Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of SexThomas, William Isaac
Science
Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex
Thomas, William Isaac
Sex; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
One of the most important facts which stand out in a comparison of
the physical traits of men and women is that man is a more specialized
instrument for motion, quicker on his feet, with a longer reach, and
fitted for bursts of energy; while woman has a greater fund of stored
energy and is consequently more fitted for endurance. The development
of intelligence and motion have gone along side by side in all animal
forms. Through motion chances and experiences are multiplied, the
whole equilibrium characterizing the stationary form is upset, and the
organs of sense and the intelligence are developed to take note of and
manipulate the outside world. Amid the recurrent dangers incident to
a world peopled with moving and predacious forms, two attitudes may be
assumed--that of fighting, and that of fleeing or hiding. As between
the two, concealment and evasion became more characteristic of the
female, especially among mammals, where the young are particularly
helpless and need protection for a long period. She remained,
therefore, more stationary, and at the same time acquired more
cunning, than the male.
In mankind especially, the fact that woman had to rely on cunning
and the protection of man rather than on swift motion, while man had
a freer range of motion and adopted a fighting technique, was the
starting-point of a differentiation in the habits and interests,
which had a profound effect on the consciousness of each. Man's most
immediate, most fascinating, and most remunerative occupation was
the pursuit of animal life. The pursuit of this stimulated him to
the invention of devices for killing and capture; and this aptitude
for invention was later extended to the invention of tools and of
mechanical devices in general, and finally developed into a settled
habit of scientific interest. The scientific imagination which
characterizes man in contrast with women is not a distinctive male
trait, but represents a constructive habit of attention associated
with freer movement and the pursuit of evasive animal forms. The
problem of control was more difficult, and the means of securing it
became more indirect, mediated, reflective, and inventive; that is,
more intelligent.
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