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
Woman's activities, on the other hand, were largely limited to plant
life, to her children, and to manufacture, and the stimulation to
mental life and invention in connection with these was not so powerful
as in the case of man. Her inventions were largely processes of
manufacture connected with her handling of the by-products of the
chase. So simple a matter, therefore, as relatively unrestricted
motion on the part of man and relatively restricted motion on the part
of woman determined the occupations of each, and these occupations
in turn created the characteristic mental life of each. In man this
was constructive, answering to his varied experience and the need of
controlling a moving environment; and in woman it was conservative,
answering to her more stationary and monotonous condition.
In early times man's superior physical force, the wider range of his
experience, his mechanical inventions in connection with hunting and
fighting, and his combination under leadership with his comrades to
carry out their common enterprises, resulted in a contempt for the
weakness of women and an almost complete separation in interest
between himself and the women of the group. The men frequently formed
clubs, and lived apart from the women; and even where this did not
happen, the men and women had no mental life in common. To this
contempt for women also was added a superstitious fear of them,
growing out of the primitive belief that weakness or any other bad
quality is infectious, and may be transferred by physical contact or
association.[270]
From Mr. Crawley's excellent paper on "Sexual Taboo" I transcribe the
following illustrations of this attitude:
In New Caledonia you rarely see men and women talking or
sitting together. The women seem perfectly content with the
company of their own sex. The men who loiter about with spears
in most lazy fashion are seldom seen in the society of the
opposite sex.... The Ojebwey, Peter Jones, thus writes of his
own people: "I have scarcely ever seen anything like social
intercourse between husband and wife, and it is remarkable
that the women say little in the presence of the men." The
Zulus regard their women with a haughty contempt. If a man
were going to the bush to cut firewood with his wives, he and
they would take different paths, and neither go nor return in
company. If he were going to visit a neighbor and wished his
wife to go also, she would follow at a distance. In Senegambia
the women live by themselves, rarely with their husbands,
and their sex is virtually a clique. In Egypt a man never
converses with his wife, and in the tomb they are separated by
a wall, though males and females are not usually buried in the
same vault.[271]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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