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
The body of a woman, as I have already shown, is sexual throughout, and
the special sexual acts are only intensifications of a distributed
sensation. Here, also, the difference between the two types displays
itself. The prostitute type in coquetting is merely using the general
sexuality of her body as an end in itself; for her there is a difference
only in degree between flirtation and sexual congress. The maternal type
is equally sexual, but with a different purpose; all her life, through
all her body, she is being impregnated. In this fact lies the
explanation of the “impression” which I referred to as being
indubitable, although it is denied by men of science and physicians.
Paternity is a diffused relation. Many instances, disputed by men of
science, point to an influence not brought about directly by the
reproductive cells. White women who have borne a child to a black man,
are said if they bear children afterwards to white men, to have retained
enough impression from the first mate to show an effect on the
subsequent children. All such facts, grouped under the names of
“telegony,” “germinal infection,” and so on, although disputed by
scientists, speak for my view. And so also the motherly woman,
throughout her whole life, is impressed by lovers, by voices, by words,
by inanimate things. All the influences that come to her she turns to
the purpose of her being, to the shaping of her child, and the “actual”
father has to share his paternity with perhaps other men and many other
things.
The woman is impregnated not only through the genital tract but through
every fibre of her being. All life makes an impression on her and throws
its image on her child. This universality, in the purely physical
sphere, is analogous to genius.
It is quite different with the prostitute. Whilst the maternal woman
turns the whole world, the love of her lover, and all the impressions
that she receives to the purposes of the child, the prostitute absorbs
everything for herself. But just as she has this absorbing need of the
man, so the man can get something from her which he fails to find in the
badly dressed, tasteless, pre-occupied maternal type. Something within
him requires pleasure, and this he gets from the daughters of joy.
Unlike the mother, these think of the pleasures of the world, of
dancing, of dressing, of theatres and concerts, of pleasure-resorts.
They know the use of gold, turning it to luxury instead of to comfort,
they flame through the world, making all its ways a triumphant march for
their beautiful bodies.
The prostitute is the great seductress of the world, the female Don
Juan, the being in the woman that knows the art of love, that cultivates
it, teaches it, and enjoys it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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