The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German EditionBloch, Iwan
Philosophy
The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German Edition
Bloch, Iwan
Sex; Sexual ethics
When Rosa Mayreder herself, at the end of her book (p. 278), comes to
the conclusion--
“In the province of the physical, about which no doubt is possible,
the development towards ‘homologous monosexuality,’ towards =the
unconditional sexual differentiation of individuals=, =constitutes the
most desirable aim=. Every =divergence= from the normal renders the
individual an imperfect being; =physical hermaphroditism is repulsive=
because it represents a state of insufficiency, an inadequate and
malformed structure. It appertains to the qualities of beautiful and
healthy human beings that the body should be that of an entire man or
an entire woman, just as it is desirable that the body should be
intact in all other respects”
--she has at the same time expressed a judgment regarding the value of
psychical bisexuality which =must ever be a rudiment merely= in the
“entire man” or the “entire woman,” and can never attain the
transcendent importance, can never represent the progress towards higher
altitudes, which the author, in her singular misunderstanding of the
true relations, wishes to ascribe to that condition. We may admit that
the bisexual character is more or less strongly developed in the
individual male or female, without thereby abandoning the fundamental
natural difference between man and woman, which involves not merely the
physical, but also the psychical sphere.
I disbelieve, therefore, in Rosa Mayreder’s “synthetic human being,” who
is “subordinate alike to the conditions of the masculine and the
feminine” but I do believe, as I have already stated in earlier
writings, in an individualization of love, in an ennobling and deepening
of the relationship between the sexes, such as is possible only to free
personalities. This is easily attainable in conjunction with the
retention of all bodily and mental peculiarities, as these have
developed during the process of sexual differentiation between man and
woman.
There can be no possible doubt that psychically woman is a different
creature from man. And quite rightly Mantegazza declares the opinion of
Mirabeau, that the soul has no sex, but only the body, to be a great
blunder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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