Feminism; Women; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
Women, as result of like abnormal undevelopment, or after operative
removal of reproductive organs (_propter quos est mulier_) become
mannish of type. In extreme cases the figure changes to a strong and
sturdy maleness, the voice drops to gruffness; manners and speech become
terse and abrupt, the jaw squares; even moustache or beard may develop.
Such women lose, perhaps, every womanly characteristic; refinement of
form, mental delicacy and sensitiveness, emotion, subtlety. They lapse
to the biological grade, not of cultured, but of rough working men. In
lesser degrees of sex-extinction, such as are seen in many of our modern
girls, de-sexed by masculine training, the subjects are boyish merely;
lean, active, restless, hipless, breastless, lacking all those fair,
delicate artistries of face and form, as likewise the complex
sensibility and emotionalism which are the higher characteristics of
their sex.
III
These and other singularities of the phenomenon indicate that man has,
so to speak, a woman concealed in him; woman has a man submerged in her.
The case suggests the little Noah and his wife of the toy weatherglass.
Under some conditions the man in woman emerges temporarily. Under some
conditions the woman in man reveals herself. But the emergence in the
one sex of the characteristics of the other, when appreciable and
permanent, is abnormal and unpleasing, and is obviously degenerative.
Man is at his best when the woman in him is dominated by his natural
virile traits. Woman is at her best when the man in her is sheathed
within her native womanliness. This way, each is a highly evolved and a
finely-specialised creation.
Nevertheless, such possession, in latency, of the qualities of the
other, not only enhances for members of both sexes the potence of their
own, inspiring and enriching these, but it engenders more perfect
sympathy and understanding between them. The woman in man endues him
with intuitive apprehension of the Woman-nature; of its needs and modes,
its disabilities, its sufferings and aspirations. The man in woman
informs her of the intrinsic values of his sterner calibre, and thus
lends her patience with his impatiences, moves her tenderness and care
for him in his rougher, more arduous lot, wins her admiration of his
enterprises and ambitions. Moreover, the man in her strengthens and
intelligises her mental fibre, stiffens and renders more stable and
effective her more pliant will and softer, more delicate aptitudes.
While she, in her turn, endows him with her intrinsic mentalities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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