual impulse in women?

There is certainly one purely natural sexual difference of a fundamental
character, which lies at the basis of whatever truth may be in the
assertion that women are not susceptible of sexual emotion. As may he
seen when considering the phenomena of modesty, the part played by the
female in courtship throughout nature is usually different from that
played by the male, and is, in some respects, a more difficult and complex
part. Except when the male fails to play his part properly, she is usually
comparatively passive; in the proper playing of her part she has to appear
to shun the male, to flee from his approaches--even actually to repel
them.[169]

Courtship resembles very closely, indeed, a drama or game; and the
aggressiveness of the male, the coyness of the female, are alike
unconsciously assumed in order to bring about in the most effectual manner
the ultimate union of the sexes. The seeming reluctance of the female is
not intended to inhibit sexual activity either in the male or in herself,
but to increase it in both. The passivity of the female, therefore, is not
a real, but only an apparent, passivity, and this holds true of our own
species as much as of the lower animals. "Women are like delicately
adjusted alembics," said a seventeenth-century author. "No fire can be
seen outside, but if you look underneath the alembic, if you place your
hand on the hearts of women, in both places you will find a great
furnace."[170] Or, as Marro has finely put it, the passivity of women in
love is the passivity of the magnet, which in its apparent immobility is
drawing the iron toward it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity,
an absorbed preoccupation in the end to be attained.

Tarde, when exercising magistrate's functions, once had to inquire into a
case in which a young man was accused of murder. In questioning a girl of
18, a shepherdess, who appeared before him as a witness, she told him that
on the morning following the crime she had seen the footmarks of the
accused up to a certain point. He asked how she recognized them, and she
replied, ingenuously but with assurance, that she could recognize the
footprints of every young man in the neighborhood, even in a plowed
field.[171] No better illustration could be given of the real significance
of the sexual passivity of women, even at its most negative point.

"The women I have known," a correspondent writes, "do not express
their sensations and feelings as much as I do. Nor have I found
women usually anxious to practise 'luxuries.' They seldom care to
practice _fellatio_; I have only known one woman who offered to
do _fellatio_ because she liked it. Nor do they generally care to
masturbate a man; that is, they do not care greatly to enjoy the
contemplation of the other person's excitement. (To me, to see
the woman excited means almost more than my own pleasure.) They
usually resist _cunnilinctus_, although they enjoy it. They do
not seem to care to touch or look at a man's parts so much as he
does at theirs. And they seem to dislike the tongue-kiss unless
they feel very sexual or really love a man." My correspondent
admits that his relationships have been numerous and facile,
while his erotic demands tend also to deviate from the normal
path. Under such circumstances, which not uncommonly occur, the
woman's passions fail to be deeply stirred, and she retains her
normal attitude of relative passivity.

It is owing to the fact that the sexual passivity of women is
only an apparent, and not a real, passivity that women are apt to
suffer, as men are, from prolonged sexual abstinence. This,
indeed, has been denied, but can scarcely be said to admit of
doubt. The only question is as to the relative amount of such
suffering, necessarily a very difficult question. As far back as
the fourteenth century Johannes de Sancto Amando stated that
women are more injured than men by sexual abstinence. In modern
times Maudsley considers that women "suffer more than men do from
the entire deprivation of sexual intercourse" ("Relations between
Body and Mind," _Lancet_, May 28, 1870). By some it has been held
that this cause may produce actual disease. Thus, Tilt, an
eminent gynecologist of the middle of the nineteenth century, in
discussing this question, wrote: "When we consider how much of
the lifetime of woman is occupied by the various phases of the
generative process, and how terrible is often the conflict within
her between the impulse of passion and the dictates of duty, it
may be well understood how such a conflict reacts on the organs
of the sexual economy in the unimpregnated female, and
principally on the ovaria, causing an orgasm, which, if often
repeated, may _possibly_ be productive of subacute ovaritis."
(Tilt, _On Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation_, 1862, pp. 309-310.)
Long before Tilt, Haller, it seems, had said that women are
especially liable to suffer from privation of sexual intercourse
to which they have been accustomed, and referred to chlorosis,
hysteria, nymphomania, and simple mania curable by intercourse.
Hegar considers that in women an injurious result follows the
nonsatisfaction of the sexual impulse and of the "ideal
feelings," and that symptoms thus arise (pallor, loss of flesh,
cardialgia, malaise, sleeplessness, disturbances of menstruation)
which are diagnosed as "chlorosis." (Hegar, _Zusammenhang der
Geschlechtskrankheiten mit nervoesen Leiden_, 1885, p. 45.) Freud,
as well as Gattel, has found that states of anxiety
(_Angstzustaende_) are caused by sexual abstinence. Loewenfeld, on
careful examination of his own cases, is able to confirm this
connection in both sexes. He has specially noticed it in young
women who marry elderly husbands. Loewenfeld believes, however,
that, on the whole, healthy unmarried women bear sexual
abstinence better than men. If, however, they are of at all
neuropathic disposition, ungratified sexual emotions may easily
lead to various morbid conditions, especially of a
hysteroneurasthenic character. (Loewenfeld, _Sexualleben und
Nervenleiden_, second edition, 1899, pp. 44, 47, 54-60.)
Balls-Headley considers that unsatisfied sexual desires in women
may lead to the following conditions: general atrophy, anemia,
neuralgia and hysteria, irregular menstruation, leucorrhea,
atrophy of sexual organs. He also refers to the frequency of
myoma of the uterus among those who have not become pregnant or
who have long ceased to bear children. (Balls-Headley, art.
"Etiology of Diseases of Female Genital Organs," Allbutt and
Playfair, _System of Gynaecology_, 1896, p. 141.) It cannot,
however, be said that he brings forward substantial evidence in
favor of these beliefs. It may be added that in America, during
recent years, leading gynecologists have recorded a number of
cases in which widows on remarriage have shown marked improvement
in uterine and pelvic conditions.

The question as to whether men or women suffer most from sexual
abstinence, as well as the question whether definite morbid
conditions are produced by such abstinence, remains, however, an
obscure and debated problem. The available data do not enable us
to answer it decisively. It is one of those subtle and complex
questions which can only be investigated properly by a
gynecologist who is also a psychologist. Incidentally, however,
we have met and shall have occasion to meet with evidence bearing
on this question. It is sufficient to say here, briefly, that it
is impossible to believe, even if no evidence were forthcoming,
that the exercise or non-exercise of so vastly important a
function can make no difference to the organism generally. So
far as the evidence goes, it may be said to indicate that the
results of the abeyance of the sexual functions in healthy women
in whom the sexual emotions have never been definitely aroused
tend to be diffused and unconscious, as the sexual impulse itself
often is, but that, in women in whom the sexual emotions have
been definitely aroused and gratified, the results of sexual
abstinence tend to be acute and conscious.

These acute results are at the present day very often due to
premature ejaculation by nervous or neurasthenic husbands, the
rapidity with which detumescence is reached in the husband
allowing insufficient time for tumescence in the wife, who
consequently fails to reach the orgasm. This has of late been
frequently pointed out. Thus Kafemann (_Sexual-Probleme_, March,
1910, p. 194 et seq.) emphasizes the prevalence of sexual
incompetence in men. Ferenczi, of Budapest (_Zentralblatt fuer
Psychoanalyse_, 1910, ht. 1 and 2, p. 75), believes that the
combination of neurasthenic husbands with resultantly nervous
wives is extraordinarily common; even putting aside the
neurasthenic, he considers it may be said that the whole male sex
in relation to women suffer from precocious ejaculation. He adds
that it is often difficult to say whether the lack of harmony may
not be due to retarded orgasm in the woman. He regards the
influence of masturbation in early life as tending to quicken
orgasm in man, while when practised by the other sex it tends to
slow orgasm, and thus increases the disharmony. He holds,
however, that the chief cause lies in the education of women with
its emphasis on sexual repression; this works too well and the
result is that when the external impediments to the sexual
impulse are removed the impulse has become incapable of normal
action. Porosz (_British Medical Journal_, April 1, 1911) has
brought forward cases of serious nervous trouble in women which
have been dispersed when the sexual weakness and premature
ejaculation of the husband have been cured.

The true nature of the passivity of the female is revealed by the ease
with which it is thrown off, more especially when the male refuses to
accept his cue. Or, if we prefer to accept the analogy of a game, we may
say that in the play of courtship the first move belongs to the male, but
that, if he fails to play, it is then the female's turn to play.

Among many birds the males at mating time fall into a state of
sexual frenzy, but not the females. "I cannot call to mind a
single case," states an authority on birds (H.E. Howard,
_Zooelogist_, 1902, p. 146), "where I have seen anything
approaching frenzy in the female of any species while mating."

Another great authority on birds, a very patient and skillful
observer, Mr. Edmund Selous, remarks, however, in describing the
courting habits of the ruffs and reeves (_Machetes pugnax_) that,
notwithstanding the passivity of the females beforehand, their
movements during and after coitus show that they derive at least
as much pleasure as the males. (E. Selous, "Selection in Birds,"
_Zooelogist_, Feb. and May, 1907.)

The same observer, after speaking of the great beauty of the male
eider duck, continues: "These glorified males--there were a dozen
of these, perhaps, to some six or seven females--swam closely
about the latter, but more in attendance upon them than as
actively pursuing them, for the females seemed themselves almost
as active agents in the sport of being wooed as were their lovers
in wooing them. The male bird first dipped down his head till his
beak just touched the water, then raised it again in a
constrained and tense manner,--the curious rigid action so
frequent in the nuptial antics of birds,--at the same time
uttering his strange haunting note. The air became filled with
it; every moment one or other of the birds--sometimes several
together--with upturned bill would softly laugh or exclaim, and
while the males did this, the females, turning excitedly, and
with little eager demonstrations from one to another of them,
kept lowering and extending forward the head and neck in the
direction of each in turn.... I noticed that a female would often
approach a male bird with her head and neck laid flat along the
water as though in a very 'coming on' disposition, and that the
male bird declined her advances. This, taken in conjunction with
the actions of the female when courted by the male, appears to me
to raise a doubt as to the universal application of the law that
throughout nature the male, in courtship, is eager, and the
female coy. Here, to all appearances, courtship was proceeding,
and the birds had not yet mated. The female eider ducks,
however,--at any rate, some of them,--appeared to be anything but
coy." (_Bird Watching_, pp. 144-146.)

Among moor-hens and great-crested grebes sometimes what Selous
terms "functional hermaphroditism" occurs and the females play
the part of the male toward their male companions, and then
repeat the sexual act with a reversion to the normal order, the
whole to the satisfaction of both parties. (E. Selous,
_Zooelogist_, 1902, p. 196.)

It is not only among birds that the female sometimes takes the