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
And that men would maintain their old position cannot be doubted. The
only change would be that women, too, would take part in the work of
civilization.[28] They would introduce a new and fresh element into
this work; and inasmuch as every woman would be brought up
systematically with a view to her life’s work, the physically and
psychically disastrous idleness of unmarried young girls, of “old
maids,” and of “misunderstood women,” would come to an end, and these
unattractive types would pass away for ever. The work of mother and
housewife must, in correspondence with these changes, be more highly
esteemed than has hitherto been the case. The technique and the theory
of domestic economy can even now, with sufficient intelligence devoted
to the question, be remodelled and transformed to a satisfying
activity.[29]
Woman is an integral constituent of the processes of civilization,
which, without her, becomes unthinkable. The present moment is a
turning-point in the history of the feminine world. The woman of the
past is disappearing, to give place to the woman of the future; instead
of the bound, there appears the =free personality=.
APPENDIX: SEXUAL SENSIBILITY IN WOMAN
An old and still unsettled subject of dispute is the strength and nature
of sexual sensibility in woman. Whilst the manifestation of sexual
appetite and sexual enjoyment in the male are fairly simple--and in man,
as A. Eulenburg has proved, the copulatory impulse is much more powerful
than the reproductive impulse--the sexual sensibility of woman is still
involved in obscurity. Magendie remarked that no two women are exactly
alike in respect of their sexual sensations and perceptions. There is no
question that among women the varieties of erotic type are far more
numerous than among men. Rosa Mayreder, for instance, distinguishes an
erotic-eccentric, an altruistic-sentimental, and an egoistic-frigid
type. The attempt has been made to prove that the last-named type is the
most widely diffused--that it is, in fact, the characteristic type of
woman. Lombroso and Ferrero were the first to maintain the slight sexual
sensibility of woman; Harry Campbell took the same view; and recently a
Berlin physician--Dr. O. Adler--has published a book on the “Deficient
Sexual Sensibility of Woman,” the conclusions of which are that
“the sexual impulse (desire, libido) of woman is, alike in its first
spontaneous origin and in its later manifestation, notably less
intense than that of man; and further, that libido must first be
aroused in a suitable manner, and that often it never appears at all.”
Albert Eulenburg, in an article in _Zukunft_ (December 2, 1893), and
later in his “Sexual Neuropathy,” pp. 88, 89 (Leipzig, 1895), first
opposed this doctrine of the physiological sexual anæsthesia of woman,
and quoted in support of his view the following passage from the
writings of the celebrated gynæcologist Kisch:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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