Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German EditionWeininger, Otto
Philosophy
Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition
Weininger, Otto
Character; Sex; Sex (Psychology); Sexual ethics
In the case of a human embryo of less than five weeks, for instance, the
sex to which it would afterwards belong cannot be recognised. In the
fifth week of fœtal life processes begin which, by the end of the fifth
month of pregnancy, have turned the genital rudiments, at first alike in
the sexes, into one sex and have determined the sex of the whole
organism. The details of these processes need not be described more
fully here. It can be shown that however distinctly unisexual an adult
plant, animal or human being may be, there is always a certain
persistence of the bisexual character, never a complete disappearance of
the characters of the undeveloped sex. Sexual differentiation, in fact,
is never complete. All the peculiarities of the male sex may be present
in the female in some form, however weakly developed; and so also the
sexual characteristics of the woman persist in the man, although perhaps
they are not so completely rudimentary. The characters of the other sex
occur in the one sex in a vestigial form. Thus, in the case of human
beings, in which our interest is greatest, to take an example, it will
be found that the most womanly woman has a growth of colourless hair,
known as “lanugo” in the position of the male beard; and in the most
manly man there are developed under the skin of the breast masses of
glandular tissue connected with the nipples. This condition of things
has been minutely investigated in the true genital organs and ducts, the
region called the “urino-genital tract,” and in each sex there has been
found a complete but rudimentary set of parallels to the organs of the
other sex.
These embryological conclusions can be brought into relation with
another set of facts. Haeckel has used the word “gonochorism” for the
separation of the sexes, and in different classes and groups of
creatures different degrees of gonochorism may be noted. Different kinds
of animals and plants may be distinguished by the extent to which the
characters of one sex are rudimentary in the other. The most extreme
case of sexual differentiation, the sharpest gonochorism, occurs in
sexual dimorphism, that is to say, in that condition of affairs in which
(as for instance in some water-fleas) the males and females of the same
species differ as much or even more from each other as the members of
different species, or genera. There is not so sharply marked gonochorism
amongst vertebrates as in the case of crustacea or insects. Amongst the
former there does not exist a distinction between males and females so
complete as to reach sexual dimorphism. A condition much more frequent
amongst them is the occurrence of forms intermediate in regard to sex,
what is called abnormal hermaphroditism; whilst in certain fishes
hermaphroditism is the normal condition.
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