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
Many phenomena, amongst which may be noticed specially experiments on
the regeneration of lost parts and investigations into the chemical
differences between the corresponding tissues of nearly allied animals,
have led the investigators to whom I have just referred to conceive the
existence of an “Idioplasm,” which is the bearer of the specific
characters, and which exists in all the cells of a multi-cellular
animal, quite apart from the purposes of reproduction. In a similar
fashion I have been led to the conception of an “Arrhenoplasm” (male
plasm) and a “Thelyplasm” (female plasm) as the two modes in which the
idioplasm of every bisexual organism may appear, and which are to be
considered, because of reasons which I shall explain, as ideal
conditions between which the actual conditions always lie. Actually
existing protoplasm is to be thought of as moving from an ideal
arrhenoplasm through a real or imaginary indifferent condition (true
hermaphroditism) towards a protoplasm that approaches, but never
actually reaches, an ideal thelyplasm. This conception brings to a point
what I have been trying to say. I apologise for the new terms, but they
are more than devices to call attention to a new idea.
The proof that every single organ, and further, that every single cell
possesses a sexuality lying somewhere between arrhenoplasm and
thelyplasm, and further, that every cell received an original sexual
endowment definite in kind and degree, is to be found in the fact that
even in the same organism the different cells do not always possess
their sexuality identical in kind and degree. In fact each cell of a
body neither contains the same proportion of M and W nor is at the same
approximation to arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm; similar cells of the same
body may indeed lie on different sides of the sexually neutral point.
If, instead of writing “masculinity” and “femininity” at length, we
choose signs to express these, and without any malicious intention
choose the positive sign (+) for M and the negative (-) for W, then our
proposition may be expressed as follows: The sexuality of the different
cells of the same organism differs not only in absolute quantity but is
to be expressed by a different sign. There are many men with a poor
growth of beard and a weak muscular development who are otherwise
typically males; and so also many women with badly developed breasts are
otherwise typically womanly. There are womanish men with strong beards
and masculine women with abnormally short hair who none the less possess
well-developed breasts and broad pelves. I know several men who have the
upper part of the thigh of a female with a normally male under part, and
some with the right hip of a male and the left of a female. In most
cases these local variations of the sexual character affect both sides
of the body, although of course it is only in ideal bodies that there is
complete symmetry about the middle line. The degree to which sexuality
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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