Читать книгу The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization - Iwan 1872-1922 Bloch - Страница 25

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An old and still unsettled subject of dispute is the strength and nature of sexual sensibility in woman. Whilst the manifestation of sexual appetite and sexual enjoyment in the male are fairly simple—and in man, as A. Eulenburg has proved, the copulatory impulse is much more powerful than the reproductive impulse—the sexual sensibility of woman is still involved in obscurity. Magendie remarked that no two women are exactly alike in respect of their sexual sensations and perceptions. There is no question that among women the varieties of erotic type are far more numerous than among men. Rosa Mayreder, for instance, distinguishes an erotic-eccentric, an altruistic-sentimental, and an egoistic-frigid type. The attempt has been made to prove that the last-named type is the most widely diffused—that it is, in fact, the characteristic type of woman. Lombroso and Ferrero were the first to maintain the slight sexual sensibility of woman; Harry Campbell took the same view; and recently a Berlin physician—Dr. O. Adler—has published a book on the “Deficient Sexual Sensibility of Woman,” the conclusions of which are that

“the sexual impulse (desire, libido) of woman is, alike in its first spontaneous origin and in its later manifestation, notably less intense than that of man; and further, that libido must first be aroused in a suitable manner, and that often it never appears at all.”

Albert Eulenburg, in an article in Zukunft (December 2, 1893), and later in his “Sexual Neuropathy,” pp. 88, 89 (Leipzig, 1895), first opposed this doctrine of the physiological sexual anæsthesia of woman, and quoted in support of his view the following passage from the writings of the celebrated gynæcologist Kisch:

“The sexual impulse is so powerful, in certain life periods it is an elementary force which so overwhelmingly dominates the entire organism of woman, that it leaves no room in her mind for thoughts of reproduction; on the contrary, she greatly desires sexual intercourse even when she is very much afraid of becoming pregnant or when there can be no question of any pregnancy occurring” (see Kisch, “The Sexual Life of Woman,” English translation, Rebman, 1908).

I have myself asked a great many cultured women about this matter. Without exception, they declared the theory of the lesser sexual sensibility of women to be erroneous; many were even of opinion that sexual sensibility was greater and more enduring in woman than in man.[30]

When we actually consider the physical bases of feminine sexuality, we must admit that women’s sexual sphere is a much more widely extended one than that of men. The author of “Splitter” has very well characterized this fact when he says:

“Women are in fact pure sex from knees to neck. We men have concentrated our apparatus in a single place, we have extracted it, separated it from the rest of the body, because prèt à partir. They (women) are a great sexual surface or target; we have only a sexual arrow. Procreation is their proper element, and when they are engaged in it they remain at home in their own sphere; we for this purpose must go elsewhere out of ourselves. In the matter of time also our part in procreation is concentrated. We may devote to the matter barely ten minutes; women give as many months. Properly speaking, they procreate unceasingly, they stand continually at the witches’ cauldron, boiling and brewing; while we lend a hand merely in passing, and do no more than throw one or two fragments into the vessel.”

It is possible, however, that the greater extension of the sexual sphere in woman gives rise, if one may use the expression, to a greater dispersal of sexual sensations, which are not, as they are in man, closely concentrated to a particular point, and for this reason the spontaneous resolution of the libido (in the form of the sexual orgasm) is rendered more difficult.

Recently Havelock Ellis has made a searching investigation into the nature of the sexual impulse in woman. He found the following differences by which it was distinguished from the sexual impulse of the male:

1. The sexual impulse of woman shows greater external passivity.

2. It is more complicated, less readily arises spontaneously, more frequently needs external stimulus, while the orgasm develops more slowly than in man.

3. It develops in its full strength only after the commencement of regular sexual intercourse.

4. The boundary beyond which sexual excess begins is less easily reached than in man.

5. The sexual sphere has a greater extension, and is more diffusely distributed than in man.

6. The spontaneous appearances of sexual desire have a marked tendency to periodicity.[31]

7. The sexual impulse exhibits in woman greater variability, a greater extent of variation, than in man—alike when we examine separate feminine individuals, and when we compare the different phases in the life of the same woman.

This great extension of the feminine sexual sphere is illustrated, for example, by the case reported by Moraglia, of a woman who was able to induce sexual excitement by the masturbation of fourteen different areas of her body.

How much more woman is sexuality than man is can be observed in asylums, where the conventional inhibitions are withdrawn. Here, according to Shaw’s observations, the women greatly exceed the men in fluency, malignity, and obscenity; and in this relation there is no difference between the shameless virago from the most depraved classes of London and the elegant lady of the upper circles. Noise, uncleanliness, and sexual depravity in speech and demeanour, are much commoner in the women’s wards of asylums than on the male side. In all forms of acute mental disorder, according to Shaw, the sexual element plays a much more prominent part in woman than in man.

Another experienced alienist, Dr. E. Bleuler, confirms this permeation of woman with sexuality. In a recently published work he remarks:

“The whole ‘career’ in the average woman depends on sexuality; marriage, or some equivalent of marriage, signifies to her what to man a position in business signifies—viz., her ambition in all relations, the happily conducted struggle for simple existence, as well as for pleasure and for all else that life can bring, and only after these, sexuality also, and the joy of having children. Not to marry, and also extra-conjugal sexual indulgence, induce in woman inevitable consequences, with strongly marked emotional colouring; to the average man all this is a trifling affair, or it may even be a matter of absolute indifference. And we have further to consider the limits imposed by our civilization, which make it impossible for the well-brought-up woman to live, and even to think, as she pleases in sexual matters, and which demand the actual suppression of sexual emotions, not merely of the outward manifestation of these emotions. Is it to be wondered at that in these circumstances, in mentally disordered women, we encounter once more the suppressed sexual feelings, those sexual feelings which really comprise at least half of our natural existence?—I say at least half, for the analogous impulse, the nutritive impulse, seems really to be inferior in strength to the sexual impulse, in civilized as well as in savage human beings.”

In the majority of cases the sexual frigidity of woman is, in fact, apparent merely—either because behind the veil prescribed by conventional morality, behind the apparent coldness, there is concealed an ardent sexuality, or else because the particular man with whom she has had intercourse has not succeeded rightly in awakening her erotic sensibility, so complicated and so difficult to arouse.[32] When he has succeeded in doing so, the sexual insensibility will in the majority of cases disappear. A striking example of this is seen in the following case:

Case of Temporary Sexual Anæsthesia.—Girl twenty years of age. Early awakening of the sexual impulses. Already practised onanism at the age of five years; often for the sake of sexual stimulation introduced hairpins into the vagina, until one day one of these remained, and had to be removed by operation. Notwithstanding this, she soon resumed masturbation, using for this purpose a finger, a candle, etc. Ultimately this became a daily practice, which she continued until she was eighteen years of age. She then first had sexual intercourse with a man, in which, however, she remained quite cold; this was the case also in subsequent attempts with this man and with others. Finally she met a man with whom she was in sympathy, who succeeded in inducing in her sexual gratification, by exchange of rôles, and corresponding alteration in the position in intercourse. Later, intercourse in the normal position also induced complete sexual gratification; since then onanism has been entirely discontinued, and in coitus the orgasm occurs speedily in one or two minutes.

Where sexual frigidity in woman is enduring in character, we have to do either with inherited influences, with sexual developmental inhibition, the psycho-sexual infantilism of Eulenburg, or with some disease (especially hysteria and other nervous disorders), and with the consequences of habitual masturbation.

Speaking generally, the sexual sensibility of woman is, as we have seen, of quite a different nature from that of man; but in intensity it is at least as great as that of man.

[24] The hermaphroditic idea of antiquity has repeatedly fascinated the human spirit. It certainly cannot be denied that something great and noble underlay this idea of overcoming sex. As long as eighty years before, Weininger and the modern apostles of bisexuality, Johann Michael Leupoldt, Professor of Medicine at the University of Erlangen, made the following prophecy: “The reconciliation of the sexual contrast in every human individual will some day proceed so far that, dynamically understood, with the general attainment of a kind of hermaphroditism, humanity, having reached its earthly goal, will become totally extinct” (“Eubiotik oder Grundzüge der Kunst, als Mensch richtig, tüchtig, wohl und lang zu leben”—“Eubiotics, or Principles of the Art of Living as Man Rightly, Virtuously, Well, and Long,” pp. 232, 233; Berlin and Leipzig, 1828). This would amount to a kind of natural realization of E. von Hartmann’s ideal of conscious self-annihilation at the end of time!

[25] G. Hirth, “Entropy of the Germinal System and Hereditary Enfranchisement,” pp. 89, 90 (Munich, 1900).

[26] See note ([36]), p. 94.

[27] The “ulu” is a kind of knife used by Eskimo women.

[28] Cf. in this connexion, Alice Salomon, “The Choice of a Profession for Girls”; Josephine Levy-Rathenau, “A Consideration of the Various Professions for Women, Qualifications and Prospects”; Elizabeth Altmann-Gottheiner, “A Study of Woman.” These are all published in “Das Buch vom Kinde” (“The Book of the Child”), edited by Adele Schreiber, Leipzig and Berlin, 1907, vol. ii., Div. 2, pp. 182-188, 189-209, 210-216 (contains an abstract of the most important literature of the subject).

[29] On this subject one of our most celebrated economists writes as follows: “Let us observe what to-day a good housewife of the middle class is able to get through in the way of domestic and hygienic activity, and of the education of children, and by means of the knowledge and employment of domestic machines; let us not overlook in what a one-sided way the great advances in natural science and in the mechanical arts have hitherto been devoted to the service of the great industries, what enormous economies are still possible if the same knowledge and intelligence are devoted to the amelioration of domestic service. Only the rough, barbarous housewife of the lower classes can say, ‘I have no more to-day to do in the house.’ When the mode of life is a healthy one, when to every dwelling-house is attached a garden, the housewife even to-day is fully occupied, and in the future will be still more so, notwithstanding all the schools that come to her assistance, all the shops, all the trades; notwithstanding all the products, including food-products, which nowadays she buys ready-made. And besides her domestic activity, she has to find time for lectures, for culture, for music, and for various socially useful activities—even women of quite the lower classes. Without this no social cure is possible.”—G. Schmoller, “Elements of General Domestic Economy,” vol. i., p. 253 (Leipzig, 1901).

The Simplification of Household Duties.—English readers will find the questions briefly touched upon in this note—the enslavement of woman by an unceasing round of petty domestic toil, the necessity for devoting the same amount of finished intelligence to these domestic problems that has been devoted to “labour-saving” in most departments of masculine activity, and the lines on which future progress may be expected to move, bringing about in this way alone a much-needed “emancipation” of women—fully discussed by Mr. H. G. Wells in his sociological studies. See “Anticipations,” “Mankind in the Making,” “A New Utopia,” “In the Days of the Comet.”—Translator.

[30] Noteworthy is the following utterance of a clergyman regarding the sensuality of country girls: “Young women are in no way behind young men in the strength of their fleshly lusts; they are only too willing to be seduced—so willing that even older girls frequently give themselves to half-grown boys, and girls give themselves to several men in brief succession. Moreover, it is by no means always the young men by whom the seduction is effected. Often enough it is the girls who lure the lads to sexual intercourse, in which case they do not wait till the lads come to their rooms, but they go themselves to the young men’s bedrooms, or wait for them in their beds.”—C. Wagner, “The State of Affairs as Regards Sexual Morality among the Evangelical Agricultural Population of the German Empire,” vol. i., sec. 2, p. 213 (Leipzig, 1897).

[31] E. Heinrich Kisch (“The Sexual Life of Woman,” English translation, Rebman, 1908) names the ovaries “regulators of the sexual impulse.” In the ovary, and in the periodical changes that occur in that organ, are to be found the fundamental cause, and the means of regulation, of the sexual impulse; in the clitoris is the seat of voluptuous sensibility.

[32] Georg Hirth remarks very aptly (“Ways to Love,” Munich, 1906, p. 570): “For it is the task of the man to summon his whole power of self-command, to employ all his skill, to take all the care in his power, that the woman may be, as one says, ‘ready.’ The man who thinks only of his own gratification, and who leaves his partner ungratified, is a brutal being, or, if not brutal, he is simply ignorant of the harm he is doing.... In general, the man has the tempo of gratification much better and more securely under control than the woman; in many women, indeed, the sexual orgasm is very difficult to induce, and in such cases the man must help with skill and tenderness.”